He said that, knowing the site’s history, he felt “a creepy atmosphere” at the pass, which takes days to reach from the town of Ivdel, a day’s train ride from Yekaterinburg. “You’re completely alone up there.”
Mr Born said he was “really delighted” about the recorded evidence of an avalanche, but said mysteries would always remain about the case. “At some point with this Dyatlov mystery,” he says, “you have to be open about the fact that there are some things you will never understand.”
Mr Gaume said the winds helped explain why no avalanches had been recorded in the area before, despite the indigenous people, the Mansi, living in the area. “These avalanches, they release in the condition that people don’t go out because of the wind, the storm, and then a few hours later the wind covered the tracks,” he said.
Mr. Puzrin and Mr. Gaume’s latest article, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, was not peer-reviewed. And two avalanche experts who were not involved in it, Karl Birkeland and Doug Chabot, expressed skepticism, saying that although Swiss scientists had shown how an incident could happen, but that doesn’t seem to be the case yet.
“We believe the avalanche hypothesis cannot be completely ruled out, but it is not the most likely scenario,” said Birkeland, director of the US Forest Service’s National Avalanche Center. “While that could happen from afar, we advise that it will be very unlikely.”
He and Mr Chabot, the director of the Gallatin National Forest Avalanche Center in Montana, said the evidence of avalanches near the tent site “didn’t really have anything to do with it”, as the safe terrain could directly cause damage. hazardous conditions.
They also expressed concern about whether the terrain was steep enough. Despite the 3-D mapping, they believe the slopes shown in the old photos “are not steep enough for an avalanche,” Mr Birkeland said.
