help translate tent and snow paragraph

[kylecorbin]

Here are four Russian lines of text I need help translating. Presumably, the questioner ("Q"), and the answerer ("A" - one of the witnesses who found Dyatlov's tent in the snow), and the translator all knew the context of what was being discussed, but one single word can make all the difference for those of us trying to understand what is fully meant.

Q: Внутри палатки снега не было?
A: Да, не было снега.
Q: Несмотря на разрезы и ветер?
A: Разрез был с подветренной стороны ну и что она на разрез как бы легла, упала.

Below are the various translations. Here is the context: LEEWARD means on the side that's not facing the wind. The Dyatlov nine dug a trench in deep snow on a mountainside to pitch their tent in so that it would be protected from the wind that blew constantly down the mountain. They positioned the tent with one long side facing uphill (toward the taller wall of the trench) and the other long side facing downhill (basically into open air - toward the short wall of the trench). The downhill side faced away from the blowing wind. When the trench's tall uphill wall collapsed downhill onto the tent, it covered both sides of the tent, and the people inside the crushed tent cut holes to get out. They cut into the fabric of the leeward (downhill) side of the tent.

I don't know whether Russian uses gender for nouns like we do in English, but presumably "tent" in Russian is a feminine noun and accounts for the SHE in this conversation that is not about people. The enormous problem is figuring out what thing fell. Before I got multiple translations, I assumed "snow" was the thing that fell onto the holes (using the translation that has no "she" in it at all), but now that I look at multiple translations, I think the answerer is thinking that the order of events was different and he is saying that the TENT ("she" or "it") fell. He thinks that the holes were cut into the tent fabric while the tent was standing normally, and then the tent collapsed down onto its cuts, the uphill side then facing skyward and covering the downhill side, preventing any snow that later fell from the sky from reaching the holes, and that is why no snow got inside despite there being lots of windy snow that normally would get inside something standing out in the wind with holes cut in it.

Can anyone fully translate the four lines, knowing all the above, and figure out what is meant? I would prefer both an exact word-for-word translation and then a translation that connects pronouns with antecedents so that I know what refers to what. Thanks.

Q: Внутри палатки снега не было?
A: Да, не было снега.
Q: Несмотря на разрезы и ветер?
A: Разрез был с подветренной стороны ну и что она на разрез как бы легла, упала.

My own guessed translations of the individual words (I know ZERO Russian!):
Q: INSIDE TENT SNOW NOT BE?
A: YES, NOT BE SNOW.
Q: DESPITE THE CUTS AND WIND?
A: CUT WAS WITH LEEWARD SIDE WELL AND THAT SHE ON CUT LAY DOWN, FELL.

Some actual translations:

Q: Was there no snow inside the tent?
A: Yes, there was no snow.
Q: Despite the cuts and the wind?
A: The cut was on the leeward side, and that she kind of lay on the cut, fell.

Q: Was there any snow inside the tent?
A: Yes, there was no snow.
Q: Despite the cuts and the wind?
A: The cut was on the leeward side, so she kind of lay down on the cut and fell.

Q: There was no snow inside the tent?
A: Yes, there was no snow.
Q: Despite the holes and the wind?
A: The cut was on the leeward side, and so it fell, as it were, on the holes.

[Axelrod]

How did you obtain so strange translations?
Use Google translator (Q: Was there any snow inside the tent?) and won't worry.

[Axelrod]

The main problem is that Russian worg "tent" does'not correspond to englsih

тент = awning
палатка = tent.

Some Russian researchers suppose that Dyatlov's  tent was w/o floor, i.e. it was awning (e.g. Sungorkin in interview).
It is wrong supposition.

[kylecorbin]

How did you obtain so strange translations?

One translation is from this website, one is from Google Translate, and one is from Bing Translate. NO machine translator is anywhere close to 100% accurate. That's why I'm hoping someone on this website who is familiar with the case can figure out what the people "meant" as opposed to what the words alone mean.

[kylecorbin]

Oh no! Now I'm finding even worse problems. In describing the footprints [frequently translated as "traces"] found on the mountain, Atmanaki said very different things depending on which version you believe. There is only one case file for Atmanaki, so how can there be two very different versions of it?

Atmanaki witness testimony
https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-209-220?rbid=17743
"There were no traces around the tent, because digging around the tent we threw a lot of snow, which was subsequently carried away by the wind, destroying all traces ... 20-30 m below the tent in Lozva valley led a string of tracks well preserved till this time"

But this version of what he said is VERY different and CANNOT POSSIBLY be due only to translation differences:
https://dyatlovpass.com/1959-search
Atmanaki
"There were no footprints right around the tent because when the Dyatlov group dug they had stacked the snow all around, and later this snow was drifted by the wind, thus covering all the tracks. But 30 or 40 m down there was a file of very well preserved footprints."

What's going on!?

I copied the Russian text into Google Translate and got this version:
"There were no traces around the tent, because... While digging a hole, they threw a lot of snow around, which was subsequently blown away by the wind, destroying all traces ... 20-30 meters below the tent, a string of tracks led into the Lozva valley, well preserved until this time."

There are MAJOR problems:
- Who threw snow:  the victims when digging their trench, or the searchers when digging the tent out of the snow!
- The digits 0, 2, 3, and 4 are the same in English and Russian, so there is NO possible way that "20-30" can ever become "30-40" via translation.

[Axelrod]

How could the victims cover their tracks with snow, which they had not yet made, because they had not yet descended?

[kylecorbin]

How could the victims cover their tracks with snow, which they had not yet made, because they had not yet descended?

I don't understand the question, but the issues are with the footprints right around the tent, not the footprints that began several meters away and continued down the slope for half a mile. The 9 victims dug a trench for their 14-foot-long tent on the mountainside in a deep-snow area. They spent an hour doing that in a hurry in a blizzard in bitterly cold wind. They had no shovels. They threw snow everywhere. They stepped on top of their own footprints literally hundreds of times. There would have been no discernible footprints left from their effort, only a jumbled flattened area of snow around the tent. But when the tragedy happened hours later, they walked from there downhill to the trees. THOSE prints were preserved. The rescuers arrived 25 days later and dug snow off the tent. Someone is mistakenly thinking that the piles of snow removed from the trench blew onto the footprints right beside the tent, but there never were any footprints there because the 9 victims all walked on top of them in that 14-foot area.

[Partorg]

Sharavin meant that the fallen roof of the tent with a cut lay on the floor, there was no free space between it and the floor, and the snow simply could not get inside.Yes, he uses the expression "lay down, fell on the cut", which implies that he automatically adheres to the commonly held view that the tent was cut while standing.
It is not entirely clear what you want to extract from the opinions of people who were not eyewitnesses to the Event. They know no more than anyone who spends some time gathering information and immersing themselves in a topic could know.

I copied the Russian text into Google Translate and got this version:
"There were no traces around the tent, because... While digging a hole, they threw a lot of snow around, which was subsequently blown away by the wind, destroying all traces ... 20-30 meters below the tent, a string of tracks led into the Lozva valley, well preserved until this time."

This translation option is correct both in relation to “20 - 30 meters” and in relation to the snow scattered near the tent. Those. in the handwritten text Atmanaki does not specify who threw the snow.A confident impression: he means the Dyatlovites.
In general, Google Translate  works quite accurately.  Same as Deep Translate. When working with most others problems often arise

[Axelrod]

According to Sharavin`s interview by Maya Piskariova
see his drawing
https://dyatlovpass.com/sharavin-2?rbid=18461
= steps begin in distance 2(3 m) from tent =

Askinadzi states about 20-30 meters.
Prosecutor Tempalov noticed 50 meters.

This progress maybe is caused by excavaton work around ther tent.

[kylecorbin]

I'm looking for people who read the Russian language to translate those four lines, not to interpret outside those lines. I'm not needing guesses, since I know the Dyatlov case backwards and forwards. I need help figuring out which words have been mistranslated. I don't know whether Russian uses pronouns and antecedents, but in English we say IT, SHE, THEY, etc., to refer to prior nouns, but which noun is often hard to know. In Latin, it's easier, since almost all nouns have gender even when they don't need to. If Russian uses gender, and if there really is a pronoun SHE in the answerer's words, then if Russian SNOW and TENT have different genders, then we'll know which one the answerer meant. The answerer is saying something fell, but the two competing translations can't decide whether it's SNOW that he is saying fell onto the holes that were cut into the tent, or the TENT itself that fell onto its holes. I'd always wondered why he was saying that snow fell on the holes, since he was also saying that there was no snow inside the tent despite the holes, so when I started double-checking this website's translations, I found out that the translation itself is the problem, most likely. If it turns out that his words are literally "she fell" and if TENT is feminine and SNOW isn't, then we know he's saying the tent fell.

I figured this website would have LOTS of Russian readers who could answer me the very first day, so I'm surprised not to have had a single person say, "I read Russian and English fluently and the answer is this..."

Pronouns probably are the key to most of the mistranslations. Often on this website I'll see a THEY or a SHE where no prior word could possibly be a they or she. If no one here can read Russian and English fluently, perhaps someone can refer me to a different website where I can find such a person?

[Axelrod]

My native language is Russian, then Ukrainian, and English is already in third place.

Although the Russian and Ukrainian languages are similar, the translation problem that you described also appears in the Ukrainian language.

Q: Усередині намету снігу не було?
A: Так, не було снігу.
Q: Незважаючи на розрізи та вітер?
A: Розріз був з підвітряної сторони ну і що вона на розріз лягла, впала.

Here the word “she” appears in the Ukrainian translation, although there are no feminine words in the text.
Instead of the word палатка ~ tent (which is used in the real language as "Russian" word), in the official Ukrainian language for some reason the word намет ~ cover is used on touristic sites, which in my understanding is something else, like yurta.

Ukr.: Наме́т — тимчасове приміщення із тканини, шкіри, рідше з гілля, що напинається на каркас; шатро; навіс, що утворюється переплетінням гілля і листя дерев.[1]

A tent is a temporary room made of fabric, leather, less often of a branch, which is stretched over a frame; tent; a canopy formed by the interweaving of branches and leaves of trees.[1]

It seems to me that this does not at all correspond to the concept of a tent as a bag. It's more like a Turkish tent.
Since modern Ukraine is struggling with the Russian language, but forget that there is no non-Russian word in the language at all.
To convey the situation, I would prefer to use “they slept in a sack” than “they slept under a tent.”

Further, you correctly understand that it is possible to understand the cause of all incidents only after correct translation.
Next, I will say this: it is possible to understand what happened with the Dyatlov group only in Russian, maybe in German, but it is impossible to understand in English.
That's why you need to learn Russian.
You see, there are such features of the ashtray that even if the translation is correct, the original information is lost.
Even a modern Russian person can understand some words incorrectly. For example, the word ham in stores is sold as a chemical jelly, which has nothing to do with the product that was sold 50 years ago.

Also, the phrase “saw a rocket” in the language of the 1950s meant a fireckacker (PETARDA), because Yuri Gagarin only flew in 1961.
I was very surprised when I read children's books about the war that they mentioned some kind of missiles. In modern jargon the word is firecracker.
And if in the English language the words firecracker and rocket are separated, then a problem generally arises, how to translate the text, when in English it is necessary to separate firecracker and rocket.

If investigated in English, the problem of the presence of missiles at the pass would not even arise.

+++
Another point in your text confuses me. Here you write:

The Dyatlov nine dug a trench in deep snow on a mountainside to pitch their tent in so that it would be protected from the wind that blew constantly down the mountain.

What do you understand by the term “deep snow”.?For Europe, 50 cm is deep snow, but for Siberia it is not deep snow.
So, a reader from Siberia will imagine 5 meters of snow, and a reader from Europe - 50 cm.

[Ehtnisba]

I'm looking for people who read the Russian language to translate those four lines, not to interpret outside those lines. I'm not needing guesses, since I know the Dyatlov case backwards and forwards. I need help figuring out which words have been mistranslated. I don't know whether Russian uses pronouns and antecedents, but in English we say IT, SHE, THEY, etc., to refer to prior nouns, but which noun is often hard to know. In Latin, it's easier, since almost all nouns have gender even when they don't need to. If Russian uses gender, and if there really is a pronoun SHE in the answerer's words, then if Russian SNOW and TENT have different genders, then we'll know which one the answerer meant. The answerer is saying something fell, but the two competing translations can't decide whether it's SNOW that he is saying fell onto the holes that were cut into the tent, or the TENT itself that fell onto its holes. I'd always wondered why he was saying that snow fell on the holes, since he was also saying that there was no snow inside the tent despite the holes, so when I started double-checking this website's translations, I found out that the translation itself is the problem, most likely. If it turns out that his words are literally "she fell" and if TENT is feminine and SNOW isn't, then we know he's saying the tent fell.

I figured this website would have LOTS of Russian readers who could answer me the very first day, so I'm surprised not to have had a single person say, "I read Russian and English fluently and the answer is this..."

Pronouns probably are the key to most of the mistranslations. Often on this website I'll see a THEY or a SHE where no prior word could possibly be a they or she. If no one here can read Russian and English fluently, perhaps someone can refer me to a different website where I can find such a person?

The tent is she, the snow is he. In the Russian text is said that the tent has fallen and there is no snow inside.

[Partorg]

The answerer is saying something fell, but the two competing translations can't decide whether it's SNOW that he is saying fell onto the holes that were cut into the tent, or the TENT itself that fell onto its holes.

Now it is clear.
In Russian, not only nouns have sexual characteristics - palátka (tent) - “oná” (she), tent (awning) - “ on” (he), but even verbs: He fell - On upál; She fell - Oná upála.
Sharavin's phrase means that the cut was on the leeward side of the tent and that she (palatka, i.e.) fell on its cut
If this answer is not recognized as correct as well, I will be forced to capitulate and admit my both linguistic and any other (except sexually, of course) insolvency.

[kylecorbin]

My native language is Russian, then Ukrainian, and English is already in third place.
...
Further, you correctly understand that it is possible to understand the cause of all incidents only after correct translation.
Next, I will say this: it is possible to understand what happened with the Dyatlov group only in Russian, maybe in German, but it is impossible to understand in English. That's why you need to learn Russian.
You see, there are such features of the ashtray that even if the translation is correct, the original information is lost.
Even a modern Russian person can understand some words incorrectly. For example, the word ham in stores is sold as a chemical jelly, which has nothing to do with the product that was sold 50 years ago.
Also, the phrase “saw a rocket” in the language of the 1950s meant a fireckacker (PETARDA), because Yuri Gagarin only flew in 1961. I was very surprised when I read children's books about the war that they mentioned some kind of missiles. In modern jargon the word is firecracker. And if in the English language the words firecracker and rocket are separated, then a problem generally arises, how to translate the text, when in English it is necessary to separate firecracker and rocket.

Thanks much. Actually, your description of translation problems and people not being old enough to understand 1959 is EXACTLY what I have been pondering for my entire month of working on this. I was tempted at the beginning to search locally for someone at least 50 years old from Russia who was interested in this mystery, to help me fix all the mistranslations, knowing precisely what you said - that younger Russians wouldn't know about 1959-era terms that necessarily would have been used in the hand-written witness statements that the translations are now made from. Now that you and the others today have clarified that SNOW is masculine and TENT is feminine, and with the translations I got of the four lines from other websites, I know that the answerer must have meant that the tent itself fell onto its own holes that were cut into it and blocked snow and wind from reaching those holes.

Another point in your text confuses me. Here you write:

The Dyatlov nine dug a trench in deep snow on a mountainside to pitch their tent in so that it would be protected from the wind that blew constantly down the mountain.

What do you understand by the term “deep snow”.?For Europe, 50 cm is deep snow, but for Siberia it is not deep snow.
So, a reader from Siberia will imagine 5 meters of snow, and a reader from Europe - 50 cm.

Just the snow shown here having been dug out of a one-meter-deep area of snow:
https://dyatlovpass.com/resources/340/gallery/Unknown-origin-Dyatlov-photos-12.jpg
When deciding what to do about being trapped on a mountainside in a blizzard when the wind increased, they probed around for snow deep enough to pitch a one-meter-tall tent in for it to be shielded as much as possible from the wind, as their training said to do. It turned out that it took long enough to do so that they would have been better off spending that hour getting down to the trees and pitching the tent supported by trees sheltered from the wind.

[kylecorbin]

The answerer is saying something fell, but the two competing translations can't decide whether it's SNOW that he is saying fell onto the holes that were cut into the tent, or the TENT itself that fell onto its holes.

Now it is clear. In Russian, not only nouns have sexual characteristics - palátka (tent) - “oná” (she), tent (awning) - “ on” (he), but even verbs: He fell - On upál; She fell - Oná upála.
Sharavin's phrase means that the cut was on the leeward side of the tent and that she (palatka, i.e.) fell on its cut

Q: Внутри палатки снега не было?
A: Да, не было снега.
Q: Несмотря на разрезы и ветер?
A: Разрез был с подветренной стороны ну и что она на разрез как бы легла, упала.

Thanks much. Can you verify that the specific Russian words in those four lines include the words you're using? Those lines have words for "she fell" instead of "it fell" or "he fell" or "snow fell"? If so, then it appears that everyone posting to me here agrees that the 1959 answerer meant the tent fell onto its own holes that had been cut into it.

[Partorg]

Can you verify that the specific Russian words in those four lines include the words you're using?

Yes, sure.

1959 answerer meant the tent fell onto its own holes that had been cut into it.

Without any doubt.

[Partorg]

When deciding what to do about being trapped on a mountainside in a blizzard when the wind increased, they probed around for snow deep enough to pitch a one-meter-tall tent in for it to be shielded as much as possible from the wind, as their training said to do. It turned out that it took long enough to do so that they would have been better off spending that hour getting down to the trees and pitching the tent supported by trees sheltered from the wind.

The thickness of the snow cover at the site where the tent was installed, according to one of the rescuers who removed the tent (V. Brusnitsyn), was “up to 1.5 m” (UD Sheet 366)
It is unlikely that the place was looked for for a long time. They just stopped where the terrain and snow depth seemed appropriate. Didn’t want to go down to the forest. To understand why, you need to put on a backpack weighing 8. - 10 kg, get on skis and climb a 15° slope for ~ 2 km, gaining ~ 300 m of altitude in this section. If after this you want to immediately go down these 300 m in order to gain them again tomorrow morning, then you are a cyborg, and not everyone is given this.  The temperature at that time apparently was not lower than –8/–9 °C and spending the night without spruce branches under a tent did not seem to them something extreme.

Когда решаешь, что делать о том, что они оказались в ловушке на склоне горы во время метели, когда ветер усилился, они исследовали местность в поисках снега, достаточно глубокого, чтобы поставить там палатку высотой один метр, чтобы максимально защитить ее от ветра, как было сказано в их обучении. . Оказалось, что это заняло достаточно много времени, поэтому лучше было бы потратить этот час на то, чтобы спуститься к деревьям и разбить палатку, поддерживаемую деревьями, укрытыми от ветра.

Толщина снежного покрова в месте установки палатки по словам одного из спасателей снимавших палатку (В. Брусницын) составляла «до 1,5 м» (УД Лист 366)
Вряд ли место искали долго. Остановились там где рельеф и глубина снега показались подходящими. Спускаться вниз, к лесу,  не хотелось. Чтобы понять почему, надо надеть на себя рюкзак весом  8. - 10 кг , встать на лыжи и подняться по 15° склону ~ 2 км, набрав на этом участке ~ 300 м высоты. Если после этого вам захочется тут же спуститься на эти 300 м. чтобы завтра с утра снова их набирать, значит вы киборг, а это не каждому дано.  Температура на тот момент видимо была ещё не ниже –8 /–9 °С и ночлег без лапника под палаткой, не представлялся им чем-то экстремальным.

[kylecorbin]

The thickness of the snow cover at the site where the tent was installed, according to one of the rescuers who removed the tent (V. Brusnitsyn), was “up to 1.5 m” (UD Sheet 366). It is unlikely that the place was looked for for a long time. They just stopped where the terrain and snow depth seemed appropriate. Didn’t want to go down to the forest.,,

Yes, but Brusnitsyn arriving 26 days later had no way of knowing that, since the photos of the entire tent area 26 days later show all snow less than 1 foot deep, nowhere near 5 feet deep, tho a kilometer downhill there were areas of snow 5 feet deep and 10 or 15 feet deep in the ravine nearby. I suspect we have another translation problem from 1959. I saw his mention of deep snow weeks ago, and other witnesses as well discussing deep snow in various places at various times, and I embarrassedly admit that one of my first impressions from those was that the tent was found buried under multiple feet of snow and that the famous photo of it showed a pole sticking out of very deep snow instead of what it actually shows - just a foot or less. I suspect that, given the thousands of lines of testimony available at this website, many researchers have made my same mistake, and almost none of them have stuck with it to figure out the reality of the confusing situation. It took me almost a month.
Here are the stenographer's handwritten pages of witness Brusnitsyn's statement with English and Russian translations:
https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-362-369
Here's a close-up of where the stenographer hand-wrote "1,5" (near bottom of page) and presumably the Russian word for "meters":

I'll have to reread his whole statement and will be away from the internet for the rest of today, but I believe we simply have a problem of him meaning that he saw 5 feet of snow in various places downslope. Note that he starts that section of his statement with a major error, saying that he's discussing the events of Feb. 27 when it actually was Feb. 28, and that he goes back and forth between discussing what is happening with the searchers and what had happened almost a month earlier with the victims (other statements are much more ambiguous, so I'm not complaining - just advising anyone reading this to be VERY careful. I literally have to run out the door right now, so I have no time to edit this quickly typed note from my files, but here's where I assessed his statement two weeks ago, unfortunately with the caps-lock key on. Tonight I'll come back and clean up this post so it makes sense to people reading it, but if anyone can look at the hand-written Russian and determine whether he is saying "1.5 meters", please do. Even if so, there's no way to determine which part of the slope he means, and we have crystal-clear photos of the tent area on Feb. 28 (such as one I included below) showing no possible place for that much snow.
BRUSNITSYN'S WITNESS STATEMENT, MADE 77 DAYS AFTER THE EVENT, IS FULL OF ERRORS. HIS LONG DESCRIPTION OF WHAT MAY HAVE HAPPENED FOR THE GROUP TO ABANDON THE TENT IS IMPOSSIBLE, AS IT HAS THEM LEAVING THE AREA BEFORE SNOW GOT ON THE TENT (DISPROVED BY FLASHLIGHT ON SNOW ON TENT), AND HE GOT THE LOCATION OF THE FLASHLIGHT WRONG. IT HAS THEM ALL STANDING UP IN THE TENT (NO ONE COULD STAND IN THE SHORT TENT), AND IT HAS THEM CUTTING A HOLE IN TENT ONLY FOR THE PURPOSE OF GOING OUTSIDE RIGHT AFTER SOMEONE ELSE JUST LEFT THROUGH THE FRONT ENTRANCE AND THEN CALLED FOR HELP, AND THEN WITH NOW TWO EXITS, THEY STILL CUT TWO MORE EXIT HOLES ONLY TO GO OUT FOR THE SAME PURPOSE (THERE WAS NO DANGER INSIDE). HE LISTS THE LOCATIONS OF SEVERAL ITEMS INSIDE THE TENT VERY SPECIFICALLY, YET MOST CONTRADICT WHAT OTHERS SAID. HE DISCUSSES THINGS THE SEARCHERS SAID TO EACH OTHER WHEN HE WAS NOT THERE ("SLOBOTSOV, M. SHARAVIN AND GUIDE IVAN"), SO OF COURSE HE'S SAYING THINGS SECOND-HAND.

Here's an excerpt of his long statement, leading up to the "1.5 meter" item we're discussing:
"On the next morning, the 27th [HE MEANS 28TH], we continued our search with dogs. The rest, after dismantling the tent, began to probe the snow cover on the pass with ski poles.
After the prosecutor of Ivdel's protocoled the property of the group, it was ordered to me and M. Sharavin to collect things and transport them to the landing site of the helicopter.
The tent is set on the slope of height 1079. Entrance to the south. The steepness of the slope in this area approx. 20-25 °. Depth of snow up to 1.5 meters. A shallow pit is dug for the horizontal installation of the tent.
Under the tent were laid 8 pairs of skis with their fasteners facing down. Thanks to the dense snow cover, the tent was installed very firmly. Everything is covered with already clammy snow, except for the southern end, fortified on a ski pole and tied to a pair of skis. No stick was found under the northern end; there was no pole.
Snow was cleared with the help of skis and ski poles. Ten people worked without any system. In most cases things everything was pulled out directly from under the snow, so it's very difficult to determine where and how each thing was."

[Partorg]

.

[Partorg]

AND IT HAS THEM CUTTING A HOLE IN TENT ONLY FOR THE PURPOSE OF GOING OUTSIDE RIGHT AFTER SOMEONE ELSE JUST LEFT THROUGH THE FRONT ENTRANCE AND THEN CALLED FOR HELP, AND THEN WITH NOW TWO EXITS, THEY STILL CUT TWO MORE EXIT HOLES ONLY TO GO OUT FOR THE SAME PURPOSE (THERE WAS NO DANGER INSIDE).

Even don't know if you're ready to hear the whole truth ...  ))
There were most likely no calls for help. And it’s absolutely certain that no calls or commands will force you to destroy a tent outside of which is not North Carolina, but the North Ural...
Only circumstances inside the tent could have forced them to cut the roof to get out. And only those that left no choice and tolerated no delay.
Secondly, the very nature of the cut - a downward arc in the longitudinal direction - suggests that the slope (roof) was cut while in a tent that was fallen and most likely crushed by snow A standing tent will be cut vertically - from the ridge to the cornice or vice versa, but vertically. For those who sit in it on their heels and knees (or on the 5th point), it is more natural and convenient
The two “French windows” in the roof of the tent visible in expert Churkina's diagram are the work of Sharavin and Slobtsov. You shouldn't pay attention to them.

but if anyone can look at the hand-written Russian and determine whether he is saying "1.5 meters", please do. Even if so, there's no way to determine which part of the slope he means, and we have crystal-clear photos of the tent area on Feb. 28 (such as one I included below) showing no possible place for that much snow.

Snow in the mountains (even such “toy” ones) is not evenly distributed. Most of it accumulates at the bottom of valleys. Significantly less on the upper third of the leeward slopes and even less on the middle third. In addition, its distribution is influenced by small local depressions and elevations - in depressions the snowpack is thicker, in elevations it is thinner. The tent was placed in a place where the snowpack flowed around the ledge of a gently sloping (18 - 20° in the snow) terrace stretching approximately 25 meters to the west of it, after which the steepness of the slope increases, reaching 25.2° in one section and then passes into the pass ridge of the spur. The tent stood on the lower border of the upper third of the slope. Besides In such folds of the relief as this ledge, snow always accumulates more than in the places adjacent to it.
Look at the photo of preparing the tent site. In the foreground below, sticking out of the snow is the tip of a ski pole, the length of which was unlikely to be less than 1.2 meters. This is the depth that was in the place of the tent.

Here's a close-up of where the stenographer hand-wrote "1,5" (near bottom of page) and presumably the Russian word for "meters"

I'm sorry to disappoint you but the text is all handwritten. There were no stenographers. Something in the left corner is not “1.5 m”, but just some kind of blot that has nothing to do with the text.

[kylecorbin]

I'm sorry to disappoint you but the text is all handwritten. There were no stenographers. Something in the left corner is not “1.5 m”, but just some kind of blot that has nothing to do with the text.

Alas, we are having huge communication problems today. I assume the problem is the English language barrier, but I don't know.

There is the enlargement of Brusnitsyn saying 1,5 meters (about 5 feet, with a comma used instead of a decimal point). I don't see any blot, but since you're keying in on the left corner, and the "1,5" is on the right, somehow you're not looking at what I am. Anyone who can read 1959 Russian cursive, please tell us whether Brusnitsyn is saying that he thinks the snow depth very near the site of the tent on the day he saw it (NOT the day the victims left it) was about 5 feet. We know that is impossible, since we have close-up photos taken by investigators of the 20 or 30 feet around the tent and of the entire slope, so we know there were no spots having anywhere near that much snow there. The deep snow was downslope from there, and there were MANY spots of 5, 10, or even 15 feet of snow, but just not near the tent (which was exposed on an empty wind-scoured slope).

The witnesses gave legal depositions. I don't know the terms for what it was called, or what the staff were called, but each witness would have been in a room with a questioner and a person writing everything down that was said by either person, I assume, since some witnesses were illiterate.  If the witnesses were the only persons writing, then they would not have written the questions as well as the answers, so the writer must have been a stenographer of some sort. I already said they were hand-written. I have studied all of the dozens of these on this website. Perhaps you looked up the definition of "stenographer" and thought that I thought that person was typing? No, I always knew it was hand-written, and that the person wrote down both the questions and the answers, the way a "court reporter" does in my country.

Even don't know if you're ready to hear the whole truth ...  ))
There were most likely no calls for help. And it’s absolutely certain that no calls or commands will force you to destroy a tent outside of which is not North Carolina, but the North Ural...
Only circumstances inside the tent could have forced them to cut the roof to get out. And only those that left no choice and tolerated no delay.

Somehow the language barrier has caused you to think I am thinking what Brusnitsyn was thinking. I am saying that he was WRONG, not that he was correct. He and many of the searchers that first week thought that someone went outside the tent through the exit and got blown down the mountain and screamed for help in such a manner that the people in the tent thought they had only a few seconds to save him, so they cut their way out of the tent, and then they themselves also got blown down the mountain. He also theorized that instead they may have cut their way out of the tent due to terror from an outside light or sound, or gas. None of his theories is correct. The point of our discussion now is his purported claim of deep snow on Feb. 28 near the tent, not his obviously wrong claim of why the victims left the tent. You next say that the cuts were made after the tent was crushed instead of when it was standing, and that is the same thing I've always said. And you say I should not pay attention to Sharavin and Slobtsov's cuts to the tent, but again, I've always said that. And you suggest that I look at the photo of the trench being dug by the victims, but I myself was the one who suggested that very same thing to people reading this discussion so that they would know that the snow was deep when the victims left the tent and shallow when the searchers arrived. I've read our discussion several times and cannot understand how you are getting the impression that I think certain witnesses are correct about things, and that I don't know certain things. Perhaps I will compose a private message to you so that we can "get on the same wavelength".

[Axelrod]

Depth of snow is shown in recent TV video (March 2019 video), in second part of video



Here is transcript (autotranslated - from position 7-40 of 14 minutes):

– My goal was, first of all, to understand: was an avalanche possible here, or was it impossible to expect here? I can say that this slope is definitely avalanche dangerous. This is confirmed primarily by the steepness of this slope; here it exceeds 20°. This is a completely ordinary slope for an avalanche. Because the minimum angles at which avalanches are recorded is 15°.

If an avalanche descended on a tent, then along the maximum slope. The tent was placed partly in the part where there was protection from stones, and partly outside it. And this is confirmed by measurements. Let me try it on. At this point (in the center of the tent) the snow thickness is 159 cm. And if you go to that point (from the corner at the entrance of the tent), then it is 105 cm. In any case, 50-60 cm less.

And so the avalanche, when it came from above, it naturally bent here. And she went like this to the left. And the tent was only affected on one side! Was it an avalanche, or a shift in the layer of snow, it’s hard to say now. But in any case, both the gloss and the avalanche – they could have gone away. If this is a shift of a snow layer, or a snow board, then it is quite dense in nature… (shakes his hands, showing). Density, which can reach 0.5 g/cm³, or 1 cubic meter – that’s half a ton!. If such a mass simply collapses the tent… Imagine, there are people lying here. And only one cubic meter moves. And it could have shifted more. Weight – half a ton! If such a load puts pressure on a person, and the person is pressed against something solid, it could be a ski, a binding, or a metal pot. Possible injuries – time! The weight may cause broken ribs – two that were recorded. Weighs half a ton!

And according to my version… I say, this is my version. I do not insist that this is exactly what happened, but at least it does not contradict the thoughts that appear to me. The guys who were lying on this edge were injured by the avalanche. The guys who were lying on the other side were not injured. But since the tent was covered on this side, the support was broken. Everyone is pinned down by this dense, icy mass, making it difficult to get them out. They shout: they are hurt!

In order to pull them out, an incision is made. Because they pull out and first free the wounded. It is clear that it was necessary to free the tent from the snow. But in that situation… night, cold and wind. Well, I can't say it was panic. The guys were experienced. But nevertheless, it is a nervous environment. They pull them out through a slot in the tent. And they start going down. Probably the shoes were still there. It was completely filled with snow and ice.

[Partorg]

so the writer must have been a stenographer of some sort.

No. Brusnitsyn wrote the text himself. Аbout it here is a corresponding entry at the end of the protocol.
The line marked with your red arrow contains literally the following:
« '0 - 25° Depth of snow up to 1,5 meters.» *
Below “-25°” two fuzzy strokes and an even less clear spot between them are visible.
It seemed to me that here ...

Here's a close-up of where the stenographer hand-wrote "1.5" (near bottom of page) and presumably the Russian word for "meters"

... we are talking about this hieroglyph.
In the line marked with an arrow, everything is absolutely obvious and there is nothing to discuss there.
* At that time, in our country, in writing decimal fractions we used only comma.

but Brusnitsyn arriving 26 days later had no way of knowing that, since the photos of the entire tent area 26 days later show all snow less than 1 foot deep, nowhere near 5 feet

Brusnitsyn had no motive to lie about the depth of the snow at the site of the tent, and he could have an idea about it, because in the first days the snowpack was probed directly around the tent. If at the time of interrogation he did not have a confident memory of this, he would simply not say anything about it, because he was not asked the question about the depth of the snow. Therefore, IMHO, there is no reason to doubt these words of his. Moreover, some photos confirm them

The sticks have a length of at least 1.2, and most likely 1.3 m. Where do you see 1ft here?
If youthink that the photo preparing a place for a tent
indicates that 01.02.the tent should be immersed in the slope deeper
than what can be seen in the photo from February 27, then no one argues with this.
It’s just that some people assume that the Dyatlovites refused to set up a tent under this rung of slope (on which backpacks and skis are placed) and put it on a flat terrace a few meters to the west (To the right, if you look at the photo)
Well, let them assume. God is their judge.

With your assessment of Brusnitsyn as a witnessdo, not agree
The guy is quite observant and not stupid. He is one of the few who immediately realized that the X-factor arose at the moment when they were just changing clothes and starting dinner.
He couldn’t imagine himself in their place and understand that no amount of cries for help would force a normal person to cut the tent, remembering that the tent has an exit and near the exit there is always someone sitting -
he couldn’t, but that him, like Maslennikov for example, didn’t occur to say that the tourists were “blown out of the tent by a strong wind” – already good.

As for “lost in translation”, yes, “they live”
People who speak both Russian and English fluently can probably be found on the websites and forums of professional translators.
They must have their own «sandboxes».
Almost oll have.

так что писатель, должно быть, был какой-то стенографисткой.

Нет. Текст Брусницын писал сам.  Об этом есть соответствующая запись в конце протокола.
Строка отмеченная Вашей красной стрелкой содержит буквально следующее :
« '0 - 25°  Глубина снега до 1,5 метров.» *
Ниже  « - 25° »  видны два нечётких штриха и ещё менее чёткое пятно между ними.
Мне показалось, что вот здесь : 

Here's a close-up of where the stenographer hand-wrote "1,5" (near bottom of page) and presumably the Russian word for "meters"

  ... речь идет именно об  этом иероглифe, а в строке отмеченной стрелкой, всё абсолютно очевидно и обсуждать там нечего.


* В то время, в записи десятичных дробей  в СССР использовалась только запятая.

но Брусницын, прибывший 26 дней спустя, не мог этого знать, поскольку на фотографиях всей территории палатки 26 дней спустя виден весь снег глубиной менее 1 фута, а не около 5 футов.

У Брусницына не было мотива врать относительно глубины снега на месте палатки, а иметь представления о ней он мог, потому что в первые дни snowpack зондировали и непосредственно вокруг палатки. Если бы на момент допроса у него не было уверенного воспоминания об этом, он бы просто  об этом ничего не сказал, ведь вопрос о глубине снега ему задан не был. Поэтому, IMHO, нет повода сомневаться в этих его словах. Тем более что  2  лыжные палки на фото  палатки  от 27.02.1959 их подтверждают.
Палки имеют длину  как минимум 1,2 , а скорее всего 1,3 м.  Где Вы тут видите 1ft ?
Если Вы считаете, что фото подготовки дятловцами места для палатки свидетельствует о том, что  01.02. палатка должна быть погружена в склон глубже чем  это видно на фото от 27.02, то с этим никто и не спорит. Просто некоторые предполагают, что дятловцы отказались от установки палатки под этим бугром (на котором  рюкзаки и лыжи стоят) и поставили её на пологой террасе в нескольких метрах западнее.
Ну, пусть предполагают. Бог им судья.


С Вашей оценкой Брусницына как свидетеля не согласен. Парень достаточно наблюдательный и  не глупый. Он один из немногих кто сразу сообразил, что  X-фактор возник в момент когда они только ещё переодевались и приступали к ужину.
Представить себя на их месте и понять, что никакие крики о помощи не заставят нормального человека резать палатку помня, что у палатки есть выход и возле выхода всегда кто-то сидит, он не смог, но то, что ему, как например Масленникову, не пришло в голову сказать, что туристов «выдуло из палатки сильным ветром» - уже хорошо.


Что касается «трудностей перевода», то да, «они существуют» 
Бегло говорящих как на русском, так и на английском наверное можно найти на сайтах и форумах профессиональных переводчиков.
Должны же быть у них какие-то свои песочницы.
Почти у всех есть.

[kylecorbin]

Forum member Axelrod has found a YouTube video that is ENORMOUSLY helpful to our research. While I await his answer to  my private message to him, I will comment on what I see so far. The video has no English, and I cannot tell where Axelrod's translation starts in the video, but what I DEFINITELY can tell so far is this:

The 2019 experimenters apparently found a place on the slope very near where the 1959 tent was, and they even found a spot with very deep snow, and they appear to have tried to replicate the actual Dyatlov tent itself, so we could learn a lot simply from watching the entire video if we could get enough valid translation (and for those of you who already know Russian and have never seen a video of the place of the tragedy in conditions near what the victims experienced, prepare yourself: this video could be emotional).

Whoever the people are in the video, they must have gone to huge expense to do all this, so surely they wrote a lot about it when they returned. Can we get that?

The man who uses the pole to measure the snow seems to be the one making the conjectures. He seems to think that snow covered not nearly all of Dyatlov's tent, and that it soon filled most of the inside of the tent with snow. He thinks the snow there was extremely dense and accounted for the broken ribs of the victims. (Again, remember that I cannot understand ANY Russian words.) He thinks some of the victims got out of the less-covered part of the tent and helped the ones who were trapped in the snow-covered part of the tent. I don't think he has read many of the 1959 witness statements. I hope that once I get a full translation of this 2019 expedition's findings, I will think differently, but for now, his logic is poor. We know that the cuts were made from the inside, not from people outside cutting in to get to people trapped inside. We know there were no external injuries corresponding to the broken ribs and cracked skull, so those injuries could not have come from direct impact (not by falling down or crashing into something or something crashing into them), and we know that after the bones were broken, the victims couldn't have walked far, so we know that almost none of that happened inside the tent, because all nine walked a mile afterwards. And if as he says most of the entrance area of the tent was not covered by significant snow, then some people would have exited there, and the boots were next to the exit, and the stove, and that area would of course have given access to some of the coats, gloves, and other crucial items. The fact that almost none of those items were gotten out, and the fact that the tent items showed no sign of having been in a disaster, mean that the man's whole approach is wrong. Maybe he's just a TV reporter there filming the actual expedition? I hope my impression changes once I get the full translation so I can see exactly where in the video he is saying what.

If I hear back from Axelrod re my message, I'll edit that into this comment.

[kylecorbin]

[Ziljoe]

I would agree that the ski poles are 1.3 meters long. I am not understanding your point about the snow depths though ? Random red x's on a photo is not particularly accurate? And certainly no more accurate than reading 60 year old text of a witness and saying they were wrong or right.

Slobodin was covered with snow to about 60 cm, half a meter , 1.5 feet or whatever. On that slope.

I certainly don't think a snow slip slide is out of the question but post your theory in detail. Speed it up.

[Ehtnisba]

The thickness of the snow cover at the site where the tent was installed, according to one of the rescuers who removed the tent (V. Brusnitsyn), was “up to 1.5 m” (UD Sheet 366). It is unlikely that the place was looked for for a long time. They just stopped where the terrain and snow depth seemed appropriate. Didn’t want to go down to the forest.,,

Yes, but Brusnitsyn arriving 26 days later had no way of knowing that, since the photos of the entire tent area 26 days later show all snow less than 1 foot deep, nowhere near 5 feet deep, tho a kilometer downhill there were areas of snow 5 feet deep and 10 or 15 feet deep in the ravine nearby. I suspect we have another translation problem from 1959. I saw his mention of deep snow weeks ago, and other witnesses as well discussing deep snow in various places at various times, and I embarrassedly admit that one of my first impressions from those was that the tent was found buried under multiple feet of snow and that the famous photo of it showed a pole sticking out of very deep snow instead of what it actually shows - just a foot or less. I suspect that, given the thousands of lines of testimony available at this website, many researchers have made my same mistake, and almost none of them have stuck with it to figure out the reality of the confusing situation. It took me almost a month.
Here are the stenographer's handwritten pages of witness Brusnitsyn's statement with English and Russian translations:
https://dyatlovpass.com/case-files-362-369
Here's a close-up of where the stenographer hand-wrote "1,5" (near bottom of page) and presumably the Russian word for "meters":

I'll have to reread his whole statement and will be away from the internet for the rest of today, but I believe we simply have a problem of him meaning that he saw 5 feet of snow in various places downslope. Note that he starts that section of his statement with a major error, saying that he's discussing the events of Feb. 27 when it actually was Feb. 28, and that he goes back and forth between discussing what is happening with the searchers and what had happened almost a month earlier with the victims (other statements are much more ambiguous, so I'm not complaining - just advising anyone reading this to be VERY careful. I literally have to run out the door right now, so I have no time to edit this quickly typed note from my files, but here's where I assessed his statement two weeks ago, unfortunately with the caps-lock key on. Tonight I'll come back and clean up this post so it makes sense to people reading it, but if anyone can look at the hand-written Russian and determine whether he is saying "1.5 meters", please do. Even if so, there's no way to determine which part of the slope he means, and we have crystal-clear photos of the tent area on Feb. 28 (such as one I included below) showing no possible place for that much snow.
BRUSNITSYN'S WITNESS STATEMENT, MADE 77 DAYS AFTER THE EVENT, IS FULL OF ERRORS. HIS LONG DESCRIPTION OF WHAT MAY HAVE HAPPENED FOR THE GROUP TO ABANDON THE TENT IS IMPOSSIBLE, AS IT HAS THEM LEAVING THE AREA BEFORE SNOW GOT ON THE TENT (DISPROVED BY FLASHLIGHT ON SNOW ON TENT), AND HE GOT THE LOCATION OF THE FLASHLIGHT WRONG. IT HAS THEM ALL STANDING UP IN THE TENT (NO ONE COULD STAND IN THE SHORT TENT), AND IT HAS THEM CUTTING A HOLE IN TENT ONLY FOR THE PURPOSE OF GOING OUTSIDE RIGHT AFTER SOMEONE ELSE JUST LEFT THROUGH THE FRONT ENTRANCE AND THEN CALLED FOR HELP, AND THEN WITH NOW TWO EXITS, THEY STILL CUT TWO MORE EXIT HOLES ONLY TO GO OUT FOR THE SAME PURPOSE (THERE WAS NO DANGER INSIDE). HE LISTS THE LOCATIONS OF SEVERAL ITEMS INSIDE THE TENT VERY SPECIFICALLY, YET MOST CONTRADICT WHAT OTHERS SAID. HE DISCUSSES THINGS THE SEARCHERS SAID TO EACH OTHER WHEN HE WAS NOT THERE ("SLOBOTSOV, M. SHARAVIN AND GUIDE IVAN"), SO OF COURSE HE'S SAYING THINGS SECOND-HAND.

Here's an excerpt of his long statement, leading up to the "1.5 meter" item we're discussing:
"On the next morning, the 27th [HE MEANS 28TH], we continued our search with dogs. The rest, after dismantling the tent, began to probe the snow cover on the pass with ski poles.
After the prosecutor of Ivdel's protocoled the property of the group, it was ordered to me and M. Sharavin to collect things and transport them to the landing site of the helicopter.
The tent is set on the slope of height 1079. Entrance to the south. The steepness of the slope in this area approx. 20-25 °. Depth of snow up to 1.5 meters. A shallow pit is dug for the horizontal installation of the tent.
Under the tent were laid 8 pairs of skis with their fasteners facing down. Thanks to the dense snow cover, the tent was installed very firmly. Everything is covered with already clammy snow, except for the southern end, fortified on a ski pole and tied to a pair of skis. No stick was found under the northern end; there was no pole.
Snow was cleared with the help of skis and ski poles. Ten people worked without any system. In most cases things everything was pulled out directly from under the snow, so it's very difficult to determine where and how each thing was."

I saw the handwriting. In its lower part it DOES SAY DEPTH 1,5 meters (1, 5 метра). Before that is as you have it in English, the tent at a slope 20-25 degrees, entrance to the south. Follows a dot. Then new sentence that only states "Depth 1,5 meters. " This is exact translation in English.

[kylecorbin]

The English translation issue apparently is going to make communicating well on this website impossible. As a professional editor, I post crystal-clear paragraphs here that sometimes get responses as if the responder hasn't read them at all. This very discussion thread, for example, is supposed to be about an English-only forum member asking those who can read Russian to help fix important obviously-wrong translation errors that are on this website and thus will lead researchers astray. It literally could have had just one or two quick responses and been finished. Yet now two people have asked this sort of thing:

"It is not entirely clear what you want to extract from the opinions of people who were not eyewitnesses to the Event. They know no more than anyone who spends some time gathering information and immersing themselves in a topic could know."

No one who understood what I wrote would say that, yet two different people have said that same sort of thing. There is no way to make it any clearer that the goal of the discussion is to get wrongly-translated words translated correctly, not to get opinions about what happened (but I will indeed want to do the latter in the future). Why do people think this case has taken 65 years to be solved? No, I'm not saying translation has delayed it 65 years (in the first several decades, it wasn't known to the outside world), but it certainly has delayed things a lot. By far, the biggest problem is that people on Feb. 26-28, 1959, didn't know they needed to preserve things precisely (or at least photograph them in extreme detail) because three unlikely things had happened there that they didn't know about. They thought it was yet another case of people dying in the wilderness, though a strange one. When we add decades of fading memory, lost evidence, new scientific discoveries, and the fact that all languages have ambiguities, we have quite a situation. We don't need wrong translations and false assumptions about one another making things worse. And some people don't even realize how ambiguous languages are, so they don't see translation as much of a problem. To illustrate, here's an extremely ambiguous fictional sentence I have constructed. How many different meanings can you find in it?

WILL MAY SEE THAT GAS CAN BLOW UP BY GEORGE?


There are dozens of different valid meanings there! Would you know which one was intended?
WILL - is a verb meaning "is permitted to", or a verb meaning "might", or a male's first name, or a surname
MAY - is a verb or a female's name or a surname
SEE - is a verb meaning "use one's eyes" or "understand with one's mind"
GAS - is a noun meaning "gaseous vapor" or short for GASOLINE (liquid)
CAN - is a verb, or a noun (short for CANISTER)
BLOW UP - is a verb meaning "explode" or "enlarge a photograph" or "move in the air upwards"
BY GEORGE - can mean "near the person named George" or "done by George" or humorously "wow!" or "absolutely!"
GAS CAN - either short for GAS CANISTER, or the noun GAS and the start of the verb phrase CAN BLOW UP (or CAN BLOW)
THAT - either specifies "which" item (THAT gas over there, not THIS gas here) or signifies that the rest of the sentence is grammatically the object of the verb "see".

WILL MAY SEE THAT GAS CAN BLOW UP BY GEORGE?


Here are just some of the possible interpretations:
(WILL is a name and MAY is a verb: )
1. Actor Will Smith is permitted to be near the filming of a gasoline canister exploding near actor George Clooney?
2. Actor Will Smith is permitted to be near the filming of a gasoline canister exploding, oh wow!?
3. Actor Will Smith might watch that particular gasoline canister explode near George?
4. Actor Will Smith might understand that vapors in the air might spontaneously ignite near George?
5. Actor Will Smith might understand that vapors in the air might be blown by the wind up to where George is?
6. Actor Will Smith might see the enlarged photo of a gasoline canister (the enlargement was made by George)?
7. Actor Will Smith might see the enlarged photo of a gasoline canister (the enlargement is located near George)?
8. Actor Will Smith might see the enlarged photo of a gasoline canister, oh wow!?
(WILL is a verb introducing a question, and MAY is a name: )
9. Will a person named May watch that particular gasoline canister explode near George?
10-14. Will a person named May do the things in #4-8?
(Talking to the person named "Will May": )
15. Are you watching that particular gasoline canister explode near George?
16-20. Are you doing the things in #4-8?

Etc... "Gas" could instead be what we in the USA call "natural gas" fuel, or the gas inside a person/animal. "Will" could be any person (or animal) who had already been established in the discussion or who had not been established but was known by the questioner to be so famous that the person being asked would know for certain who it was. The same goes for "May" and for "George".  So there are literally thousands of possible valid interpretations of that sentence. Most sentences have at least one possible reading different from the intended one, to say nothing of after they've been translated into another language! Keep that in mind.

All languages have ambiguities. Presumably, we in this forum are trying to better the world by solving the mystery of the nine deaths so that those sorts of deaths can be prevented in the future. Please give one another the benefit of the doubt before assuming that it's more likely that someone whose intelligence may be far higher than you know is thinking something preposterous or contradictory of the very things he is meticulously citing and making illustrations of. Isn't it more likely that someone is going to that much trouble because the things he's responding to are ambiguous (or are less ambiguous in their native language but when machine-translated and copied into comments here are "lost in translation")?

I spent far more than an hour trying to figure out why I was repeatedly being asked about "sticks" as if the point were obvious, despite there being many sticks of various types in the photos in question. I FINALLY had an aha moment and figured out what the asker meant, but even then the question was based on his obvious misunderstanding of how the stick (a ski pole) in question was positioned, or whether the stick was even intact (instead of just a broken portion - the ski pole supporting the back end of the tent was broken during the tragedy). It took quite a while to come up with a way to explain it to him that would be clear in any language: a drawing, and a math table. If future tiny issues such as this take so long to handle, we will never make any progress. I don't know of a solution to this problem of understanding each other's languages, but keeping in mind the difficulties will be a good start.

I assume you know that I don't write in any language other than English. Yet I've had several responses that show quotes from me typing in a foreign language. When private-messaging the poster, I get no response. Perhaps some of us don't know that private-messaging happens here, or how to check them. We all should understand that this website apparently has computer errors, and human communication is far from straightforward. Let's deal with it properly rather than possibly preventing the betterment of the world by wrongly assuming the worst of those trying to achieve that.

[Axelrod]

I have good advice for you: forget about the English translation that already exists, give original Russian text to a professional technical translator, and I will be very interested to see the result.

[Partorg]

Let's assume that the stick has a length of 130 cm. Of this, ~25 cm is above the snow level, which means that under the snow is ~105 cm. The stick stands at an angle of ~60° to the horizon. We lower the vertical from the top point of its part immersed in the snow to the level of the horizontal emanating from the bottom point and get a right triangle withlegs - a, b, angles - A, B, C and hypotenuse - c

The hypotenuse is a ski pole. Cathetus b, although without any calculations it is equal half a ski pole, we don’t need it.  Cathetus a which shows the depth of the snow into which the stick is stuck = c × sin C i.e. 105 cm × 0.86 = 90.3 cm.
It is not a fact that the lower end of the stick rests on the ground. In the background of the same photo you can see another stick standing vertically. Using it you can approximately estimate the depth of the snow without remembering your home school.
Kyle, I'm not a fan of exploring donut holes. Whether Brusnitsyn was wrong or not is not very important. By default, it is clear that the level of snow adjacent to the tent from the west, in the photo of preparing the site for it, is at least a foot higher than what is visible in the photo of its discovery. This is enough to make one wonder: where did this foot go?


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Принимаем, что  палка имеет  длину 130см. Из них ~ 25 см - выше уровня снега и это  значит, что под снегом  ~ 105 см.  Палка стоит под углом ~ 60° к горизонту. Опускаем из  верхней точки участка вертикаль до уровня горизонтали исходящей из нижней      точки и получаем прямоугольный треугольник  с катетами  -  a, b, углами –  A,  B, C и гипотенузой - c
Гипотенуза, это лыжная палка, катет b, хотя и без всяких расчётов равен половине лыжной палки, нам не нужен, а катет a который показывает глубину снега в который воткнута палка = c × sin C  т.е. 105 см × 0.86 = 90.3 см.  При этом не факт, что палка упирается нижним концом в грунт. На втором плане того же фото видна ещё одна палка, стоящая вертикально. По ней можно приблизительно оценить глубину снега и не вспоминая родную школу.
Кайл, я не любитель исследовать дырки от пончиков.  Ошибался Брусницын или нет - не очень важно. По умолчанию ясно, что уровень  снега примыкающего к палатке с запада, на фото подготовки места под неё, не менее чем на фут выше того что видно на фото её обнаружения. Этого достаточно чтобы озадачиться вопросом: куда подевался этот фут.