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Author Topic: Tent: Discovery date  (Read 5150 times)

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January 12, 2023, 03:23:30 PM
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Missi


Hi all. It's been a while since I've last been active. There has been much going on and I've had to let Teddy's book sink in.
Recently I've stumbled across a mini-series on Youtube and there it was again, the mystery, that kept me hostage.


The videos I've been watching on Youtube are german. They can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-FH4ptK-XW1nBe-myLUVTaQ6NUVkG-Im
Especially part 7 made me rethink things. He mentions that the tent has been discovered three times.

1. On Feb 24th Pashin, Cheglakov and Anyamov found the tent, yet seemed not to tell anyone. Their finding the tent is proven by their testimony in the case files. At least Pashin and Cheglakov did testify accordingly.
2. On Feb 25th the tent was found by Karpushin and his pilot while flying over the area. Which is proven by an interview he gave later in his life.
3. On Feb 26th the tent was found as everyone knows by Slobtsov and his group.

Is there any known explanation at least for Feb 24th and 26th being present in the case files simultaneously?


As an explanation: I've been trying to find something explaining the whole story at once. Inspired by Teddy's book I though I'd try to find plausible explanations for all the little things and get those out of the way before trying to find something explaining the rest of the facts together.
 

January 15, 2023, 08:57:12 AM
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Manti


So they found the tent and did nothing? Didn't dig it out to see if someone is in there? Seems hard to believe. And it's not like the "military was unsure if there's something to cover up so they asked for confirmation" or something like that because, well, Anyamov a Mansi was with them.


 

January 15, 2023, 10:18:53 AM
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Missi


That is exactly what puzzles me (and many other).

Maybe it's an example of "lost in translation". Maybe someone reading Russian can clarify. Until then, this is what we have:

Testimony of Cheglakov:
"In the third week of February 1959 on the orders of the Chief of the logging branch Hakimov, together with the forester Ivan Pashin I flew by helicopter to the site of the death of a group of hikers near Mount Otorten. With us together in the same helicopter were 4 people and from Ivdel the same day came another 5 people. We start to carry out the assigned tasks same day we arrived. The search of hikers started in two groups. One person left on the protection of belongings and tents. On the first day of our search we found the ski tracks of the hikers. On the second day we found the tent of the hikers which was located in the upper reaches of rivers Auspiya and Lozva at the height of the mountain Verhuspiya. It was badly drifted by snow. We did not go inside.

We couldn't see any ski tracks of the hikers around the tent. Mansi ski tracks we have seen 10 km from where the tent of the of the hikers was found. One kilometer from the camping site of the hikers we found new Mansi stand (chum)."
https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-44-45?rbid=17743

Testimony of Pashin:
"On February 23, 1959 6 of us were dropped off from a helicopter in the area of Mount Otorten ​​to look for the lost group of hikers. On the first day of the search, once descended into the Auspiya we found ski tracks from the hikers. Here we pitched a tent, spend the night, divided into three groups and went to look for the hikers, as a result of the search we found a tent with belongings that was not clearly seen since it was covered with snow, we did not go into the tent."
https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-49-50?rbid=17743

There's nothing I could find in the testimony of Anyamov concerning the finding of the tent.

There's no testimony, but an interview with Karpushin:
"February 25, the weather was just wonderful. Mountains against the background of a clear, clear sky created a calm, gracious mood. From Ivdel airport almost simultaneously in the air soared 7 aircraft. To the village of Burmantovo we flew in V formation. There, at an altitude of 300 m, were divided, as was agreed earlier. Kholat Syakhl (Mountain of the Dead), marked simply as "altitude 1079" on the pilot maps, was directly at the rate of the leading aircraft. "Approximately 25-30 km to the mountain," recalls navigator Karpushin, "we saw very clearly the tent stuck to the eastern slope of the mountain ...

"To avoid the accumulation of aircraft, I instructed the rest of the crafts to return to Ivdel. I remember we made a lot of runs over the tent. It was clearly visible that it was cut from the north. Straight by the tent, a corpse of a woman lay judging by her long hair. A little further away lay another body. It was evident that the students left the tent in panic. By the way, I was already struck by the fact that the tent was improperly set up, on a gradient of about 30 degrees, open to all winds and rock falls ... What made the guys do this - I can not imagine. I can assume that, having reached the top, they were so tired that they decided not to go down to the foot of the mountain. This mistake became fatal for them.

The pilots marked the tent position on the map and contacted Ivdel, where they received the command to return to the airfield."
https://dyatlovpass.com/interview-karpushin?lid=1 - Bottom of page 2

That part is a mystery to me. Not that it's the only one...
 

January 16, 2023, 02:45:13 PM
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Manti


Kaprushin's interview reads like a fantasy. Flying in V formation is for airshows, not rescue missions in the mountains. And they flew from Ivdel to Burmanytovo, which is 66 kilometers, and were only at an altitude of 300 m? No pilot will ever do this. This is risky, a waste of fuel, against common sense and probably also against regulations (not sure about the SU in '59...).

And from Burmantovo to the Dyatlov Pass, it's 77 km, not "25-30 km". What kind of navigator is this? Moreover, the navigator doesn't "instruct aircraft" (other aircraft) to return to anywhere. That's ATC's job. So I don't trust that testimony at all.

Also, Cheglakov's testimony makes it seem like the "site of the death of a group of hikers" was already known. Odd...


 
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January 16, 2023, 03:12:53 PM
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Missi


I agree, the testimony seems weird. But I think that's maybe because of the translation?
As for Karpushin, I'm not quite happy with that interview myself, especially because it's an interview from years later as opposed to the testimonies at the time. Yet it's all we have, so either we believe it or we find something to disprove it. And still, even if we don't believe Karpushin, there's the testimony of Cheglakov and Pashin which make it two findings of the tent and no tell the first time.
 

January 22, 2023, 10:54:07 AM
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tenne


As far as I can tell from reading the interviews, the only reason to refute this testimony, which he has nothing to gain by and a lot to lose by telling the truth, is it doesn't fit in the individual's theory of what happened.

Back in a repressive regime like the soviet union, no one with official people with them, would ever do anything that wasn't approved because that put you in a gulag. He could hardly insist on his story being told because he would have been severely punished for daring to disagree with the authorities.

He had a superior with him, he would do as he was told.
 

January 22, 2023, 11:04:57 PM
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Missi


I do not refute his testimony per se. It's just that between the testimony and the incidents he testifies about are many years. Those years could have altered his memory. I don't think he's lying.
 

February 17, 2023, 07:42:31 AM
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amashilu

Global Moderator
www.dyatlovpass.com/igor-povetkin

I like his examination and explanation of the details and documents regarding the conflicting dates of tent discovery.
 

October 29, 2023, 05:48:37 PM
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kylecorbin


All witness statements and later recollections that say someone discovered the tent before Feb. 26, 1959, are wrong.  This discussion thread is one of the first ones I studied on this website, so now that I have spent weeks researching everything, I thought it would be appropriate to start adding my findings to this website starting with this discussion.

Karpushin said he saw the tent on Feb. 25 while flying above it. I meticulously examined all the data about that and proved he simply was confusing things in his mind when he stated those details long afterwards. I wrote up the details, together with photos. Yesterday, I read Slobtsov's book and found that he had reached my same conclusions fifteen years ago! If only there were some way for false leads like those in this discussion thread to have a warning posted at the top once the actual answer becomes known! Even worse, there is a very detailed write-up on this website about one of these wrong-first-discovery-date leads that doesn't allow responses posted to it. If anyone knows how we can get that fixed, please message me or tell the site owner.

Here's what Slobtsov's book says, followed by my summary of its confusing translation from Russian to English:
------------
https://litres.com/book/evgeniy-buyanov/mystery-of-the-dyatlov-group-death-21231057/read-online/page-2/
Having got the message about the found tent, Ortyukov and Maslennikov began to draw up rescue forces to Mount Holatchakhl (1096) for localization of the search zone. The Karelin and Tchernyshov groups were transferred here from Ivdel and upper reaches of the Vishera already on February 27th together with Moiseyev and Mostovoy with guard dogs. After receiving a message with a pendant from the plane, on February 27th the Tchernyshov group made all ready for the journey in the morning and set out for Mount Holatchakhl (it was 25 km away from this place). The flown-up helicopter picked them up and delivered to the outlier on the pass at Mount Holatchakhl. The Grebennik group was given a signal with a pendant from the plane while approaching Mount Oyko-Chakur, and they started descending along the Toshemka in the direction of Vizhay. The next day the helicopter took them off. The Grebennik group also had a “double” tent which looked like the Dyatlov group’s tent.

On all grounds, it was the tent, which the aviators (Karpushin, Patrushev) saw, who spoke of it much later as of the Dyatlov group’s tent, near which “the dead” were lying. However, it was the Grebennik group’s tent, and it was the tourists of the Grebennik group, who were lying in a conventional sign near it, not “the dead”. And it was on February 27th, when the aviators saw the tent, not on 25th, – already after discovering the Dyatlov group’s tent by the Slobtsov group.
------------

Slobtsov is saying that the Grebennik group had an extra-long tent like the Dyatlov group had, and after Dyatlov's tent was found on Feb. 26, the Grebennik group was signalled to by a plane and then picked up by a helicopter, since there was no need for them to keep searching in the wrong area, and they had no portable radio/phone. Karpushin, one of those pilots, saw their tent from the air on Feb. 27, and noticed a female with long hair lying down waiting, and a man, and somehow over time he merged those memories into a memory of having seen Dyatlov's tent on Feb. 25, when what he actually saw was the Grebennik tent on Feb. 27, and living people from that group, not dead people from Dyatlov's group. Probably he had been sent to find people near a tent, perhaps as early as Feb. 25, and the very first tent he saw was the Grebennik one, so that cemented an aha moment in his mind that confused him later, even though he knew he had seen more than one tent in the last few days of February.

Unfortunately for me (and for the others in this discussion), Karpushin's testimony was believable enough that we studied lots of things to try to figure it out. Alas, this was almost a complete waste of time, since we were chasing figments of his imagination. Other than Slobtsov's booking proving that, here's my own proof that I wrote up before I found Slobtsov's book (amazing that I ended up concluding almost the same thing Slobtsov did):

----------------------
Plane navigator Karpushin said things that clearly couldn't have happened on ANY date, much less FEB. 25 (one day before the day that everyone agrees Sharavin first chopped into the snow-encapsulated tent and looked inside). This part of Karpushin's statement proves he's got his memories mixed up with some other rescue mission he was on, or with other dates he did see the things, or in some other way is just plain wrong:
"[from the airplane when discovering the tent and other things nearby:] Straight by the tent, a corpse of a woman lay judging by her long hair. A little further away lay another body. It was evident that the students left the tent in panic."
NONE of that is true! None of the nine bodies were visible from the air before being dug out. All were covered by snow and so hard to find that none were found the 1st day (Feb. 26), four the 2nd day (one needing a scent-dog), one the 8th day, and four found many weeks later. Of the two females, one was under 15 feet of snow in the ravine, and the other under almost two feet of snow 2000 feet away from the tent, completely hidden from view from the air and from the ground. It took searchers two months to find the deeper-buried woman, and the less-deep woman was deep enough under completely smooth snow that they needed a scent-dog to find. The men's bodies he's referring to (Slobodin or Dyatlov) were also under the surface of the snow and could not possibly have been seen from the air. At the end of this write-up I show Slobodin after they'd dug enough snow off to photograph him, clearly showing two feet of snow having accumulated after he died. Neither man was anywhere near any other body. The closest body to the woman was over 500 feet from her. The next picture is Dyatlov, apparently when they'd first started digging, almost 100% covered by snow. Only part of his sleeve is out of the snow, and that was probably also covered before they started digging.  Kolmogorova, the woman whom Karpushin must have been referring to, is in the next photo. Her head was under about two feet of snow, with the hood of her coat pulled up onto part of it, and all of her body under snow, completely hidden from the air. Conceivably, diggers would have seen SOME of her not-long-but-not-short hair once they'd dug up the snow. Her body in the morgue, with no snow, still frozen in that position, shows her hair better. The most that anyone could see with her in the snow, face-down, before being removed, would be if up-close they looked at her head and noticed longer hair than any of the men had, so it would have to be a woman. If Karpushin had walked the slope after she and Dyatlov had been found, he may have been able to tell which was female, and after seeing tents from the air in February, he has mixed those memories. He might also have seen a female on some different rescue mission. I disregard his ENTIRE testimony as completely wrong.
-------------

Now, on to the other people whom this discussion thread says claimed to have found the tent before Feb. 26:

Cheglakov's testimony doesn't use dates but instead timespans from when the search started. He probably meant the word "third" instead of "fifth"; if we correct that, then his dating is fine. His testimony was given on March 6, so his memory should have been fine. It's odd that he mentioned anyone being "dragged in the ravine" since the ravine bodies and snow-den items were not found until two months later. Perhaps this is due to multiple people using "ravine" to refer to the entire area of the trees instead of just the creek ravine itself. His frequent use of the word "we" indicates that he is summarizing what "searchers collectively" did. He personally could not have done/seen all the things he said.
 
"On the second day [of our search] we found the tent of the hikers... It was badly drifted by snow. We did not go inside."  ...  "On the fifth day of searching we found 4 bodies, one of them female. After that we were taken home by helicopter to village of Vizhay."

By "did not go inside" he must mean that they themselves did not crawl into the tent but they looked into it from outside, so he is correct. But no bodies were discovered on what he is saying is the fifth day. He is testifying on March 6. His search started Feb. 25. Tent was found on Feb. 26. Four bodies found on Feb. 27. One body found on Mar. 5. If we change the word FIFTH to THIRD then his entire testimony is fine. It definitely is correct that they found the tent on the 2nd day and the four bodies on the 3rd day.

Here is his complete testimony, but there is nothing additional in it to clarify anything other than what I said above; He never said "Feb. 25". That is simply someone's misinterpretation of his mistaken wording. (There are A LOT of typos and translations errors in the official files, and that is why it has taken me almost a month to finally figure out the entire case.)

-------------
CHEGLAKOV WITNESS TESTIMONY
6 March 1959 investigator of Ivdel district in Sverdlovsk region lawyer I class Kuzminyh interrogated on the premises of the Vizhay logging department P.O. 240 as a witness, in compliance with art. 162-168 Code of Criminal Procedure
Surname, name and middle name: Cheglakov Aleksey Semyonovich
Year of birth 1924
Education: 10th grade
Occupation a) currently – Chief of the Separate Paramilitary Fire Brigade of Vizhay Forestry.
Al. Cheglakov (signature)

The witness testified: At the end of January 1959 the exact date can not remember, I saw at the club in village of Vizhay a group of hikers, among them there were 2 girls. These hikers left in a truck to 41st district of the Forestry Energolesokombinat. No one lives in the village of 2nd North mine. In the third week of February 1959 on the orders of the Chief of the logging branch Hakimov, together with the forester Ivan Pashin I flew by helicopter to the site of the death of a group of hikers near Mount Otorten. With us together in the same helicopter were 4 people and from Ivdel the same day came another 5 people. We start to carry out the assigned tasks same day we arrived. The search of hikers started in two groups. One person left on the protection of belongings and tents. On the first day of our search we found the ski tracks of the hikers. On the second day we found the tent of the hikers which was located in the upper reaches of rivers Auspiya and Lozva at the height of the mountain Verhuspiya. It was badly drifted by snow. We did not go inside.

We couldn't see any ski tracks of the hikers around the tent. Mansi ski tracks we have seen 10 km from where the tent of the of the hikers was found. One kilometer from the camping site of the hikers we found new Mansi stand (chum).

The first stop of the hikers from the location of the tent was at a distance of 17-20 km. The same distance was from Vizhay river. On the fifth day of searching we found 4 bodies, one of them female. After that we were taken home by helicopter to village of Vizhay. The mountain where the tent and the dead bodies were found is not a Mansi sacred place. Mansi sacred places are very far from there. While Stepan Kurikov and other Mansi helped with the search their behavior was normal and they even regretted that what happened to the hikers was so bad. What I saw and the circumstances under which they died I can only assume that they perish from the elements. Mansi should not be prosecuted for the death of the hikers. The group of hikers could have frozen because of a hurricane that tore the tent and broke loose and they try to fix it, or even managed to do that before being blown by the wind and dragged in the ravine, where they lost orientation and couldn't get back to the tent and died from the cold. I have nothing more to add.
Al. Cheglakov (signature)
Interrogator Assitant Attorney Lawyer I Class Kuzminyh (signature)
---------------

Likewise, I see only one specific date in the testimony of Pashin. He never said he found the tent before Feb. 26. Like the above, he also used timespans, not dates. He is not mistaken when he uses the words FIRST and FIFTH. And he simply says he found the tent as a result of a multi-day search, not on any specific day. And like the above, he uses the collective WE. He himself did not go to the tent, and he did not look inside. He remained downslope from it while Sharavin and Slobtsov went to it. They said he was too scared to go. You must view EVERY English citation from a Russian person from 1959 as possibly mistranslated. No kidding. Seriously! You can waste countless hours chasing false leads if you see something that doesn't make sense and assume the error is something other than a misunderstanding. I CAN'T EMPHASIZE THAT ENOUGH. Do not take ANYTHING on this website, that is a translation from Russian, as sacrosanct. Only believe the photos. If I still haven't convinced you, try taking the Russian letters and pasting them into an internet Russian translation site, and compare the result to the translation here. They'll be close but with notable differences.

"On February 23, 1959 6 of us were dropped off from a helicopter in the area of Mount Otorten ​​to look for the lost group of hikers. On the first day of the search, once descended into the Auspiya we found ski tracks from the hikers. Here we pitched a tent, spend the night, divided into three groups and went to look for the hikers, as a result of the search we found a tent with belongings that was not clearly seen since it was covered with snow, we did not go into the tent."

Here's his full testimony:
https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-49-50?rbid=17743




« Last Edit: October 30, 2023, 03:23:49 AM by kylecorbin »
 
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October 30, 2023, 09:31:39 AM
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Ziljoe


Hi kylecorbin,

I agree. A lot of the confusion arises from misinterpreted events. Several authors, perhaps for want of profit, embellished facts to add a narrative of mystery. Depending on how one is first introduced to the mystery can easily set the bias on how everything is read.

There are  a huge number of links to every theory , when reading them,  it is easy to assume the author has done all the relavent research but sometimes it seems some authors are just copying others to keep the spin going.

Teddy has let everyone put forward their ideas and publishes the content for all that read to make up their own minds.

I've had go back and re read the statements myself many times. I forget who said what sometimes and even the witnesses contradict themselves over the 60 years.

Everything seems to fit. Even from day one. Confusion over the start date of the search seems to tie in with the confusion of another group of tourists not returning on time. The delayed reporting , a local holiday, finding the proposed route all added to the delay.

The search plan is organised and logical. The tent was mostly covered and highly unlikely to be seen from the air. It is logical to bring in military personnel for resources and skills , metal detectors etc. They are only brought to the area when they have established the location of the hikers tent.

Everything that follows is consistent with a search and rescue. The lack of better documentation is possibly down to experience of the investigation or lack of suspicion of anything other than freezing.
I notice in your link that the crack in Slobodin head is even put down to freezing which has been heavily debated on this forum.

From the discovery of the tent and first 5 bodies, All that is is noted is that the tent was cut from the inside,nothing really  happens until the ravine 4 are found .

The autopsy from the ravine 4 is what confuses us all and is one of the two main mysteries, the other being , leaving the tent.

The date for the tent discovery is on the 26th and no one says different. 
 

October 30, 2023, 07:26:21 PM
Reply #10
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kylecorbin


Ziljoe,
Yes, I've never understood the fascination with the injuries on the bodies. All nine decomposed at least somewhat in the 25 days before being discovered. The 2-foot-deep snow covering did not happen the first day, so the three on the slope were exposed to air and sun for a little while, tho admittedly in a deep-cold state. The two at the cedar had even less snow cover. And while most people think of the four in the ravine as having been literally entombed 100% in snow for those two months, since they were INSIDE a ton of snow when the surrounding multiple tons of snow collapsed. The problem with that thinking, tho, is that they ended up very near the bottom of the collapse, right next to the never-freezing creekbed, so exposed to liquid water and any air it carried for those two months, and the higher temperatures with it. (That's why fish in frozen ponds don't freeze solid; the water below the frozen surface stays slightly above freezing.) 99.9% of people studying this mystery have never had a death in the family where the victim was outside for a long time before being embalmed, so it's understandable that a missing tongue and the other ghastly things that the coroner found on some bodies would make folks think something was amiss. But, no, it was just normal decomposition and scavenging by denizens of the forest and creek that caused the body changes. Further, I would not be surprised if Slobodin's bone crack happened on the day he was dug out, when at least two men were standing on top of the two feet of snow covering his head. A hard-frozen decomposing skull would be a bit fragile, I would think, and the searchers had no idea they were walking around above a body.

For others, here's the excerpt from Slobtsov's book:
--------
The commission of experts also found out that Slobodin:
"…had the bone crack with the dehiscence of edges to 0,1 cm (the length of this crack is 6 cm) from the leading edge of scales of the left temporal bone in the direction of the front and up the frontal bone. The crack is in 1,5 cm from the sagittal suture. Besides, there is opening of joints in the area of temporoparietal suture on the left, and also on the right (posthumous) …"
These cracks, invisible from the outside, found only during the internal investigation, were also considered the result of freezing, and weren't attached value.
--------

So I never considered the body injuries a mystery. I spent 99% of my research on the tent situation.
Kyle
« Last Edit: October 31, 2023, 05:43:24 AM by kylecorbin »