It wasn't that expansive.
The Group Diary 27/1/59 says "Second North is an abandoned geological site consisting of 20-25 houses."
This estimate is a little overstated. As we talked to Yuri Yudin in 2009, there were fewer houses that had a roof and walls together. There were 10...12. The rest of the houses were half destroyed or more. Yudin stayed after the group left for the route and looked at the village without rushing. Maybe he, too, was wrong 50 years after he had been there, but he could not be much wrong, because he had already had time to analyze everything well over that time.
Yuri Yudin's diary 28/1/59 "We spent the night in the hut of the 2nd Northern settlement. There are so many houses, warehouses, premises, forgotten old vehicles, machine tools. Everything was abandoned since 1952. Here worked а geological expedition. They took out what they could, the rest was written-off and abandoned. The houses are all dilapidated, there is only one with a stove and glass on the windows. The place is picturesque. Lozva river is wide. Lots of lime rocks. Uncle Slava says that in the summer you can cross the river. There are many warm, hot springs. Sagebrush and water is not entirely frozen and there are places under the snow where water is not frozen after which we need to break the ice from the skis."
Here Yudin is slightly mistaken about the timing. The village was finally abandoned in 1954. This was established later by some researchers on the basis of official documents. But this difference is insignificant.
Lyuda's Diary 28/1/59 "After breakfast, some of the guys Yura Yudin, Kolya and Yura Doroshenko went for the rocks in the core storage, where they decided to collect minerals for the collection. Nothing but pyrite, and there were no quartz veins in the rock."
Yudin was delayed because he was finishing his mineral collection and was waiting for the horse to go.
Group Diary 28/1/59 "After breakfast, some of the guys lead by Yuri Yudin, our well- known geologist, went to look for local minerals. They didn't find anything except pyrite and quartz veins in the rock."
Here's some photo's. I've colourised the first two (said to be circa 1954).
Thanks for a job well done. If you don't mind, I could use some of these two when I need to explain something?
By the way, what link should I put to these images?
The third photo does not show 2 North Village. This is Valentin Yakimenko in expedition 2012 on the way to the pass, when they were in Ushma. Ushma was built after Dyatlov's trip. What he is looking at are the remains of the former free labor camp, which existed from 1965 to 1990
This is a very strange perspective of the view of Severny 2. It was taken from the same point where I took a similar photo in winter 2013 (in March). In winter, it's very hard to see where the main road through the village was and we missed this spot. The banks have been overgrown with large shrubbery since 1959, so we missed it. But why Vladimir Androsov, who was a local there and said he knew the place well, missed the angle, it is not clear to me? I have the impression that Piskareva sent him my picture and he copied it in the summer. Then it turns out that he does not know this place. Because we could not go half kilometer downstream in winter, because there was a lack of time (the day in winter is short) and the temperature was about -30C (-22F). He was on a motorboat and there is a lot of daylight time in the summer - it's a northern area there and the day to night ratio is different in summer and winter.
I have some later winter photos, but there are big bushes from the river bank from the angle shown in the helicopter photo. So this photo is not very informative.