Honestly I don’t know where to start on this story or what I think of it. I will do my best to relay what I found and my thoughts. I spent the most time yet researching it hoping I’d find an answer I felt was the right one. I didn’t. As much as I like mysteries I don’t like them when it takes nine gifted live loving people’s lives. That’s what happened to these nine Russian hikers in 1959. They set out doing something they loved and wound up dead not from hazards of the arduous hike but from something unexplainable. Why was Lyuda’s tongue removed while she was still alive? How did two of them wind up with radioactive clothes? What removed both eyes from two? What crushed the chest of three? What flailed the chest of one? Why was their tent cut from the inside? What happened? What compelled these highly experienced hikers to do what they did? Why was the region closed for three years after the event? Why were the documents related to it classified until after the fall of the Soviet Union? If after this you favor a theory or have one let me know. The more I found out the less I felt I knew except as the coroner ruled “an unknown compelling force” caused their deaths.
Mary Louise Eklund 