Death Mountain or a UFO Site?

In the Ural Mountains of the Soviet Union in 1959, nine climbers mysteriously died.

Although the cause of death or the circumstances as to why they died had not been determined, two months after the incident occurred, it was classified as secret.

Details of the incident were only released in 1990.

Although since the release of the information several investigations have taken place, the circumstances still remain a mystery

On 23 January ten students set out on an expedition to travel to and climb Otorten Mountain, in the northern Urals. Each student was an accomplished skier and climber.

After a few days, one of the students, Yudin, had become sick and had to turn back. The others continued on what was intended to be a 3 week adventure.

The students had planned to return to Vishai by February 12. When they had not returned on the planned day, not too much attention was paid as the team was known to be well experienced. It was only on February 20 that a search party was sent out.

The students, all dead, were found on February 26 on the slopes of Kholat-Syakhyl (Mountain of the Dead in the local Mansi language).

They had apparently died on the night of 1-2 February, but how?

On reaching the climbers campsite, the search party found their tent which had apparently been torn open from the inside. A Geiger counter that they had with them, started beeping rapidly and loudly. The student’s diaries indicated that every thing was fine in the evening when they had set up camp.

Footprints were found in the snow. Later all the footprints were attributed to the climbers, no extras. Following the footprints that led to the forest, the search party first found two bodies perhaps 1.5kms from the tent. These bodies were barefoot and dressed only in underwear although the temperatures would have been -30 degrees C. at night.

Within 500m, another three bodies were found. One appeared to have been clinging to the branch of a tree, looking towards the camp, whilst the other two had seemed to be trying to crawl back to the camp.

It was another two months before the other four bodies were found beneath 4 feet of snow. These four were dressed but seemed to have dressed in a hurry as they were wearing a mixture of their own and other climbers clothing.

Apart from burns on the hands, all the bodies seemed to be free of injury. Later it was discovered that one of the climbers had broken ribs and no tongue whilst another had a crushed skull.

Later medical tests showed all the bodies and clothing to have high levels of radiation. Family members stated that the skins of the casualties appeared to be “a kind of orange”, tanned.

Although the details of what happened that February night remain a mystery, several theories have been put forward.

The first theory is that the indigenous Mansi people must have taken offense at their presence.

What makes this unlikely though is that there was a lack of footprints apart from the climber’s.

The nearest village was 80kms away and the area was not any kind of sacred ground. The Mansi would have no reason to take offense, even if they were aware of the climbers’ presence.

The second theory is that the climbers stumbled on some kind of military experiment.

This theory is supported by the facts that the report was kept secret for many years and that region was banned to climbers for three years after the incident.

To this day though, there has been no evidence to suggest any kind of military experiment or other military activity in that area at that time.

A third theory is that the group was confronted by a Yeti.

In support of this theory there have been many supposed sightings of Yetis in those mountains and one medical report suggested that some of the injuries could have been caused by a “hug” of great pressure.

So what does that leave us? A radioactive Yeti?

The last theory is that the group happened upon aliens. This is supported by many UFO sightings being reported in that area. Also a group of geographers, who were camped 30 miles to the south on the night in question, said that they saw orange lights “fireballs” hovering in the sky above where the climbers were camped.

Recently a meeting was held to try to determine what happened that night. In attendance were six of the original search party and 31 independent experts.

They determined that the incident was most probably caused by some kind of military action. They did say though that they had no evidence to support this finding.

With this mystery still inconclusively resolved, it is up to us to decide for ourselves what happened that cold night of 1 February 1959.