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Humans are fascinated by gore and violence, but even more so, the mysterious and unsolved. Interest in these disturbing and unpleasant subjects is called morbid curiosity, and it has gripped millions of people throughout the ages. I am one of those people. My name is Hallie, and this is the Morbid Curiosity Podcast.
While trying to keep myself up to date with anything new surrounding the Dyatlov Pass incident, listen to our previous two-episode series on this one for more information about it. I came across another incident involving another group of young Russian hikers perishing on the frozen slopes of a mountain. This incident has only recently reached English-speaking audiences, and according to one of the people who aided in the recovery effort after this incident, it's in danger of being embellished with conspiracy and paranormal theories in the same way the Dyatlov Pass incident currently is. That's why I wanted to share the facts of the case with you on the 51st anniversary of the tragedy.
The incident has many names, including the Chivruay incident, the Chivruay tragedy, and the Kola Peninsula tragedy. There aren't any official documents surviving about the case, at least none that have been uncovered so far. Most of the articles published about the case come from people who participated in the search for the bodies, and family members or friends of the deceased. All of these are in Russian, which unfortunately I can't read.
Thankfully, researcher Teodora Hajinska, who authored 1079 The Overwhelming Force of Dyatlov Pass with Igor Pavlov and runs dyatlovpass.com, has posted English translations of some of the articles and conducted her own research into the tragedy. Her main source is Vladimir Borzenkov. Borzenkov was part of the search and rescue team sent in after the first bodies were discovered. He wanted to set down the facts in English before the story made it to wider audiences, so that the families of the dead don't suffer the same uncertainty and constant probing that the families of the Dyatlov group did.
As this incident is more recent, the pain is still quite fresh for some of their families. Please keep that in mind when you listen to this episode. Also keep in mind that after a certain point in their journey, all information is made up of educated guesses, assumptions, and theories. The group did keep diaries, but these have gone missing, and apparently there was no information in them about why they did what they did.
Rescuers, other hikers, and then researchers have filled in the blanks. Some of their ideas are plausible, while others tug at tiny strings, hoping they'll lead to someone or something extraordinary. In January of 1973, 10 students from the Kuibyshev Aviation Institute, or KUI, attempted a Category 2 difficulty hike in the mountains of the Kola Peninsula in Russia. The hikers were between the ages of 17 and 26, the majority being freshmen in their first year of college.
Most were experienced hikers. Originally, two groups of seven were to make the trip, but when several members of both groups were unable to go, the two groups combined into one larger group of 10. Both leaders, Mikhail Kuznetsov, age 24, and Valentin Zemlyanov, age 23, were present on the hike. Both had traveled the route multiple times before.
Six KUI freshmen accompanied them. Alexander Novoselov, age 18, Sergei Gusev, age 17, Yuri Ushkov, age 18, Yuri Krivov, age 17, Anatoly Pirogov, age 17, and Artyom Lakan, age 17. Only Lakan was new to hiking. Two other individuals were also present.
One was Ilya Elschuler, age 23, who had graduated from KUI. The other was Lydia Martina, age 26, who worked as an engineer at the Yekren Research Institute, which was located in Kuibyshev, now called Samara, the same city as the college that all of the students attended. She often went on hiking treks and was quite an experienced hiker. The fact that her place of employment was supposedly the site of secret research has already caused rumors to fly about her presence with the group.
I'll get into the theories about her a little later. The area where these hikers were traversing is quite unique. The Kola Peninsula lies east of Finland. Almost the entire peninsula is within the Arctic Circle, meaning that in the winter, there is hardly any daylight.
On the winter solstice, the sun doesn't rise at all, while on the summer solstice, the sun doesn't set. The peninsula is bordered by the Barents Sea to the north and the White Sea to the east and southeast. This proximity to the Gulfstream, which runs through the Barents Sea along the coast, leads to unusually high temperatures during the winter, but also high winds, which develop due to the drastically differing temperatures over the land and sea. The whole area is prone to sudden severe weather changes.
The terrain mostly consists of swampy plains, but there are several groups of steep flat-topped mountains or mesas. The Lovozero Mountains and the Khibiny Mountains are both horseshoe-shaped ranges with lakes nestled in their curves. The area was originally the home of the Sami, one of the indigenous peoples of Europe. During the Soviet era, which is when the Chivrua Pass tragedy occurred, the Sami of the peninsula had been forcibly relocated to reservations, one of which was in the city of Lovozero.
The route the KUI students planned to take went through both the Lovozero and Khibiny Mountains. It was a popular route for hikers looking to do a Category 2 hike, which was part of the requirements for becoming a certified hiker. As I mentioned, two of the members of the hiking group had done the route before. It's possible that they were already Category 2 certified hikers.
Their journey began in a large mining settlement called Levta, in the middle of the peninsula, on January 24th, 1973. The hikers took a bus south to Ilma mining settlement. From there, the group made their way on skis along the Lovozero tundra for 3 kilometers, or 2 miles. This brought them to the Yelmurayok Pass, ascending to an elevation of 350 meters, or 1,000 feet.
They would then move along the bank of the Seduzero Lake, which was frozen, and then they would follow the Chivrua River southwest and ascend to the Chivrua Pass, a plateau with a steep drop on one side. They were supposed to descend from the pass, follow another river, and pass to Lake Umbozero, and then travel through the Khibiny Mountains to the city of Kirovsk. The hike was supposed to take six days. However, they would not make it past their second day.
January 25th was the last day of polar night, a time when the sun doesn't rise much above the horizon. The hikers would have been dealing with low light during the daytime hours, and it would be fully dark by 3 to 4 p.m. The moon and the aurora would add some light if it was a clear night, but that light was still very reduced. In 2019, it was revealed that before leaving Ilma mining settlement in 1973, the hikers spoke to a miner named Lev Gurin.
He told them that an alert had been sent from the nearest meteorological station, warning of bad weather, including a temperature drop and strong winds, which would start that night. Gurin was the last person to see the hikers alive. They camped in the tree line near the Yelmurayok River for the night. On the 26th, they started out late, traveling 8 kilometers or 6 miles along the edge of the Seduzero Lake.
They didn't need to go much further that day, as they wanted a full day to get over Chivruy Pass, a trek of 22 kilometers or 15 miles with a climb of 700 meters or 2,000 feet. The temperature in the Chivruy River Valley was lower than average for that time of year, between negative 15 to negative 18 degrees Celsius or 5 to 0 degrees Fahrenheit, with high humidity around 80 to 90 percent. The wind was blowing, but not terribly hard. That day, the group covered about 16 to 18 kilometers or 10 to 11 miles.
The wind was getting stronger, and based on some of their photographs, it had begun to snow. However, after stopping to eat a hot supper around 2 p.m., they changed their minds and decided to start their ascent of Chivruy Pass with no more than three hours of dim daylight left. Whatever their reasoning, the group climbed the plateau with a rising wind at their backs. They made it across the pass and moved onto the plateau in darkness.
Their path went along the edge of a precipice at the apex of a horseshoe-shaped ridge. Far below was the Kikuyai River and Kikuyai Lake. This was not the usual route for crossing the pass. There are several theories from Russian researchers of how the hikers ended up in this location.
Some say the group took the northern ascent route to get to the top of the Chivruy Plateau, but Borzhenkov stated that based on the group's Find all the missing hikers. Metal detectors were employed, but were useless as the hikers had no metal on them. A police dog was brought in to help, but after one day running around the sharp rocks of the plateau, its paws were cut up and bleeding, so it was sent back for medical treatment. No other bodies were found until March.
As the helicopter was taking off, snow was blown off the plateau, revealing a rope. This rope led to the bodies of Martina and Novoselov. They lay 300 meters or 980 feet north of the tent. Both showed signs of paradoxical undressing, the removal of clothing due to confusion brought on by severe hypothermia.
Two more bodies were found in April. Zemlianov and Lokont were found at the bottom of the gradual descent route on the right side of the Kitkui River. They were nearly three kilometers or two miles from the tent. Both of their watches read 4:33, and it's assumed this was 4:33 a.m., nearly 14 hours after they'd had their supper.
In late May, the snow began to melt. The search party used binoculars to scan the area, hoping to see the last body emerging from the snow. On June 1st, a suspicious object was spotted near the base of the plateau, directly below where the tent had been. The search team carefully climbed down the slippery slope and found the body of Otschuler lying face down in the snow, his hands without mittens, and his skin a deep reddish color.
All the students except Gusev were buried in closed coffins at Rubezhnoe Cemetery in Kuibyshev. A monument was raised for the entire group, and everyone also had individual headstones. A memorial plaque was placed on the Chivruay Pass some years later. What happened in the immediate aftermath is not well documented.
Some researchers believe a criminal investigation was opened, but this isn't confirmed. There's discussion of death certificates at the time, but I haven't found any online. That doesn't mean that there aren't any, just that I can't find them. The cause of death was officially hypothermia, but there's no record of this determination.
Supposedly there were autopsies, but again, there are no records of these. Anatoly Pirogov's brother stated that at the time, the police never told them the conclusion of their investigations. In an article published in a Russian magazine called Tourist in 1973, it was reported that the tragedy occurred due to a lack of experience. Officials for tourism in Kuibyshev and in the Murmansk region were reprimanded for bad organization of tourist trips, and that was the end of it.
Family and parents sought more information, but were not allowed any information on an ongoing investigation. This made many of them suspicious that they weren't being given the whole story. Later researchers too became suspicious when trying to find evidence of the case and finding the archives lacking any trace of the investigation. This lack of information seems suspicious at first, but there are many simple explanations.
The lack of information available to modern researchers has to do with standard archival procedures of the Soviet prosecutor's office. Any documents older than 25 years were destroyed in order to make room for more recent documents. As for a lack of a criminal case, this wasn't unusual at the time. The Lovozero mountains were often a location for hiking accidents and disappearances.
Hardly any other incidents had criminal cases associated with them. Most only had investigations, and the danger, time, and cost made it very difficult to do much more than a cursory investigation. Several sources I read stated that in their diaries, there's no explanation for the decision to ascend to Chivruai Pass early. I wasn't able to find any images of these diaries, let alone transcriptions or translations.
I did see two photos, one from the first day of the trek and one that appeared posed of the group beginning their day's trek on the 26th. However, there wasn't much context, as I knew who took them or where they were taken. I did see that Pirogov had a camera, but that it wasn't returned to his family after the investigation. Most of the photos surrounding this tragedy are from the search party members afterwards.
As time passed, gruesome details were added to the story, such as a mask of horror on the faces of the deceased, that their eyes were missing, that there were explosions in the mountains that night, that the hikers were poisoned with chemicals or radiation. Basically, these additions are repeats of all the rumors surrounding the Dyatlov Pass incident. Magnetic anomalies and vengeful spirits have also been thrown into the mix. Most of these rumors began in 2019 when a cousin of Anatoly Pirogov began his own investigation, thinking that something was being covered up about the incident.
Viktor Voroshilov was a businessman and was ready to spend his personal funds on an on-site investigation. He hiked to the pass and interviewed anyone left who knew the hikers or met them as they passed through the town of Revda. When he returned, he contacted Russian TV one to propose they film his second expedition to the pass. They agreed, but two weeks before they were going to begin filming, Voroshilov was brutally murdered by a disgruntled client of his business.
He was hit with a rock, placed in his car in his garage, and then burned alive. This event in itself has caused conspiracy theorists to assume that he was killed before he could make any of his findings public. However, apparently he told his wife that he hadn't found anything on his search. I couldn't find much more information about Voroshilov, other than that he was a businessman from Nizhny Novgorod.
He was related to one of the Kuai students and could fund his own search. No one likes to think in coincidences, but his murder could have just been a coincidence. Some believe Martina was a KGB agent and was conducting some sort of research that night when the weather hit, or perhaps caused group strife that caused them to separate. It's true Martina worked in a secret research institute, but it's not known if she was a KGB agent.
We do know it was common at the time for the Soviet Party to integrate a chaperone with hiking groups to make sure they didn't abscond. From what I read, Martina had hiked with the group before, and she got along with them. If she was KGB, she was likely just their usual escort for these types of treks. There's a theory that it was radiation that killed the group.
Supposedly an accident occurred in January 1973 at the nearby power plant, and as a safety measure, the accumulated radioactive gases were released into the atmosphere inside latex balloons. I'm not sure how these gases supposedly came into contact with the students, but the theory goes that they somehow did, and it made them undress and freeze to death on the plateau. This theory doesn't take into account many of the details of the case, so it's just not plausible to me. Radiation has been floated as the cause of death, mostly because the bodies turned a dark orange color when they returned to room temperature.
This was also a feature of the Dyatlov group, where radiation was actually detected. However, this change in color has nothing to do with radiation. It's a part of profound hypothermia called frost erythema. Frost erythema occurs when the blood cells in the blood vessels that run through the skin over protruding bony surfaces, such as the face and hands, burst due to extreme cold.
These locations usually have thinner skin and thinner layers of subcutaneous fat, making them more vulnerable to the cold and also more likely to show discoloration. Hypothermia can occur within 10 minutes at negative 30 degrees Fahrenheit or negative 34.4 degrees Celsius. The temperature that night in Revda was reported as negative 28 degrees Fahrenheit, with high speed winds, which would accelerate heat loss. Other symptoms of hypothermia include extreme confusion and a sudden lack of shivering as the muscles begin to go limp and release blood from the core into the extremities, making a person feel overheated, which in turn causes paradoxical undressing.
Other symptoms include cardiac arrest and death. Another researcher suggested the hikers were affected by what he called Arctic hysteria. According to him, individuals experience a sudden dissociative period of extreme excitement in which they often tear off their clothes, run naked through the snow, scream, throw things and perform other wild behaviors. There are several Arctic cultures who recognize a similar psychosis, but these behaviors in this case can all be explained by severe hypothermia.
This, plus the rapid rate of decay that occurs once a body defrosts, is likely the practical reason for closed coffin funerals. Another researcher stated that the Lovozera area is affected by electromagnetic anomalies that could affect the human brain. However, electromagnetic fields have not been shown to affect the human brain in repeatable empirical scientific tests. While they have some effect on plants and some animals over time, there is no instant effect and no detectable effect on humans.
The radiation given off by the sun's rays, which occurs due to fluctuations in the Earth's magnetic field, is more dangerous and it's still not a significant threat to humans. This fluctuation is what is meant by electromagnetic anomaly in a scientific context. These can be caused by variations in the chemistry or magnetism of the rocks in the area. Another supposed scientist suggested that radon deposits in the Earth's crust exploded and killed the group.
However, radon is not explosive or really reactive at all. It can cause cancer if you're exposed to enough of it over time, but there's no immediate risk. Radon can rise out of the soil and rocks where it's made by the decay of uranium. This often occurs just before an earthquake as the gas is shaken from wherever it has settled within the soil.
There were no earthquakes in the Lovozero area in January of occurs. As Bozhenkov said, I don't doubt more articles about the Chivruy Pass tragedy will become available, but there's no telling how sensationalized it will be when it's published. As I said in the Dyatlov Pass episode, there is no need to sensationalize an already tragic incident like this. It's morbid and terrifying enough without adding anything paranormal or conspiratorial.
But people love a mystery, especially a deadly one. And that's why the Chivruy Pass tragedy and its potential mystery sparks our curiosity. The Morbid Curiosity podcast is produced by H. Lloyd.
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