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288 pages, ebook
First published October 22, 2013
This book is for you if… a significant amount of your brainpower has been used to analyse and over-think what happened to the 9 experienced hikers in that night that connected February 1st and 2nd of 1959 in the Ural Mountains. You will not find wild and unscientific speculations, but facts and science. Mystery and true crime fans will devour this - and if you're one of them, you've probably heard of this incident already anyways.
What led 9 experienced hikers to leave the security of their tents at night, going out into the pitch-black night of the Ural mountains, clothed insufficiently and thereby forfeiting their lives to deathly insures and hypothermia?
‘If one is going to fall back on malevolent alien visitors without backing it up with evidence, one may as well throw ghosts, the hand of God and devious subterranean gnomes into the mix. Aliens were off the table.’
In this riveting and informative non-fiction read, Documentary Filmmaker and Author, Donnie Eichar, pieces together the mystery of WHY nine young experienced Russian hikers left their tent after dark without shoes or proper clothing in sub-zero temperatures back in 1956. It was determined that six died of hypothermia, the remaining three of brutal injuries......one even missing a tongue, but.......WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?
Eichar does a great job of investigating and succinctly outlining the day-to-day activities of the group with the use of old case files, journals and interviews plus provides diagrams and interesting photographs of the hikers throughout their journey taking the reader to an eerie, frightening and believable theory.
An excellent read!
“I don't remember Sherlock Holmes ever mentioning what you are supposed to do when you've eliminated everything improbable, and nothing is left.”
I finished it! And gods, was this beautiful!
The Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident is made of 3 different timelines:
1. We follow the author, Donnie Eichar, in 2012 - 2013, on his travels around Russia, in order to find as much information as possible on the case.
I believe, this has the biggest consistency, the book seems to solely focus on this part. Which is ok, I was not disturbed by it, even tho' in the review section I can clearly see not everyone had the same attitude towards it.
2. We are introduced to the discovery of the 9 bodies by the search team, a few weeks after the Dyatlov Pass Incident happened.
and 3. *the most heartbreaking* we see the preparations and the journey of the 10, later 9, hikers.
It was very beautifully written. *It makes you want to turn page after page and it felt nothing like a non-fiction. I had to check it. *
And it was sad, a very sad truth. Even though I had read the case on google days prior, I was not expecting to feel like this: Heartbroken.
You see... Eichar shows you how beautifully they prepared for the trip and how they would sing every night and laugh, take hilarious photos, even hours before their deaths! He showed us how unprepared and how NOT ready to die the 9 hikers were.
Their ages were between 20-25, with only Sasha being of 37. 20 years old! They had the whole life ahead of them, they had dreams and expectations, and they lost them in one night. All of them!
It haunts me even today... the thought of how they might have died. How they would be calling to each other, trying to see through the dark. How some of them had to see their friends die, how the cold crept in, slowly, through their feet and up their whole body.
It is terrifying to even imagine the pain they had to endure, because they wanted to survive! Zina tried to get back to the tent and died trying.
I had no problem whatsoever with his ending theory, it can work, it is a great possibility, but we might still never know. Their surviving relatives deserve to know how it happened, but they better know that these children, students, were brave and tried to live.
I highly recommend it! Though, you should expect for it to haunt you for the following days. I know it's happening to me.