1079: The overwhelming force of Dyatlov Pass

1079 is the most comprehensive English language book concerning the Dyatlov Pass Incident I have read.Unparalleled in terms of detail and assessment especially when read together with its companion website.If you only buy one book about the Dyatlov Incident - buy this one!

I follow this story since many years and so I had to read this book. Unfortunately the autor died just b4 it was published.Good read anyway and some explanation but the whole truth will be never told... .

I have been following the case for several years now. I thought that when the prosecutors announced in 2019 that they are going to the pass to investigate a hurricane, avalanche, and a snow slab that this is a media stunt, and that they will end up excluding the three theories. I thought that there is simply nothing further that they could accomplish on the pass. I was proven wrong, they managed to mislead everyone that wants the truth. I almost gave up following the case but then I found this book. I was told by a friend that there is a new theory, not a crazy one, that could be the real solution to the case. In the photo is my daughter, she is 17. She got to the book before me, I was at work. I have rarely seen her with a real book in her hands. She tells me: "Mom, the lives and adventures of these young people seem really heroic. They went into the wild without phones and equipment. It says here they didn't even have real maps. How did they do it? And why did they die?" I took the picture to remind me that my daughter had once read a paperback. I thank the authors for making this happen! And I guess I will be waiting my turn for the book.

I have been interested in the Dyatlov Pass for a long time. I try to read all the new books on the topic. Nevertheless, over the years, I have accumulated more questions than answers. And the new book 1079 was a revelation to me. In addition to the fact that the authors analyzed a huge number of documents, many of which were previously unknown to me, they offered a completely new approach to solving the problem. Previously, all authors offered their own version of the answer to the question: "why did the hikers run away from the tent", not paying special attention to the people who were involved in organizing the trek, searching for the missing hikers and investigating the causes of their death. They all offer one-sided scenarios of how the tragedy struck - Yeti, avalanche, Ivdellag escapees, love triangle etc. As a result the heroic young people were killed or died a violent death, and the participants in the search and investigation remain faceless, trying and failing to understand what happened. The authors of 1079 take a different approach. This is the path of a true forensic investigator. They are not looking for an answer to the question of the reasons for leaving the tent. They analyze the behavior of people involved in the search and investigation and find many oddities that allow them to determine the culprits of the incident. This is a real investigation in which the reader can take the most direct part. The book is not easy to read. I do not recommend it to those looking for some light entertainment for a pulp fiction evening. The book contains a huge amount of documentary and biographical material. The first part of the book is a documentary recreation of the route of the doomed group and the history of the search for them. All search shifts are detailed with the names of the participants, dates, and relevant findings. Such an exhausting account of the search operation has never been published before. The second part of the book is a real investigation. The behavior of people is analyzed based on their experience and biographies. They cease to be faceless characters, all their actions become explicable. And in conclusion there is a completely unexpected ending. But, having gone through all the stages of their investigation together with the authors, it is difficult to disagree with their conclusions. Great book. I recommend it to everyone who likes to think independently and solve criminal problems.

This is one of those books that leaves you questioning everything you read long after you finished the book. It reads like a thesis. I have never seen someone invest so much time and resources in this case. This book is indeed hard to absorb at one reading. All this information is hard to process and I can't even imagine what this does to someone that hasn't heard about the Dyatlov case. But the book has a fair warning that its target pool is the advanced connoisseurs of the case. The authors don't even bother with artistic verisimilitude because the narrative is sufficient and convincing as it is. "1079" goes into details of the events and characters involved more extensively than the case files from 1959, but this is just one point on a continuum. The interpretation of these facts is breaking ground as unprecedented. Other books I've read about the case emphasized the unfortunate souls that never returned from the Dyatlov pass. This raises theories of conspiracy and even altercation within the group. "1070" is revealing the incident as an unfortunate stroke of serendipity and the mystery being created by scared people with the means to tamper with evidence and with the help of the bizarre circumstances create the biggest forensic puzzle that I am aware of. This is not a book, more like an old cold case that is read again with fresh eyes and mind. You know those books that you need a second read once you have the answer? This is one of them.After finishing the book I started my own digging into the case. I didn't know that besides the diaries of the dead hikers and the case files, which are the most exploited sets of documents on the case, there are also diaries of the leader of the search party and the notebooks of an independent (meaning not sent by the party) journalist that went on the pass and witnessed first hand the search, how bodies were found, and very importantly - he copied a diary. His notes were never confiscated, they were recently found in the basement of his house and translated by the authors of the book. You can see the scanned originals on the site with supporting documents. You can see on the site the note that was found on Otorten left by a previous ascent of a group from Moscow. In volume 2 of the case files the documents and drafts are translated to the doodles on the scarp of papers. All the classified and then declassified papers are taken into account. Usually, theories are built on a subset of facts. The rest are either discarded as unreliable, considered impossible, or improbable, or plainly ignored. There is a former nurse that in 1959 worked in the Ivdel morgue and remembers washing six bodies that match the description and injuries of some of the members of Dyatlov group. These bodies disappear after that. This can account for the mix up in the clothes found on the bodies of the Dyatlov group. There are recollections of pilots seeing the tent, bodies lying nearby, and men in black sheepskin coats on the location way before the Dyatlov group was even known to be missing. Then the earlier date on the cover. These facts are all brilliantly explained in the book. To me, the gem and the heart of the book is the explanation of the injuries. It is the most natural of all accidents considering the route, and yet it is so unexpected that people seem to discard it as a bolt from the blue. This is exactly what it is, deadly and comes unannounced.Having a theory that explains all the evidence and facts is only half of the contents of this book. Readers are presented with new evidence and people that have never been persons of interest in the investigation, although their names are mentioned in the case files. They still remain obscure names in (until this book only Cyrillic) that someone has to put the spotlight on for us to notice. In the book, there is a full account of people being present and their part in the events. Examining the behavior of the people living and working in the area, as well as the organizers and participants of the search, the authors point out to whom the disappearance and death of the group might have not been news at all.But wait, there's more. For a 60+ year old cold case, one can't expect any new evidence to be brought to light. This book has done it. There are geophysical reports and aeromagnetic survey plans of planes flying over the pass. The fact that they were there at the time of the incidents is relevant in more than one way. First what they were doing there involved blasting, you have to read the book, it is a whole new insight of what was going on at the time, and then if there were helicopters in the sky in the otherwise remote mountain, is it reasonable that in case of emergency one would try to signal the aircraft for help? So Zina, Slobodin, and Dyatlov were going for help, not trying to crawl back to the tent. Because the tent was not there. The followers of this case seem to be divided in their conviction if the tent was where it was found, and those who think that it was moved there by a third party. The latter point to criminal intent and cover up. This book introduces the possibility of a natural accident, the first recovery of some of the bodies, then when realizing this case becomes so important for Moscow and Khruschev and that there is going to be a massive search and campaign to make this case a flagship of the ongoing XXI congress of the party, the parties that hold the bodies decided to extract themselves from the case by dumping the bodies and tampering with the tent thus creating the mind boggling puzzle we are trying to solve to this day. There was no motive to kill the group or harm them in any way, but the motive not to be involved in the case is to avoid the Ivdellag.The myriad discrepancies created from tampering with evidence can not be explained with one consistent motive. This is not so unheard of even nowadays. So many people dump a body even though they don't have any fault for the death only so they are not found in a place where they could be related to the incident for unrelated to the incident reasons. In the Dyatlov case, there is a relation to the incident though. Blasting for prospecting mining is not the safest practice, but a common one for the times. Heads will roll if the truth is told. The regime was not allowing "bad things to happen". Did you know that during communism suicide was called a crime against ... oneself? Statistically, there were no suicides. This leads me to another interesting part of the book - the authors have listed how the contemporaries of the tragedy died, leaving the readers to make up their minds which could be related to the accident. In general, this book crams your brain with facts but leaves enough room for your own conclusions. I wholeheartedly recommend this read for anyone seriously interested in the Dyatlov case.