NOTES / LOG.TXT

  In the making of this cable car, I was inspired by the (true) story of an incident that took place in the Ural mountains (former Soviet Union, Russia) which I would like to share with you. It is known as the Dyatlov Pass incident and remains a mystery until today. Back in January of 1959, a group of nine experienced ski hikers ventured into the Ural mountains on an expedition. Their goal was to reach a specific mountain called Ortorten and then head back. Before leaving, Dyatlov, the leader of the group, said he would send a telegram to their sports club when they had returned to civilization, which he said would be no later than February 12th. February 12th arrived but there was no telegram sent by the group, but since it was very common for expeditions to be a few days late, no immediate action was taken. The hikers families were of course very worried, and on February 20th they demanded rescue teams to look for them. On February 26th they finally found the hikers campsite, and it baffled them. The tent was badly damaged, ripped open from the inside, as if the hikers had fled from it in great haste. All their belongings and shoes were left behind, hinting they must have fled barefoot, wearing nothing but underwear. Their footprints could be followed, leading down toward the edge of a nearby woods, on the opposite side of the pass. As the search parties followed the footprints to the edge of the forest, they eventually found the first two bodies, shoeless and dressed only in their underwear. Three more was later found between the forest and the camp. And not until 2 months later the remaining four were found buried deep under the snow. These four were better dressed than the others, and there were signs that those who had died first had apparently relinquished their clothes to the others. Some bodies had broken ribs or crushed skulls. One of them was missing a tongue, but there was no external wounds on any of the hikers. The little clothing they had was said to exhibit some level of radiation. At the funeral, their skin was said to have a strange orange tone, and their hair had turned gray. So what had happened to these hikers? The first investigation concluded that they had all died of hypothermia, but after the last four hikers were found the story changed. They discovered that two of the bodies had such major damage to their chests, and since there was no external wounds to be found it seemed as if they had been subjected to a high level of pressure. There is many theories but none of them seem to hold up. Big foot, military weapon testing, alien invasion, an avalanche, wild animals... There was no signs of bigfoot, wild animals, nor any other people or vehicles anywhere near the camp area and there was not enough snow covering the camp for it to have been an avalanche. What do you think happened?