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A small, delayed avalanche may have been responsible for the Dyatlov Incident

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: A small, delayed avalanche may have been responsible for the Dyatlov Incident

#41

Post by gus_massa »

nsajko wrote: post #36

This is a dupe, sort of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25952168

Yes, but the dupe detector is weak, so articles can be resubmitted after some time when they didn't get enough traction. The rues are not very clear (How much time? How many upvotes? How many comments?), it's art of the secret sauce and perhaps the mods change the details from time to time.

So, here we usually link the previous submission if it has a lot of upvotes or comments. But in this had one upvote and one comment (and the URL is wrong?), that is clearly too few.

As always, there are exceptions, when the previous post has a very good comment. I like to link to the comment and perhaps copy a small part.

Re: A small, delayed avalanche may have been responsible for the Dyatlov Incident

#42

Post by david422 »

The book "Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident" goes into this.

IIRC, an avalanche as an explanation was rejected.

The conclusion was something like a harmonic wind incident. This caused the hikers to be highly uncomfortable and disoriented, so they left the tent and later died in the confusion.

Re: A small, delayed avalanche may have been responsible for the Dyatlov Incident

#43

Post by Tor3 »

“I’m absolutely convinced that the tragedy was the result of wind and snow deposition, and the fact that they pitched camp in the lee of a ridge,” Wilkinson adds. “I’ve made this mistake in my mountaineering career more than once.” During an expedition to Antarctica in 2012, tents belonging to Wilkinson’s team were pitched inside a circle of wind-deflecting snow walls they made. Returning to camp after three days, his team found that two tents tucked in the wind-shielded wall were completely buried."

I and two friends made exactly that mistake too.. the only difference is that we didn't leave the tent, we just observed how, instead of being shielded from the wind, we got more and more buried! After two days we dug out and moved away. We were young then. A mistake we never repeated. A small slightly sloping snow wall no higher than two or three inches works, a higher wall looks like it would work better.. big mistake.

Re: A small, delayed avalanche may have been responsible for the Dyatlov Incident

#46

Post by sandworm101 »

Pyramus wrote: post #29

I watched Lemmino's mini documentary on the subject and can only recommend it [1]. He spent a month going through the Russian original evidence and is surprised why it is still considered an "unresolved mystery". Some take-aways that I remember: * They had a self-made, wood-fired oven in the tent, which had already burned one of the hikers a couple of days before (documented in a picture) and could have malfunctioned…

And alcohol. There is precious little inquiry as to how much alcohol was present at the campsite. Some of the strange behaviors make more sense if one is open to the possibility that some people may have been drunk.

Re: A small, delayed avalanche may have been responsible for the Dyatlov Incident

#47

Post by astrea »

stretchcat wrote: post #17
srge wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you downvoted? This is not at all a simple theory. It’s interesting but it defies the Occam’s razor principle. It would involve a very specific combination of natural events. So-called skeptics will spend their lives trying to explain very strange things with everyday normal causes such as « swamp gas » or « reflection on the windshield » when obviously a larger curiosity and openness of mind would be require…

Take a closer look at roadkill the next few times you see it. You'll often notice the eyes, tongue, etc are missing. Sometimes the corpse will look like a skeleton with skin but no organs. These are circumstances commonly attributed to aliens or cuppracabra attacking cattle. However it's very common in roadkill when you start to look for it. It's pretty mundane, though I understand some people will find it startling…

Or maybe chupacabra attacks are more common than you think and you just think it's roadkill ;)

Re: A small, delayed avalanche may have been responsible for the Dyatlov Incident

#48

Post by lqet »

sandworm101 wrote: post #46
Pyramus wrote: post #29

I watched Lemmino's mini documentary on the subject and can only recommend it [1]. He spent a month going through the Russian original evidence and is surprised why it is still considered an "unresolved mystery". Some take-aways that I remember: * They had a self-made, wood-fired oven in the tent, which had already burned one of the hikers a couple of days before (documented in a picture) and could have malfunctioned…

And alcohol. There is precious little inquiry as to how much alcohol was present at the campsite. Some of the strange behaviors make more sense if one is open to the possibility that some people may have been drunk.

According to Wikipedia:

> There were no drugs present and the only alcohol was a small flask of medicinal alcohol, found intact at the scene. The group had even sworn off cigarettes for the expedition.

Re: A small, delayed avalanche may have been responsible for the Dyatlov Incident

#49

Post by [deleted] »

Tor3 wrote: post #43

“I’m absolutely convinced that the tragedy was the result of wind and snow deposition, and the fact that they pitched camp in the lee of a ridge,” Wilkinson adds. “I’ve made this mistake in my mountaineering career more than once.” During an expedition to Antarctica in 2012, tents belonging to Wilkinson’s team were pitched inside a circle of wind-deflecting snow walls they made. Returning to camp after three days, hi…

[deleted]

Re: A small, delayed avalanche may have been responsible for the Dyatlov Incident

#50

Post by [deleted] »

Pyramus wrote: post #29

I watched Lemmino's mini documentary on the subject and can only recommend it [1]. He spent a month going through the Russian original evidence and is surprised why it is still considered an "unresolved mystery". Some take-aways that I remember: * They had a self-made, wood-fired oven in the tent, which had already burned one of the hikers a couple of days before (documented in a picture) and could have malfunctioned…

[deleted]
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