Free Mountain of the Dead by Keith McCloskey Page A

been highly classified in 1959 and would probably remain so today. Another problem with the theory is that even if a weapon of this nature had been available at the time, its size would have made it extremely difficult to transport it with any ease. A current unit today in use at a research facility for infrasonics in the USA, which has an output of 120dB at 5Hz, has the same footprint as a 40ft shipping container. Any unit of this nature potentially used by the Soviet military in February 1959 would be likely to have been as large if not larger. The possibility that it would have been taken by either a tracked vehicle or large wheeled carrier of the type used to carry missiles – or even slung underneath a helicopter and taken into the winter blizzard conditions of the northern Urals for testing – is extremely unlikely.
Mansi legends and murder by Mansi tribesmen
    The supposed murder by the Mansi of a female geologist in the area in the 1930s has led some to believe that the Mansi had killed the Dyatlov party as they were enraged by the group’s encroachment on two sacred Mansi sites (Kholat Syakhl and Mount Otorten). Another theory suggests that the Mansi may have killed the members of the group in order to get any alcohol they may have had, although Yury Yudin is adamant they had none with them. The story of the murdered female geologist has not been verified by anyone and, even assuming it were true – that the geologist had encroached on sacred Mansi sites such as Mount Otorten or Kholat Syakhl and it was proved that she was murdered for doing so – there is no evidence to suggest that the Mansi had killed any of the members of the Dyatlov group. In the first place, there is the absence of footprints or any signs of a struggle having taken place. Whilst it is possible that guns may have been used to keep the Dyatlov party subdued whilst the Mansi murdered them, the group could possibly have run down the mountain away from someone threatening them. None of the signs at the tent, or the tracks leading towards the tree line, suggest there was anyone else present. It would have taken more than one individual with a gun to be able to threaten the party and then kill all of them. The help given by the Mansi hunters in searching for the missing party appears to have been willingly given, and while it could be said that they assisted the search party in order to deflect attention away from themselves, it appears to be unlikely. Mansi hunters and their dogs found the bodies of Zina Kolmogorova and Rustem Slobodin.
    There is a final possibility that had Mansi hunters been involved – and had they been able to cover any tracks they had made – the deaths of Luda Dubinina, Semyon Zolotarev and Nicolai Thibeaux-Brignolle are unexplained. It does not seem possible that the Mansi would have been able to cause these injuries without leaving external marks on the bodies of the victims.
    One interesting aside on the involvement of the Mansi is that a family of Mansi who lived close to Mount Otorten said that they had seen someone (possibly members of the Dyatlov group) coming down Mount Otorten at some point after 1 February from a distance of approximately 1–1.5 miles (2–3km). Whether they may have observed another party or were not telling the truth is not known. In any event, their sighting was not taken into account in the official findings.
Murder by escaped prisoners
    Although Stalin had been dead for nearly six years by February 1959, the Soviet Union was still a repressive state. Despite the thaw in the USSR after Khrushchev came to power, the Gulags still existed, even though by early 1959 many prisoners had been released. The height of the thaw was in 1960, although the numbers incarcerated started to grow again after Brezhnev came to power. 9 A joke in the Soviet Union was that you could either be inside in one of the camps or outside in the bigger prison (i.e. the USSR). 10 The Gulag system began in 1929 and was