Dyatlov Pass

Finally got around to watching that Discovery channel “documentary” on the Dyatlov Pass incident … the “documentary” where it’s posited that the Russian Yeti, or “Menk,” was responsible for the mysterious deaths of nine student hikers isolated out in the Ural Mountains in the thick, dark heart of the Soviet Union in February of 1959.

While I’m not particularly sold on that as an explanation, what has fascinated me was a throwaway comment I heard toward the beginning of the show.  Now, I have no idea whether it is true or not, but when I heard it something clicked in the old noggin and my jaw metaphorically dropped:

“The Dyatlov Pass incident is to Russia what the JFK assassination is to the United States.” (My paraphrase.)

The narrator went on to explain that no other subject in Russian contemporary history has created such an amount of conspiracy, alternative, and fringe theories as this one.  And since the Soviet authorities closed the book on the investigation three months later (to remain unopened for over thirty years) with only a vague “compelling natural force” as the cause of deaths, who could blame them?

Needless to say, Hopper now must do his own research on this …