The most mysterious accidents in domestic tourism. The mysterious death of climbers on the Khamar-Daban pass. The surviving tourist from the group is lying.

The most famous and mysterious case The death of tourists is considered to be a tragedy that occurred with the Dyatlov group in early February 1959. The circumstances have not yet been clarified, and several dozen versions have been put forward. This story is known all over the world and has formed the basis of several artistic and documentaries. However, few people know that a similar and no less mysterious and tragic story happened thirty years later on one of the passes in Buryatia.

In August 1993, to Irkutsk from Kazakhstan by railway A group of seven tourists arrived to go to the Khamar-Daban ridge. Forecasters promised suitable weather for climbing, and the group set off for the mountains. It consisted of three boys, three girls and a 41-year-old leader, Lyudmila Korovina, who had the title of Master of Sports in hiking.

The Khamar-Daban ridge does not shock you with its height. The most high point– 2,396 meters. Arranged in ledges, with pointed peaks and ridges, the ridge is one of the oldest mountains on our planet. These Beautiful places visited annually by thousands of tourists.

The group moved from the village of Murino to one of the most high mountains ridge called Hanulu. Its height is 2371 meters. Having walked about 70 kilometers in 5-6 days, the tourists stopped for a rest between the peaks of Golets Yagelny (2204m) and Tritrans (2310m).

The weather forecasters, however, were wrong about the weather. It snowed and rained and the wind blew for several days in a row. At approximately 11 o'clock in the afternoon on August 5, when the tourists were about to leave the temporary parking lot, one of the guys became ill.

Sasha fell, blood came from his ears, foam came out of his mouth. Lyudmila Ivanovna Korovina stayed with him, appointed Denis as a senior, told him to go down as low as possible, but not to enter the forest, then the guys Vika, Tanya, Timur began to fall and roll on the ground - symptoms were like those of a suffocating person, Denis said - quickly take the most necessary things out of the backpacks and ran downstairs, bent over the backpack, pulled out the sleeping bag, raised his head. Denis fell and tore his clothes, tried to drag him by the hand with him, but he broke free and ran away. She ran downstairs without letting go of her sleeping bag.

I spent the night under a boulder, covering my head with a sleeping bag, it was scary, trees were falling along the edge of the forest from the hurricane, in the morning the wind died down, more or less dawn rose to the scene of the tragedy, Lyudmila Ivanovna was still alive but practically could not move, she showed Valya in which direction to go out and passed out, Valya closed the guys’ eyes, collected her things, found a compass and went...

After some time, the girl came across an abandoned relay tower at an altitude of 2310 meters, where she spent another night completely alone. And in the morning, the tourist noticed pillars going down from the tower. Valentina realized that they should lead her to people, but the houses to which wires had once been laid turned out to be abandoned. But Valentina went out to the Snezhnaya River and moved downstream; on the sixth day after the tragedy, she was accidentally seen and picked up by a water tour group. They had already sailed past, but decided to return; it seemed suspicious that the tourist did not respond to their greetings. Out of shock, the girl did not speak for several days.

It’s interesting that Lyudmila Korovina’s daughter and another tour group were walking along a neighboring route and agreed to meet her mother at their intersection. But when Lyudmila’s group did not arrive at the collection point, Korovina Jr. thought that they were simply late due to bad weather and continued her journey, at the end of which she went home, not suspecting that her mother was no longer alive.

For some unknown reason, the search was delayed; the bodies of the tourists were found only when about a month had passed since the death of the guys and their leader!!! The picture was terrible, rescuers recall. The helicopter landed, and everyone on board witnessed a terrible sight: “The bodies were already swollen, everyone’s eye sockets were completely eaten away. Almost all of the dead were dressed in thin tights, while three were barefoot. The leader was lying on top of Alexandra... “What was happening on the plateau? Why, freezing, did the hikers take off their shoes? Why did the woman lie on the dead guy? Why didn't anyone use sleeping bags? All these questions remain unanswered.

An autopsy was performed in Ulan-Ude, which showed that all six died from hypothermia, and the investigation agreed that the tragedy was caused by mistakes and incompetence of the group leader. But the facts say otherwise!

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Comments to the article “ The mystery of the death of the Korovina group: Khamar-Daban - the Buryat Dyatlov Pass”

Zhenya
at an altitude above 2000 meters, the pressure in the environment drops and is approximately 70 kPa, which leads to the occurrence of mountain sickness, the symptoms described by eyewitnesses (blood pressure increases from the nose and ears, the amount of O2 in the alveoli decreases, barometric pressure changes during internal cavity organs (heart, stomach, lungs, intestines, etc.) this change leads to bleeding, a decrease in O2 in the tissues leads to hypoxia, in turn, hypoxia causes a state of euphoria, delirium and hallucinations, a feeling of inexplicable fear arises, in this state a person does not feel pain, they can tear out their hair, take off their clothes. I take into account the air temperature at an altitude of above 2000 m, 0. -3 degrees, hypothermia occurs, the person quietly dies in ecstasy from hypothermia.
I would like to warn climbers that the adaptation period to altitude sickness is 14 days; only after complete adaptation can one climb higher. Considering that Korovina’s group climbed to a height of 2300 meters in 6 days, the change in weather leads to a drop in pressure in the environment even lower. (i.e. precipitation moves from higher pressure to lower pressure). The survivor claimed that the weather had worsened, which led to an even sharper drop in atmospheric pressure (possibly by 10-20 kPa, the total at that moment was not 70 kPa, but approximately below 60 kPa - such a sharp decrease in atmospheric pressure accelerated the course of “altitude sickness” , the symptoms intensified. In such conditions, untrained tourists went to their deaths without knowing it. One managed to survive because she had a very strong instinct of self-preservation (she took a sleeping bag and descended very quickly), this saved her life and mountain sickness did not lead to ecstasy and hypothermia, and saved the bedrooms from the cold).
1. Andrey
  I agree completely. I would like to add the following. The group immediately encountered bad weather, the river along which they entered swollen, the path was flooded, they had to climb the clamps, this took a lot of extra time, the schedule was disrupted. After we climbed onto the ridge and began its traverse, the group almost always walked above the forest zone with constant precipitation and an altitude of about 2000 m. This led to the fact that no one had dry things, there was no proper rest (in the guys’ diaries there were notes that we got up at 6.00 and were walking almost until dark, the lunch break was cut short because the leader was trying to reduce the backlog of the schedule, they had a checkpoint meeting with the second group, so the leader was pushing). It must be said that the food was also meager, at rest stops there was only 1 can of stew for a group of 7 people, and the guys were all young, their bodies were still growing, and they required a lot of calories. It’s no wonder that in such conditions almost everyone caught acute respiratory infections. It is easy to explain why Sasha was the first to fall, and this was considered the strongest member of the group (he seemed to be 25 years old). As we understand, he did the hardest work, and ate the same as the others, we think that he helped everyone, took things and food from the weak into his backpack in order to lighten the backpacks of the weak. We realized this when we loaded his backpack, which was very heavy compared to the backpacks of other participants. Given the combination of all factors, Sasha’s body could not stand it and broke down. Everything else is consequences. Having simply driven the group away, the leader behaved inappropriately in this situation, instead of leaving the dead guy and saving others, simply losing altitude, going down to the forest area, making a fire, etc., she abandoned the guys and stayed at the top with dead Sasha. In such a situation, the actions of the other guys can be explained very simply; they all broke down morally and psychologically due to the combination of a bunch of factors described above. In my opinion, Denis was not 16 years old at all. Valya was the only one that worked differently and she went down into the forest zone in prostration. The cedars saved her; in any rain, under a large cedar there is always a dry spot where the rain doesn’t fall, and Valya spent the night under the cedar. But Valya’s psyche was also not all right; in my opinion, they were able to talk to her only on the 3rd day after she got to the rescuers, which partly explains why the group was found only on August 25th. Well, before getting to the rescuers, Valya went to Snezhnaya, where water workers picked her up, while they passed Snezhnaya, while Valya got to Irkutsk, etc. Groups of rescuers from Ulan-Ude (2 groups) and Irkutsk began working as soon as they learned about the death of the Kazakhstanis, in my opinion since August 18, I could be wrong, so many years have passed. No one knew where they died, the weather was still bad, the helicopters couldn’t get through, so one of the rescue groups followed the same route and they found the group’s camps. Because There weren’t enough rescuers anymore, so our group from Chita was called to help. On the morning of the 25th we arrived by train in Ulan-Ude, and Valentina already told me that from the place of death she went down the old telegraph poles, i.e. the place of death was almost determined and at 10 am they gave the weather and permission for the helicopter to take off. the helicopter was flying at a low altitude and when approaching the spur, it began to gain altitude, walking in an arc, and just gained altitude and went up above the spur where the group died, we saw them immediately on the first circle, passing above them at 20-25 meters. I won’t tell you about the spectacle, but as some dreamers write, that the bodies were gnawed by wild animals, this is nonsense, when the Irkutsk rescuers flew up, they saw a bear just getting up, apparently they smelled it. And also for Nadine (her comment below) - Nadine, try not to live at such a height, but to do hard physical work, no need to write comments on something you don’t understand.
2. Georgiy
  Miner at 2300? is this such a thing?
  “in 6 days they rose to a height of 2300 meters” - why did they rise from 0 m? obviously not.
  There was no negative temperature there either, no need to make things up.
  “untrained tourists”? where does this information come from? also a fantasy? 4th category route.
Nadine
This is complete bullshit!
At an altitude of 2000 meters nothing like this happens.
Once I had to live in the mountains at 2400, despite the fact that I always lived on the plain.
Yes, hypoxia(
But this is nothing more than a shortness of breath when walking quickly and there is no need to run either.
Nadine
I was in the Hindu Kush, I don’t know how many there were - but it was definitely 3000!
Cars stalled without oxygen, but people remained adequate.
Art Deco
Zhenya, I live 2000 m away. I don’t feel any changes in my health at all. Tourists come and don’t notice anything either. Many people don’t even know how high they are. One difference is that they use high octane gasoline. number, otherwise you won’t go. yes with low and don’t sell
K
I have altitude sickness. The symptoms are completely different than those described above. Judging by the sudden change in condition and bad weather, there are 3 options:
1) ball lightning
2) electrical “bald patch” - a limited area that occurs after a lightning strike and lasts for several minutes. When entering it, a person is hit with an electric discharge.
3) a very sharp change in pressure in the mountains (I don’t remember what this rare effect is called) occurs during bad weather when air masses move down from the ridge.
Maksim
This is clearly not a miner. At such altitudes, even if symptoms appeared, it would be headaches at most. We walked along the Tien Shan, the hike lasted 8 days, we climbed from 1500m to 4000m. The most that one person had was vomiting. The rest have a headache, and not for long. And what is described in the article—blood from the ears—is suitable for altitudes above 7000m.
Valery Dombrovsky
What do we have as a picture of the incident? Exactly the same as with the Dyatlov group:

1. Described or there are traces of panic, stampede.
2. People undress even in extreme cold.
3. Self-harm occurs (in this case, another source said that young people hit their heads on stones). There were also traces of damage in Dyatlov’s group. They are attributed to the elements or third parties, but this is unlikely.
4. Events take place in the middle or end of a long route.
5. No alcohol: drunk or not taken.
6. Wind.
7. Something happens closer to night or at the end of it.
8. There are no traces of alcohol consumption in the last few hours of life.

Alas, I don't have good news, guys. This is the classic clinical picture of delirium tremens—delirium tremens, popularly known as squirrels. It develops in a sober person 2-5 days after a sharp cessation of alcohol consumption (when supplies are exhausted, if alcohol was not taken on the route). It is no secret that even young people, especially after 20 years, especially amateur athletes, regularly drink alcohol “on the ground”; many are accustomed to going on hikes at the rate of 100 grams per person per day. Travel forums are full of this, where the dose, where to get alcohol, and how to store it are condemned.

If such a person is suddenly left without alcohol (excessive consumption on the way due to sudden, unplanned cold, losses, etc.), then after a few days closer to night hell begins: monstrous, unbearable nightmares, constant fear of death, visual and auditory hallucinations; I see monsters, snakes, spiders, worms crawling out of the body, scary insects, phantasmagoric paintings on a Boschian scale, etc. The unfortunate man tries to run away, jump out the window, undress, shaking off the creeping nightmares, cuts off parts of his own body with a knife, trying to get rid of the monsters penetrating the body, and sometimes tries to commit suicide. In a wild environment, such a clinic is deadly.

Delirium occurs especially severely during alcohol intoxication in young people and adolescents who have experienced alcoholism for the first time, followed by abrupt withdrawal.

These terrible tragedies warn: either don’t drink at all - nowhere, never, and nothing, or if you are already “on the ground” and, especially in the mountains, are used to drinking, then don’t make any sudden stops, or sharp amounts of alcohol, drink evenly, as Always.

P.S. As for the alleged inadequacy of the group leader after Alexander’s death, you have to be absolutely inhuman to condemn it. After all, he was actually her adopted son. This is a force majeure event.
1. Vladislav
Victoria

Dyatlov Pass theme and the mystery of the death of students on it worries many, a lot of hypotheses, films have been made. Even in the Battle of Psychics they tried to unravel the mystery - every psychic has his own version.
And here is another, apparently not the last, “scientifically based” version.
New research by scientists has pointed to possible reason of death tourist group Igor Dyatlov in 1959. Experts linked the deaths to a similar accident, when in 1993 a group of tourists from Kazakhstan died in Buryatia in circumstances similar to the story of the Dyatlov group.

So in 1993, a group of students led by Lyudmila Korovina went to the Khamar-Daban pass. Of the seven people, only one returned - Valentina Utochenko. She doesn’t want to remember the horror she experienced.

Vladislav Rzhavtsev- a member of a local tourist club, also walked along the fatal route to study the causes of those terrible events, REN-TV reports.

"Then there was a very strong cyclone, the weather suddenly deteriorated. If the day before they passed, well, the weather immediately followed them, but was more or less tolerable, then on the morning of August 5, according to the words of survivor Valentina, it began to snow, the temperature dropped sharply, almost to zero", explains the researcher.

It snowed and rained over the mountains for several days. Exhausted, the tourists stopped to rest. The mountains in this part are completely bare, only rocks, grass and wind. Why the group did not go down to the edge of the forest is unknown. We had to spend the night on a rocky peak. On the morning of August 5, the tourists got ready to set off.

"There was a hurricane wind, snow was falling, it was cold. Here the first to fall is Alexander Krysin, the strongest, the right hand of Lyudmila Ivanovna Korovina. His nose and mouth are bleeding, and, according to Valentina, he is dying. At least he loses consciousness and cannot go further", continues Rzhavtsev.

After this, complete chaos began in the group. Someone began to hide and run away. Someone hit their head on the rocks. The rest behaved like they were out of their minds. This is recorded in the search and rescue report. People tore their clothes. Some had nosebleeds. Lyudmila Korovina died of a heart attack.

"The fact is that Valentina didn’t understand anything either. Perfectly healthy guys fall, tear their clothes, hit their heads on rocks and die one after another. She could not understand what had happened, and when she realized that she could not help, she simply went downstairs to somehow ride out this storm", explains Rzhavtsev.

Valentina Utochenko A few days later other tourists picked up. Official cause of death of the group Korovina- hypothermia. But researchers insist that people died from something else. Yes, they were dressed lightly, but there were warm clothes in their backpacks.

"They would be able to get dressed, get hypothermic, a person cannot freeze so quickly. They died abruptly. They had enough time to get dressed. They began to choke, and by all indications it was poisoning", suggests a member of the tourist club Natalia Rzhavtseva.

Researchers insist: in death groups of Igor Dyatlov and Lyudmila Korovina There are too many similarities for this to be a coincidence. Both of them left the parking lot in a panic, as if they were frightened by something. The bodies were found in different places. It was as if people were falling dead; many had no outer clothing.

One of the initiators of the campaign against Kholat-Chakhl Vladimir Borzenkov I am sure that the cause of death was infrasound.

"If you take the top of two neighboring mountains and draw a straight line between them, then along the ridge itself, with a wind speed of about 15 meters per second, about 60 tons of air per second passes. I believe that this is the most likely source of this infrasound, which could have affected the Dyatlov group"- assures the researcher.

Igor Dyatlov's group died on the night of February 1–2, 1959. Tourists from the club Ural Polytechnic went on a hike to the village of Vizhay Sverdlovsk region. The day before the tragedy, they were already trying to climb the Kholat-Chakhl pass. Due to the stormy wind, they were unable to do this and postponed the ascent to the next day.

"IN dark time day, the so-called “X” moment came, when the group was forced to hastily leave the tent. They could have exited through the entrance, of course. However, they were forced to take extreme measures and cut the tent. The urgency of the escape is also indicated by the fact that the group was practically unclothed.", explains Borzenkov.

The Dyatlovites ran out into the cold undressed. That night the temperature dropped to minus 28 degrees. Later, rescuers found warm clothes and shoes in the tent. The bodies of tourists were found at an impressive distance from the camp.

What made people flee in panic? Some even barefoot.

The official cause of death was hypothermia. Many versions have been put forward - from an avalanche to a UFO. However, today we can say: the expedition was killed by sound waves.

"Only something extraordinary could force one to leave the tent, in particular, let’s say, some kind of impact on the psyche. The brain, which has its own frequencies, was affected by something external. In particular, an acoustic wave could influence", says the researcher.

Few people know that if a person is exposed to low frequency sounds, instant death will occur. No doctor can explain this. Scientists conducted a number of experiments. The animals were exposed to infrasound, and this led to rupture of blood vessels in the brain and cardiac arrest.

"Even not very strong levels of infrasound affect a person’s mental state. In particular, a feeling of fear, a feeling of uncertainty arises, and internal organs begin to tremble. When the amplitude of the sound increases, breathing problems may occur and heart rhythms may become disturbed. More high levels sound lead to damage related to the supply of oxygen to the brain", explains acoustician scientist Kanaev.

Fierce winds on the Ural and Transbaikal passes could turn into a tornado. They walked far from the tents and tourist sites. And they didn't even damage them. But the tornado caused unusual phenomenon. People felt the impact of infrasound, so they ran away in terrible panic.

"Infrasound affects not only the human psyche, but also the entire body. These fluctuations are dangerous because they are difficult to catch. For example, oscillations of 7-8 hertz can also cause disturbances in the functioning of thought processes, panic, a feeling of inexplicable anxiety, danger", - comments Candidate of Medical Sciences Svetlana Artemova.

Despite the development of science, infrasound is still little studied. We only know that these are low frequency waves. We don't hear them, but we obey them.

Recent research by scientists confirms that infrasound causes panic and horror in people, can drive them crazy and even cause cardiac arrest. The most thorough investigation will not reveal any traces. Strong winds at sea or in the mountains, thunderstorms and even aurora are one of the reasons for the appearance of infrasound. Now researchers are sure: the mysterious death of two expeditions is indisputable proof of the existence of a fantastic killer sound.

PS (Valex). My version was that this is ball lightning. However, the appearance of ball lightning is sometimes accompanied by strange sound waves, so it's probably two in one. Also, there is no need to reset the option of testing psi-weapons in those places, because some variants of psi-weapons are precisely based on infrasonic influence on a person’s subconscious, causing panic in the crowd or in the enemy army.

A surviving participant in the campaign, Valentina Utochenko, told what really happened on Khamar-Daban in August 1993.

For several years, KP has been investigating the most sinister secret of the twentieth century - the death of a group of students at the Dyatlov Pass in 1959. But few people remember that there was a very similar and mysterious incident in August 1993 in the Eastern Sayan Mountains.

Then six tourists from Kazakhstan suddenly died - an experienced group leader, master of sports in tourism, 41-year-old Lyudmila Korovina, and with her guys and girls from the Petropavlovsk tourist club “Azimut”: Timur Bapanov, Alexander Krysin, Denis Shvachkin, Victoria Zalesova and Tatyana Filipenko.

Only the seventh participant in the hike, 17-year-old Valentina Utochenko, survived. As they say in such cases - a miracle. And the tourist club itself disintegrated after the death of the group. This tragedy puzzled even experienced rescuers: how could young, strong guys die in the summer at a relatively low mountain altitude?

In the press, the death of tourists on Khamar-Daban was dubbed the Buryat “Dyatlov Pass”.

The survivor was given a non-disclosure agreement

In Petropavlovsk (northern Kazakhstan), the tragedy caused a lot of noise and gave rise to a terrible version that is still heard today: the guys ended up in a secret weapon testing zone. And the surviving Valentina Utochenko was rescued by state security officers and took a non-disclosure agreement from her. Therefore, she left the city and has never spoken to the press until now.

Then almost the entire city of 200,000 people came to say goodbye to the dead, eyewitnesses recall. All coffins were closed.

And a few days after the funeral, Komsomolskaya Pravda suddenly published an article in which the author accused the leader of the hikers of the death of the group, Valentina Yaskova, a friend of the deceased Lyudmila Korovina, bitterly tells me.

The city was worried. So this is it, it turns out! Korovina took the kids to the mountains, decided to take a risk, and almost all of them died.

The article was even discussed on trams, continues Yaskova. “I read it and cried, I couldn’t believe it. But most of all, the article brought grief to the parents of the children.

- Why? Do you think Korovina is not to blame for the tragedy? - I’m surprised.

“And you call one of the relatives of the victims,” Valentina Nikolaevna suggested.

The mother of 15-year-old Timur Bapanova Galina Nikolaevna in 1993 was the deputy director of the Petropavlovsk pedagogical school. I’m calling her directly from Yaskova’s house.

- "TVNZ"? I won't talk!

I can hardly hold it:

- Are you sure that the group leader is not to blame for the death of your son?

I trusted Lyudmila as much as myself. She and Timur and I went on hikes of various categories many times. She is a professional! And she couldn’t destroy her group.

- Did any of the investigators communicate with you when everything happened?

- Why do you think your son died?

The death certificate says: frozen while hiking...

- How can you freeze in the summer? - I barely have time to ask, but the interlocutor has already turned off the phone.

Returning to Moscow, I rushed to the archive, spent the whole day leafing through the Komsomolskaya Pravda archive for 1993-1994, but I couldn’t find anything. Maybe that article was published in another publication, and Komsomolskaya Pravda had nothing to do with it?

We started preparing six months in advance

Valentina Yaskova remembers well how Korovina’s group got ready for that trip. We started preparing six months in advance. We wrote out the diet for every day. As usual, Korovina drew up a clear route, timed by the hour, and ordered who should take what things. She knew each of the guys well, because they had been on hikes with her more than once.

They didn't return from the trip

Alexander Krysin, 23 years old. In 1993 he studied at Baumanka in Moscow. I met Lyudmila Korovina as a teenager. I came to the tourist club when I was 12 years old and have been sick of the mountains ever since. That summer I passed the exam and rushed to Khamar-Daban.

Denis Shvachkin, 19 years old. I got into the group by accident. He was also a member of the tourist club and knew Korovina well. He was taken instead of a guy whose parents wouldn't let him go. Like, it’s time to go to the haymaking, and you’re going to the mountains. Denis's parents were at the resort in those days. The son left for Transbaikalia, leaving them a note: “I went to the mountains, I’ll be back soon.”

Timur Bapanov, 15 years old. You could say I grew up in the mountains. His parents were fond of sports tourism.

Tatyana Filipenko, 24 years old. She worked as a secretary in a pedagogical school. She loved the mountains very much. I went with Korovina on hikes of the 1st and 2nd categories. I was going to Khamar-Daban with great excitement.

Victoria Zalesova, 16 years old. The one person Korovina didn’t want to take was Vika. On a winter hike, the girl lost her temper from fatigue and became capricious. Lyudmila Ivanovna did not like this. But Vika wanted to go to Khamar-Daban so much that she begged her mother to call Korovina.

They talked in front of me,” says Valentina Yaskova. - Her mother, a primary school teacher, vouched for Vika that she would no longer be capricious and would not let anyone down. Luda somehow agreed to take Zalesova into the group.

Lyudmila Ivanovna herself was a very enthusiastic person. She lived in tourism, in the mountains. I’ve been to the Tien Shan, Altai, and Sayan Mountains. Her sports portfolio includes hikes of different categories - from first to fifth.

Lyudmila Korovina with her daughter Natasha. Photo: Personal archive of Valentina Yaskova

Survivor Valentina Utochenko was 17 years old in August 1993. She left her native Petropavlovsk immediately after graduating from college. And since then, no one here knows where she lives and what her fate is.

"Why are you bringing me back to this nightmare?"

I searched the Internet for a bunch of articles about that tragedy in the hope of finding at least some memories of Valentina Utochenko - in vain. From note to note, journalists write the same thing: she refuses to talk to anyone about what happened in Khamar-Daban. But with the help of colleagues from the Chelyabinsk editorial office of Komsomolskaya Pravda, we managed to find Valentina in an old, shabby food industry hostel.

Immediately seeing me as a journalist, Valya slammed the door:

I'm not going to talk to you!

I stand thoughtfully in the corridor, where, as in that song, “there is only one restroom for 38 rooms.” About 10 minutes passed. Suddenly Valya came out to me.

What do you want from me?! - she was very excited.

- I need the truth from the main character, that is, from you. I want to know what happened on Khamar-Daban.

Why are you bringing me back to this nightmare? - Valya suddenly switched to you. - I’ve been living with my husband for 15 years, he only found out two years ago that I was there too. They showed a program on TV about this case, and my photo was in it. Kostya shuddered. I had to tell. Journalists constantly write to me on social networks, I block everyone. I don't want to remember anything.

- Valya, I think you need to speak out. You’ve been keeping all this to yourself for 25 years!

What's the point? It's all useless. You won't get them back.

Then she thought about it. She looked through me for a long time, and then asked:

Do you want some tea?

- Want.

It was just very cold

Valentina's family - she, her husband and two sons - live in two small rooms. Everything is clean and tidy. You can feel a firm female hand.

“This happened on the fifth day of the hike,” Valentina began the conversation. - Before that everything was fine. Korovina made a request to the weather station in advance, and she was assured that the weather would be good. That's why we set out on the routes in three groups. No one expected that the weather would change to cold and rain... Landslides began.

- Are all groups from Kazakhstan?

Yes, from Petropavlovsk. The main route was carried out by a group with Korovina’s daughter Natasha. She was 16 years old at the time and was a leader. Our task was to insure her group. If something happened, we would come to the rescue.

- Did you have walkie-talkies?

No. But our routes had several intersection points.

- Can you remember the route from the map?

It’s unlikely, so many years have passed.

- Was it a difficult route?

No, it's easy.

- How many times a day did you eat?

Four times a day for sure. Hot food is a must. They made a fire and cooked. In addition, snacks at rest stops. We had cereals, powdered milk, crackers, stewed meat, carrots, beets, onions, sweets, chocolates... In my opinion, the calculation was based on 2400 kilocalories per person per day.

They say that you walked through the mountains, where there was no forest, and therefore you cooked on primus stoves. And supposedly you can’t cook much with them.

I don't remember Primus stoves. We went down into the forest and made fires. (In August 1993, in an explanatory note, Valya wrote that the food was cooked on primus stoves. - Author.) This was my third trip with Lyudmila Korovina. First we went near Petropavlovsk, then to the Tien Shan. Lyudmila Ivanovna taught us drawing, drawing and physical education. I studied in two specialties - a teacher of school work and an instructor of school tourism, which is why I ended up in the tourist club.

- What kind of person was Korovina?

ABOUT! She was a bright woman. Tall, slender and beautiful. Curls, some kind of bow with a flower or something else. Extravagant, always well-groomed.

- Married?

No, she raised her daughter alone.

Like in a horror movie

- There is an opinion that she is to blame for the death of the children.

In no case! It was very cold at the top. Early morning. We sleep. Korovina woke us up, told us to pack our things and go down into the gorge. She tried to save us. I just didn't have time. The wind was so strong that we were sliding down instead of walking. Suddenly Sasha fell. He began to foam at the mouth. Korovina sat down next to him, hugged him, and that was all. Didn't get up again. And such a madhouse began. Moreover, I still don’t understand how long it lasted. Like a horror movie. Everyone falls, everyone is bleeding, foaming at the mouth, bleeding from the nose.

- How did you escape?

Denis Shvachkin saved me. He kicked me and said: “Crawl down.” I went down. But he didn’t get there. I climbed into my sleeping bag and fell asleep. Or not a dream, but oblivion. I don't know. I woke up in the morning. Went upstairs.

- Did you hope that someone was alive?

No. I saw that they all died. I stood up to grab the map and compass. She also closed everyone’s eyes. I don’t know how I got to the Snezhnaya River. I remember seeing power poles and walking along them. Apparently, she wasn’t completely crazy by that time. And it was as if someone was guiding me all this time.

- Who? There were some strange rumors that the special services were...

- (Smiles.) Guardian angel. She survived with God's help.

- How long did it take you to walk?

They died on August 5th, and on the 9th the watermen picked me up. It turns out, four days. I remember standing on the shore, and catamarans were sailing along the river.

- Tourist Kvitnitsky, who picked you up, said that you washed yourself in the river and washed your clothes.

I don’t know, maybe I really was being weird there. But I remember that I washed myself much later, when we were rafting down the river together. In general, I remember how stunned they were when they saw me in such a taiga hole. They landed and started asking questions. I'm hysterical. They started giving me valerian and corvalol. I remember how later on the way I fried flatbreads for them on the lid of the pot. Water, flour, salt. Nowadays it is called lavash, but at that time there were no lavashes.

- Why do you think they died?

It seems to me that pulmonary edema has begun. The symptoms are suitable - foam, blood from the mouth, madness.

- What happened when you returned home?

The people of Kiev took me to Petropavlovsk. I didn't tell my parents anything. She was silent. Although they saw that I was blacker than a cloud. And then someone congratulated them on my second birthday. Then they pressed me: they say, don’t you want to tell us anything? And I burst into tears - I told everything as it is, and they cried. After that, my arms, legs, and back immediately gave out. I stayed in the hospital for a month or two. I haven't eaten for a long time. Did not want. But they cured him and put him back on his feet.

- Why did you leave Kazakhstan?

That's how life turned out. There was no work.

- Valya, why do you think you survived?

I grew up in the village. Always on the farm. We did the most difficult work there from an early age. And they grazed cattle, and went to haymaking, and went to the logging site for firewood. Since the 4th grade I have been involved in cross-country skiing. I have always been resilient, not afraid of difficulties and physical activity. That's probably why.

Final verdict

It was hypothermia. But where does protein dystrophy come from? In 1993, Buryat forensic experts established during an autopsy that all tourists died from hypothermia.

Here's how Konstantin Yugov, head of the Bureau of Forensic Medicine of the Republic of Buryatia, talked about it:

“When we received six corpses of tourists for examination, the examination was set with the task of identifying the cause of death. First, could they have died from hypothermia? Secondly, could they have been poisoned by something? Third, are there any injuries on the bodies? First, we carefully studied the conditions under which this tragedy occurred. It was necessary to determine what could kill the tourists. It all happened high in the mountains at low temperatures and heavy rain. Plus a lot of physical activity and oxygen starvation. In such conditions, death can occur quickly. There have been cases where, under similar circumstances, people died from hypothermia within two hours. At autopsy, signs of general cooling of the body were found. The muscles lack nutrients. And this gave rise to a diagnosis of hypothermia. In addition, experts identified pulmonary edema and changes in the heart, liver and lungs characteristic of protein dystrophy in the dead. This only indirectly suggests that they could have been starving.”

P.S

I still don’t have an answer to several questions. Why did six tourists die in a matter of minutes? Why did people of different physical endurance, who had undergone 4 days of acclimatization in the highlands, fall dead? Where did protein dystrophy come from if, according to Valentina, the whole group ate well on the hike? In the near future, with the help of specialists, I will try to find answers.

If you have anything to add about this tragedy, as well as similar ones, write to us: [email protected]

Natalia Varsegova

Every year, publications appear in the media about the death of climbers. The most famous and mysterious case is the tragedy that occurred with the Dyatlov group in early February 1959. The circumstances that led to the death of nine climbers have not yet been clarified, but the media paid sufficient attention to the incident. Not so long ago, the film “The Secret of the Dyatlov Pass” was even released. And few people know about the mysterious death of six climbers that occurred in Buryatia on the Khamar-Daban pass.

In August 1993, a group of seven tourists arrived in Irkutsk from Kazakhstan by rail to go to the Khamar-Daban ridge. Forecasters promised suitable weather for climbing, and the group set off for the mountains. It consisted of three boys, three girls and a 41-year-old leader, Lyudmila Korovina, who had the title of Master of Sports in hiking. The Khamar-Daban ridge does not shock you with its height. The highest point is 2,396 meters. Arranged in ledges, with pointed peaks and ridges, the ridge is one of the oldest mountains on our planet. These beautiful places are visited by thousands of tourists every year. There were no signs of trouble. The group moved from the village of Murino to one of the highest mountains in the range called Hanulu. Its height is 2371 meters. Having walked about 70 kilometers in 5-6 days, the tourists stopped for a rest between the peaks of Golets Yagelny (2204m) and Tritrans (2310m). The weather forecasters, however, were wrong about the weather. It snowed and rained and the wind blew for several days in a row. What made the experienced leader set up camp on a bare part of the mountain is anyone's guess. Just four kilometers down the slope there was a forest in which one could shelter from bad weather and make a fire. At approximately 11 o'clock in the afternoon on August 5, when the tourists were about to leave the temporary parking lot, a young man named Alexander began to feel ill. Suddenly, blood started pouring out of his ears and foam started coming out of his mouth. Literally a few minutes later he died. All members of the group were horrified. Something strange began to happen. The leader of the group fell unconscious. Mass hysteria began. The young man, whose name was Denis, ran and hid behind the stones, one of the girls (Tatiana) hit her head on the stones. Two girls fell to the ground and began to tear their clothes and grab their throats with their hands. After some time, another young man fell. The remaining guy and girl decide to take only the essentials with them and go downstairs. While the girl is unloading extra things from her backpack, a guy with the same symptoms falls to the ground. The girl, overcome with fear, runs downstairs, but does not reach the forest. She sees hurricane-force winds breaking trees and knocking them to the ground. Hiding under a large rock, the girl spends a sleepless night, and in the morning she decides to return to camp. Having risen, Valentina discovered that all the participants in the hike were dead. And I decided to look for people. Noticing an old relay tower, the girl managed to get her bearings and went to the Snezhnaya River. Pillars stretched down from the tower. Reasoning that they could lead her to housing, Valentina walked, guided by the electrical wires. And she came to the houses, but they turned out to be abandoned. Two days later, she was found, barely alive, near the Snezhnaya River by a group tourists from Kyiv. Valentina was very lucky - people rarely visited those places. The dead were taken out by helicopter. An autopsy of the bodies was performed in Ulan-Ude. According to the conclusion made, everyone died from hypothermia. The only survivor, Valentina Utochenko, does not like to remember what happened. Overcoming herself, she said that it all started with the death of Alexander, the strongest and strongest guy in the group. According to her, he suffered from a heart attack, which is why he suddenly died in front of everyone. The leader of the group, Lyudmila Korovina, who treated Alexander like a son, ordered the group to go down and leave her with the deceased. And then she herself died. And then mass hysteria began. Seeing the group members fall to the ground one after another, Valya rushed down. After Valentina’s story, the conclusion about the cause of death of the tourists is questionable. If Utochenko believes that both Alexander and Korovina died of a heart attack, then why does the conclusion given by the Ulan-Ude doctors say that all members of the group died as a result of hypothermia? And why did they fall one after another in a short period of time, foaming at the mouth and bleeding from the ears? Perhaps the reason for their death lies in something else?
Someone put forward a version that the participants in the events could have been poisoned by an unknown gas. Some believe that as a result of strong winds and the specific terrain of the area, an infrasonic wave was formed, which killed the tourists. It is also surprising that there were no warm clothes on the bodies of the dead. They were wearing only light tights. And three of the dead were found completely barefoot. Why? What made them, dying of hypothermia, take off their outer clothing? There are many questions. There are just no answers to them. The death of six people on the Khamar-Daban pass remains an unsolved mystery...

The most famous and mysterious case of the death of tourists is considered to be the tragedy that occurred with the Dyatlov group in early February 1959. The circumstances have not yet been clarified, and several dozen versions have been put forward.

This story is known all over the world and has formed the basis of several feature films and documentaries. However, few people know that a similar and no less mysterious and tragic story happened thirty years later on one of the passes in Buryatia. In August 1993, a group of seven tourists arrived in Irkutsk from Kazakhstan by rail to go to the Khamar-Daban ridge.

Forecasters promised suitable weather for climbing, and the group set off for the mountains. It consisted of three boys, three girls and a 41-year-old leader, Lyudmila Korovina, who had the title of Master of Sports in hiking. The Khamar-Daban ridge does not shock you with its height. The highest point is 2,396 meters. Arranged in ledges, with pointed peaks and ridges, the ridge is one of the oldest mountains on our planet. These beautiful places are visited by thousands of tourists every year.

Valentina Utochenko The group moved from the village of Murino to one of the highest mountains in the range called Hanulu. Its height is 2371 meters. Having walked about 70 kilometers in 5-6 days, the tourists stopped for a rest between the peaks of Golets Yagelny (2204m) and Tritrans (2310m).

“Sasha fell, blood came out of his ears, foam came out of his mouth. Lyudmila Ivanovna Korovina stayed with him, appointed Denis as a senior, told him to go down as low as possible, but not to enter the forest, then the guys Vika, Tanya, Timur began to fall and roll on the ground - symptoms like a person who is suffocating.

Denis said - quickly take the most necessary things from the backpacks and run downstairs. I bent over my backpack, pulled out my sleeping bag, raised my head: Denis had fallen and was tearing his clothes. I tried to drag him by the hand with me, but he broke free and ran away. She ran downstairs without letting go of her sleeping bag. I spent the night under a boulder, covering my head with a sleeping bag, it was scary. Along the edge of the forest, trees were falling from the hurricane. In the morning the wind died down and it was more or less dawn. I went up to the scene of the tragedy.”

Lyudmila Ivanovna was still alive but could practically no longer move, she showed Valya in which direction to go out and passed out. Valya closed the guys' eyes, collected her things, found a compass and went...

But Valentina went out to the Snezhnaya River and moved downstream. On the sixth day after the tragedy, she was accidentally seen and picked up by a water tour group. They had already sailed past, but decided to return; it seemed suspicious that the tourist did not respond to their greetings. Out of shock, the girl did not speak for several days. It’s interesting that Lyudmila Korovina’s daughter and another tour group were walking along a neighboring route and agreed to meet her mother at their intersection.

But when Lyudmila’s group did not arrive at the collection point, Korovina Jr. thought that they were simply late due to bad weather and continued on their way, at the end of which they went home, not suspecting that their mother was no longer alive.

For some unknown reason, the search dragged on; the bodies of the tourists were found only when about a month had passed since the death of the guys and their leader!!!

The picture was terrible, rescuers recall. The helicopter landed, and everyone on board witnessed a terrible sight: “The bodies were already swollen, everyone’s eye sockets were completely eaten away. Almost all of the dead were dressed in thin tights, while three were barefoot. The leader was lying on top of Alexandra...”

What happened on the plateau? Why, freezing, did the hikers take off their shoes? Why did the woman lie on the dead guy? Why didn't anyone use sleeping bags? All these questions remain unanswered.