A Compelling Unknown Force - The Dyatlov Pass Incident: AKA: Six Hours to Live

by Clark Wilkins

In February, 1959 nine young hikers on a cross country ski trip mysteriously died under horrific circumstances. It is one of the great mysteries of our times. They would be found with missing eyes, even a missing tongue, crushed bones, and stripped of their clothes (later found radioactive) in minus 50 degree temperatures . Theories range from their being being murdered by the CIA to space aliens, to even "Abominable Snowmen". This book explores this famous incident using a technique known as "Higher criticism" to explain their terrifying deaths. It includes the latest 2021 evidence and provides hitherto unexplored answers and is now a leading source on the incident, debunking all previous explanations while pointing to twelve points of overwhelming evidence that tell us what really happened on this tragic night of horror.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Mystery

263 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 28, 2014

Reviews

[Liralen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was really frustrating to read. Fascinating, sometimes, but frustrating. Nearly every book I've read about the Dyatlov Pass incident has offered a different explanation: infrasound, murder, etc. (yetis and radioactive ants, if you want to throw fiction into the mix...). Wilkins, too, has a different spin: human error, basically, compounded by bad luck and more human error.

The thing is, Wilkins' explanation is plausible. Is it the most plausible explanation? No idea. Several of the books I've read have made compelling arguments, backed up by research and facts and all that...but those arguments have all pointed in different directions, and the fact is that we're unlikely to ever know for certain what happened (for a number of reasons, including that there were no survivors and that the investigation wasn't up to today's standards and that the Russian government is likely holding on to information that it's unlikely to release).

In this case—spoiler tag because Wilkins is so determined to obscure his theory until the very very end—Wilkins believes that the wood-powered stove that the group had in the tent reignited after the chimney had been stowed away, filling the tent with smoke and necessitating a hasty exit. Because the group was preparing for bed, they weren't dressed for the elements, and—unable to retrieve their things from the smoke-filled tent—they made for the trees in order to start a fire to keep warm until the tent cleared of smoke and it was safe to return. From there, Wilkins does an extensive breakdown of when and how he thinks each person in the party died, from falling from a tree to exposure to mini-avalanche to suicide by exposure.

It's not that it's unreasonable. There's nary a whiff of the supernatural here (though Wilkins tries to raise suspense by leaving room, until near the end, for the reader to infer supernatural elements), and Wilkins has an explanation for everything. The problem—well, the problem boils down to 'repetitive and backs up nothing', but let's break it down a little further:

The writing itself is...not great. Very repetitive, far too many parentheticals, and a general lack of proofreading. Hardly the end of the world, but shoddy execution always puts me on my guard in terms of content.

There's also a question of arrogance. Everyone takes their turn at offering a solution, says Wilkins in the introduction, and everyone takes their turn at being wrong (loc. 1). He adds: The reader is about to know not only the horror of that night but also the unknown force compelled it to happen (loc. 81). In other words...everyone else got it wrong, but the explanation herein is correct. (The author also says of one of his other books on a different subject that ...the offered solution ranks the best out of some 400 different proposed theories... (loc. 3405))

Confidence is fine, except Wilkins backs up almost none of his claims. This isn't to suggest that nothing is based on evidence: many of the things he says are agreed upon by other authors, and he's clearly invested time and effort into his theories and explanations. But—and I think this comes back to the question of arrogance (or perceived arrogance; a reader less inclined towards crankiness might view it more as an eagerness to move on to the 'right' answer)—there's a distinct tendency towards presenting things as facts without offering the reader any evidence or reason to trust Wilkins as a researcher. It's little things and big:
-Most researchers conclude that Igor planned to camp at Hill 611 this night but had to turn back and that conclusion is correct. (loc. 433)
-This would later raise the question of whether or not tetanus played any role in their subsequent deaths (It did not.). (loc. 253)
-"Paradoxical Undressing" is also a popular explanation where people actually undress in the cold due to a feeling of warmth in the final minutes of hypothermia. While paradoxical undressing is a fact, it is also a fact that no one in the Dyatlov party engaged in it with the possible exception of Kolevatov (the last to die). This misconception is the result of Yuri Kri and Yuri Doroshenko being found stripped of their clothes. It was thought they took them off. Instead, it is known the two women did this to them after they died in order to add to their own clothing. (loc. 2757) (Let's come back to this.)
-Zina insisted on staying with Igor and help get the fire going again. She had apparently found her true love. (loc. 2023) (Let's come back to this, too.)

One of the few things Wilkins provides a source for is the idea that drinking alcohol leads to a full bladder (loc. 1936). That's...sure...okay...but it's not the sort of thing I really need a citation for. He mentions this so that he can repeatedly compare presumed level of intoxication to presumed impairment of judgement, but I needed more proof of alcohol consumption than 'full bladders' (you know what else causes full bladders? Water. Also cocoa, of which a mug was found in the tent), especially when other writers tend to be in agreement that excessive alcohol consumption was unlikely on this trip.

This all gets more frustrating as the book goes on and Wilkins drops into fictional scenes (he'd probably call them 'reconstructed') full of unlikely dialogue. They're meant to present an illustration of what (might have) happened, which is of course fine, but they're not marked as fiction/interpretation—they're presented as, well, This Is What Happened. The lack of distinction between fiction (reconstruction, whatever) and cold hard known fact makes it doubly hard to know how much of what he says is based on clear evidence and how much of it is supposition.

(Yes, that is a lot of parentheses, and yes, I am cheerfully a hypocrite! But if my parentheses bother you, then so will the book's.)

I want to believe Wilkins, but I ended up distrusting a lot of the conclusions drawn here. It's a pity, because I do love a clear, no-yetis-involved interpretation of a mystery. Wilkins makes a fuss about one of the hikers having had a nosebleed before dying relevant because it bolsters the stove-problem argument, and about warm, dry air being necessary for this because 'The cold prevents nosebleeds' (loc. 2258), but as far as I can tell from the (...all-knowing, ever reliable...) Internet, that's just...not true. Nosebleeds are more likely with dry indoor air, but warm, dry air is not in fact the only cause of nosebleeds.

I promised (threatened?) to come back to a couple of things. First, the question of paradoxical undressing (quote repeated here for ease of access but in spoiler tags for brevity): "Paradoxical Undressing" is also a popular explanation where people actually undress in the cold due to a feeling of warmth in the final minutes of hypothermia. While paradoxical undressing is a fact, it is also a fact that no one in the Dyatlov party engaged in it with the possible exception of Kolevatov (the last to die). This misconception is the result of Yuri Kri and Yuri Doroshenko being found stripped of their clothes. It was thought they took them off. Instead, it is known the two women did this to them after they died in order to add to their own clothing. (loc. 2757) It's not that I think Wilkins is wrong here; I've read nothing about the case to suggest that paradoxical undressing is worth seriously considering, and much to suggest that if Person A was found wearing some of Person B's clothing then it was, as Wilkins says, a matter of Person A desperately trying to survive after Person B died. But the word choice here: it is also a fact and it is known...these are very very reasonable suppositions, yes, but they're neither fact nor known. It's also possible, for example, that one of the other men removed Doroshenko and Krivonischenko's clothing to give to the women. In many ways it's an inconsequential detail (the end result is the same), but acknowledging that there are several (related) ways that this could have gone down would make it sound a lot more credible.

Second, that thing about Zina and love. Wilkins returns again and again to this idea that Zina was hyperfocused on love:
-...and discussed various topics, including love (Zina), friendship... (loc. 219)
-It was likely Zina who led these romantic discussions, having her choice of men... (loc. 303)
-...and an announcement for "Love and Hiking", a daily seminar by...Zina...who always wanted to talk about love... (loc. 965)
-She [Zina] had chosen true love, following after Igor. (loc. 2144)

Other books on the mystery have agreed that Zina had a magnetic character, but beyond that...? There's not any evidenceto suggest any current (at the time of the hike) romantic liaisons, or any drama at all between the hikers, and thus the one-note portrayal of Zina as love-obsessed ends up feeling...well. One-note, and needlessly dramatic.

This flair for the dramatic is bourne out elsewhere as well:
-To gain those extra four miles, Igor Dyatlov was now about to kill himself and his entire party. (loc. 447)
-Kolevatov himself died a helpless, hopeless death suggesting suicide. (loc. 3157)
-This:

According to Yudin:

"If I had a chance to ask God just one question. It would be, "what really happened to my friends that night?"

To which this author replies; No, Yuri. You don't really want to know. (loc. 273; original punctuation retained)

I don't know. Wilkins tries to spin blame out of it in a couple of places, and it feels really unnecessary. If things did go down as he suggested, then this dramatic 'he was about to kill them all' seems rather...cruel. Also, Wilkins suggests that the stove Dyatlov designed was of faulty design, leading to a scrambled tent evacuation and ultimately death, which makes it doubly silly that if Wilkins wanted to place blame on Dyatlov he'd do so on the basis of a changed route. Cruel and unnecessarily dramatic.

The comments about suicide felt similarly, unnecessarily dramatic. They're made based on Kolevatov having an unbuttoned coat at the time of death and on the premise that he could have made it back to their makeshift shelter to have a chance of surviving. But oof. I think some nuance is called for here—that even if Kolevatov had the energy and wellbeing and presence of mind to make it back to the shelter and chose not to, there's a world of difference between 'dying man who has just seen his entire expedition die around him not buttoning his coat' and 'active suicide'.

And lastly, kind of besides the point (but this review is epic already, so why not make it even more so)...the comment about Yudin makes me rather sad. Yuri Yudin, whom Wilkins mentions little more than in passing, was the tenth member of the Dyatlov expedition; he had health concerns and turned back early because of joint pain. As a result, he lived to the age of 75, but pretty much every detailed account agrees that the events haunted him until the end of his days; Wilkins notes that When Yuri Yudin, the only survivor of the expedition, died on April 27, 2013, according to his wishes he was also buried alongside the other seven hikers at Yekaterinburg (loc. 2705; two of the nine were buried at a different cemetery). That's not the request of a man who 'really doesn't want to know'; that's the request of a man who has spent two thirds of his life with this in the back of his mind. And oh, I know, it's a throwaway comment and just in there for the drama of it all, but this isn't really a story that needs manufactured drama, is it?

So yes. The theory has potential but the execution is so frustrating. There are nonfiction books where you can easily get away with omitting sources in the main text—e.g., if you're exploring a subject with known answers. But if you're trying to prove that your theory (especially in a case that has befuddled many for decades) is the right one, you need to back your shit up, preferably in the text itself and definitely with a long list of references at the end.

Ah well. I haven't run out of books on the subject yet. In the meantime, I'm deep into a 1960s Harlequin that's making my eyes roll deep into the back of my head with a different kind of frustration, so I guess all is as it should be.

[Jeanine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, logical explanation.

[Taksya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ennesimo libro sull'incidente al passo Dyatlov (siamo a quattro) e, dopo una prima sensazione di fastidio, si è rivelato il migliore come teoria e ricostruzione dei fatti.
Il fastidio iniziale è dovuto alla scelta stilistica dell'autore.
Mentre Svetlana Oss e Irina Lobatcheva forniscono dati, informazioni e stralci di diari e documenti delle indagini e Donnie Eichar aggiunge la sua personale avventura nel gelido inverno russo, Clark Wilkins drammatizza sia i fatti dell'incidente che le successive ricerche, rendendo la storia più un romanzo di avventura e terrore che una indagine giornalistica.
Questo gli ha permesso di rendere più veri i vari protagonisti ma, resta sempre il dubbio, di aver aggiunto emozioni e intenzioni che forse non erano realmente presenti nel gruppo.
Stessa cosa con i soccorritori, tra i quali la figura di un misterioso Anton Sergei (misterioso perché è un nome che non compare mai negli elenchi dei partecipanti alle ricerche) che funge da voce per l'autore, spiegando e raccontando dettagli tecnici di autopsie, ricerche e teorie, che nessuno poteva avere nel momento delle ricerche stesse.
Ma, una volta che la storia prende, si smette di notare la cosa e i dettagli forniti sono sovrapponibili a quelli presenti negli altri libri.
La sua ricostruzione dei fatti, con l'inserimento di scene che spiegano i vari dettagli rilevati dalle autopsie (escoriazioni, ferite) e dai rilievi sul punto dell'accampamrnto e delle morti, risulta credibile e molto più semplice di altre più complottistiche o, semplicemente, complicate.
Nella sua versione la colpa del comportamento apparentemente assurdo del gruppo è dovuto al fumo prodotto dalla stufa, trovata nel suo contenitire e senza il camino per farlo fuoriuscire dalla tenda, che avrebbe rapidamente riempito l'ambiente e costretto i ragazzi ad uscire e a non poter rientrare.
Ogni comportamento, reso assurdo dall'alcool bevuto e dall'intossicazione da fumo, ha la sua spiegazione, così come la decisione che ha portato in quel punto il gruppo e che li ha spinti sul luogo della loro morte.
Soluzione banale, peggiorata dal fatto che la colpa del precipitarsi degli eventi è solo, anche se involontaria, dei ragazzi.
Tanti piccoli errori, compreso l'aver installato la tenda con l'apertura a favore del vento, che avrebbe ridato vigore alla brace presente nella stuva mezza smontata.
Un evento non più ripetutosi perché quella stufa era stata ideata da Dyatlov stesso e non più sviluppata da altri, perché poco gestibile e rischiosa.
Nel complesso una spiegazione troppo banale per essere gradita dai più, che nell'ottica dell'evento misterioso cercano una risoluzione misteriosa.
Invece, nella sua semplicità, forse più tragicamente possibile.

[Renee Jaspers · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third Dyatlov Pass book I read and, ultimately, the most convincing. The other two being Dead Mountain by Donnie Eichar and Don't Go There by Svetlana Oss (both well done and pretty convincing of their chosen theory). While I wish Wilkins included citations, from the other books, I can say that most of what he writes can be verified from the source material. I liked the writing style. His recreation of the events made more sense than others, and was a touching and even thrilling read. His explanation of the mystery is so logical, but I haven't encountered it elsewhere. Definitely worth reading, especially for any Dyatlov Pass mystery fans out there!

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most plausible of the explanations. But why would they completely panic? Why not put the vent stack back in? Or just cap the vent stack which with something, either a cap (maybe which fell off) or anything that would restrict oxygen to the stove and would kill the fire. Yes the tent might have been full of smoke but surely trying to cap, or reassemble the stove flu would give them a better chance than being out in the cold without clothing and shoes. Also if the smoke was that bad then soot particles would be on the frozen cocoa ham clothing. There was no mention of this by investigators. And okay, suppose they were too panicked to think of this (though they were all intelligent people) and ran away, wouldn't even one of the group - the stove's designer for example - think of the simple solution, after a period of reflection? The author's explanation makes sense for why they fled the tent. Not for why they ran a mile away from it and stayed too terrorized to return to it for so long. Five minutes in the clearer air and a bit of reflection surely would have given them a simpler, saner answer than running a mile away to die in virtually no clothes or shoes.

[B.L. Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic recounting and analysis of the Dyatlov Pass incident. I am so tired of all the supernatural or conspiracy theories in other books; after I read this one, all I could say is "it all makes sense". The disaster was one of complete and total human error. Without going into detail, because the author allows this to unfold like a detective novel and I don't want to give away the surprises, I was totally surprised and satisfied at the same time with the conclusions. Definitely a fascinating read into a very sad situation that never should have happened.

[Roseanne James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Compelling Answer

I have read practically all of the theories put forward regarding the mystery of what happened & this one has to make the most sense of what happened to those unfortunate hikers. It makes the most sense compared to all the others that have been put forward. It's also a compelling read & I found I couldn't put it down & my kitchen sink just filled with unwashed dishes! I heartily recommend this book because it just about covers all bases.

I

[Gabrielle Hamilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most compelling explanation I have read yet

I have been very interested in this subject lately and read several different views of the events that must have occurred that fateful night. However, I have found this one book to be the most logical and thought-based, fitting all of the pieces together to come to a sensible conclusion. The research involved seems to go deeper than most, offering a solution that is both plausible and verifiable.

[Videoclimber(AKA)MTsLilSis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't like the way the author assumes who did what and why, for those are things no one can know. There also were some repetitive parts. I did like that I got to know more about the people involved in this incident. Wilkins reasoning for how the deaths occurred made sense. I honestly thought his idea of why they left the tent made more sense then the ideas in other books I have read.

[Jessica Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well presented and well reasoned solution to the mystery. The writing style worked perfectly to build a creeping sense of dread, without undermining the simplicity of the theory. It ultimately fell short for me in explaining why they would abandon the tent for the tree line - and the pressure put on police by party officials to declare the case closed.

[Jane K. Stecker · Rating 5 out of 5]

This One Might Be Right

I have now read 4 books on this subject. At first I thought there was too much speculation. As I read on I saw that all the research and speculations really made sense. I believe now that this author has solved most of the mystery. It is still a sad tragedy but read this if you want to make some sense of the whole thing.

[J Kowalski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good Read

Very interesting book, kept me not wanting to stop until it was finished, but it left me with unanswered questions. Still a mystery to me. Would recommend reading.

[Melbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mystery, almost paranormal history. Interesting!

[Coraline · Rating 4 out of 5]

it was ufos pog????????????

[Kay Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was decent enough. I felt like points were being repeated over and over and over though. The conclusion is interesting and one worth considering.

[Irene Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very intriguing book. It is possible the theories put forth in this book are correct but no one really knows what really happened to make these experienced skiers cut through the tent and leave without their shoes and outer clothing. Something very frightening certainly happened to make them leave in such a state but it's still a mystery. I read this book after reading Looking Beyond the Pass which is a fictionalized story about the lives of these skiers and their remaining families and friends. I couldn't put this book down once I started reading it.

[Laura Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, a theory that makes logical sense and satisfactorily explains all the weird evidence associated with this mystery. The evidence is building the whole time you're reading, but the ultimate theory isn't revealed until the very end - and for me a lightbulb instantly went off and a lot of things that didn't make sense before, suddenly were explained. An aha moment!! I won't reveal here because of the risk of spoilers, but I will say there's nothing paranormal, or even all that strange. Just a logical explanation that fits. A must read!!

[Belinda in Alabama · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very Good Reasoning

After seeing a little bit of this story on TV, I wanted to know more. While I did not purchase the more expensive books this one is fine. It explains things clearly and with reason. It doesn't go off the deep end screaming Yeti. It opened my eyes to a lot more possibilities. I have never gone camping and certainly not in snow and -20F weather. If this story interests you, then you'll enjoy the book. It is also a pretty fast read. Happy Reading!

[Mary Glass · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling theory

A bit on the gossipy side, presuming romance without evidence. The findings of the tracker are laid out very well. A simple theory that ties it up convincingly. Preventable deaths, but now understandable. Mystery solved. Such strong bright young people. But accidents happen and can spiral out of control. Like this.

[Sinovia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Read!

This book gives theories of what may have happened at Dyatlov Pass.It is written with a very clear point of view with the author's theory at the end.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good. Gave very good simple explanation of what happened.

[Steve Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good read

An aspect of this mystery that I had not read before. I would recommend this book if you are interested in this case.