The Khamar-Daban Incident Is So Strange It Is Known As “Buryatia’s Dyatlov Pass”

For those that haven’t, in 1959, a group of nine experienced hikers were climbing Kholat Syakhl Mountain when they went missing. Months later, rescue workers found their tent with most of their belongings inside, having been ripped open from within by a knife. All nine hikers died, and some were found suffering odd burns, missing appendages or eyes, and at various states of undress. The incident sparked many theories and conspiracy theories, as well as inspiring a season of True Detective.

But it is far from the only time a group of hikers has gone missing in unusual circumstances. One incident highlighted by Reddit recently is so odd it has become known as “Buryatia’s Dyatlov Pass”.

In August 1993, seven hikers – four women, three men – set out to traverse the Khamar-Daban mountain range in Buryatia, in eastern Siberia. The area was a popular tourist destination, and the group was reportedly led by an expert hiker, Lyudmila Korovina. They were able to climb to the top of Retranslyator without incident. But as the group descended, the weather quickly took a turn for the worse, and they were caught in heavy rainfall on August 4.

The hikers were unable to light a campfire in the conditions, but set up camp for the night. The following day, they were supposed to meet another group of hikers, which included some of that group’s relatives, at a specified location. However, they did not show up.

The second group, which included Korovina’s daughter, Natalia, continued down the mountain, assuming that the first group had simply been delayed by the bad weather and wet equipment. But later, as they were kayaking down the river at the bottom of the mountains, a group of tourists spotted a lone woman standing and staring at them, in some accounts, coated in dried blood.

The woman told the group, and later the police, that she was Valentina Utochenko, and she had been part of the group to descend the mountains. In fact, she was the only survivor. 

According to reports, Utochenko was unable to fill anyone in on the details for a few days, given her state of distress. Eventually though, she did relay her somewhat strange version of events. According to her, they had begun to descend the mountain when Aleksander “Sacha” Krysin began to scream from the back of the group. Utochenko claimed that Krysin was both frothing at the mouth and bleeding from his eyes and ears.

After a few moments, Krysin collapsed to the ground and convulsed before finally going still. One member told the group to go on as they attempted to look after Krysin. But soon afterwards they heard her screams, and the group returned to find her with the same symptoms as Krysin. After that, another began clutching at her own throat as if she couldn’t breathe, before reportedly moving over to a rock and repeatedly bashing her head against it until she too was motionless.

One by one, the group members began bleeding and clutching at their throats, before collapsing and lying on the floor. Utochenko continued down the mountain and set up camp for the night, before returning to her group the following day and finding them exactly where they had collapsed. She then set off down the mountain again in an attempt to find rescue, where she was seen by the group of tourists.

“There was a girl standing on the shore, screaming and waving her arms. So desperately that we immediately realized that something was wrong,” Ukrainian tourist Alexander Kvitnitsky told Russian publication kp.ru. “When we got to the shore, she threw herself at one of our participants and cried on her chest for a long time. She was incoherently telling us that people had died and how scared she was.”

Despite reporting the incident to the authorities, it wasn’t until August 24 that a search for the group began, and they were found two days after that.

“The clothes and backpacks were bright. The group was lying on a clear slope 200-250 meters (straight, not vertically) below the main ridge, towards the Snezhnaya River basin,” one witness to the rescue – Alexey Livinsky – told infpol.ru. “There were also 200-300 meters left to the edge of the forest. I don’t remember birds singing or flying there, not even crows, at the place of death. It was well ventilated. The bodies were partially mummified, and there wasn’t even a putrid smell.”

So what happened? While missing appendages and eyes may sound pretty mysterious, this could easily be put down to scavengers. However, the cause of their deaths is much more subject to speculation. Some have suggested that it could have been due to a lack of oxygen, which can cause hallucinations amongst other problems, but the mountains are not high enough for altitude sickness to occur. 

Others have suggested that the weather caused some sort of infrasound event resulting in their deaths, or that they drank contaminated water in Lake Baikal, or ate hallucinogenic mushrooms by mistake. More outlandish ideas suggest that the hikers were killed by a nerve agent tested in the area, though given the number of tourists traveling through it, this seems unlikely.

Autopsy reports suggested that several of the group died of hypothermia, while one’s death was put down to a heart attack. While this explanation may not fit with the details of Utochenko’s story, it does fit with the fact that the bodies were found to be partially undressed and had signs of bruised lungs.

In around 25 percent of deaths resulting from hypothermia, the affected can go through something called “paradoxical undressing” in the final stages. There are a few theories as to why it occurs, including damage to the temperature-regulating area of the brain. Another theory is that when people undergo hypothermia, the muscles contracting their blood vessels in their limbs become so exhausted they relax, sending blood to their extremities and making them believe they are actually boiling hot, at which point they begin to undress in their confused state. 

While this explanation doesn’t fit well with Utochenko’s recollections, confusion and hallucinations are also symptoms of hypothermia, and it is plausible that this affected her memory of the hikers’ deaths. Unfortunately, we may never get to the bottom of this mystery as we move further away from it. Utochenko, understandably, is not keen to relive the situation, and any further clues are likely lost to the wilderness and time.