Today In Pop Culture: I’m Not Saying It Was A Yeti, But…

By Jeffery X Martin

Today in Pop Culture, a hike in the snowy mountains turned deadly for nine hikers in the Soviet Union. The cause of their death has never been determined. If it has, the Russian government has never released it. All they will say is that something killed those mountaineers. You’ll hear all kinds of conspiracy theories about what murdered those people, cockamamie theories from one side of the Internet to the other.

Come on.
We all know the Yeti got them.

That area of the Ural Mountains now bears the name of the leader of that expedition, Igor Dyatlov. The folks in his group were experienced cross-country skiers and hikers. They were camping that night when some awful fate befell them. The campers tore the tents from the inside out to get away. When the bodies were found, some were barefoot. One had a skull fracture so intense it would have rendered him paralyzed. One woman’s body was missing her tongue.

Oh, here’s the best part.

The hikers were attempting to reach a mountain called Otorten. In the native language of that area, that means, “Don’t go there.”

Why would you make a special trip to go to a place that inherently does not want you there? Would you go visit a town called,”Stay the hell away?” So, let’s be honest. That was a screw-up. Such a huge red flag and they ski-hiked right past it.

Weather conditions also played a part. A sudden snowstorm caused the group to move west of their destination. They decided to camp where they were instead of moving down the mountain to avoid the storm. When whatever Yeti happened Yeti, the campers all ran away from the campsite. Investigators noted tree branches broken almost five meters up. This would be the average height of a Yeti’s arms. Or maybe something else broke those branches. Some of the investigators say heavy snow snapped them, but that just seems preposterous.

Out of the nine bodies, three had injuries that investigators determined could not have been inflicted by a human. There were horrible chest fractures and some skull damage. Investigators said they normally saw injuries like that in high-speed car crashes. Not a single body was in a tent; all of the hikers appeared to be trying to run from something. Strangely, some the hikers were wearing each other’s clothes, as if the living ones had robbed the bodies of the dead for more warm clothing.

This rational behavior in collusion with evidence of panic leaves much room open for interpretation. While most scientists point towards hypothermia as the most logical cause of death, some other researchers have chosen different paths to travel to get to their conclusions.

Could the hikers have fallen prey to a Soviet military experiment, kept hush-hush during those tense Cold War years? Could they have stumbled across a time travel machine? Might they have fallen victim to infrasounds, collapsing in pain and chaos? All of these possible answers have made their way into popular culture, and they all have their proponents.

We may never know what happened to those nine poor souls at Dyatlov Pass, but one thing is for sure: