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About the fabric and the tears / rips / apparent cuts in it ...
The two searchers who discovered the tent on 26 February were Slobtsov and X (I don't recall), both of whom were friends with Dyatlov and other members of the missing party. By their own admission, they became greatly excited and immediately began attempting to get into the collapsed tent to check on their friends. They had ice axes, and these were the only tools (I've seen cited) they used to cut their way into the tent. With the exception of a single horizontal slit near the tent's peak and approximately halfway along its length, no other cuts or holes were officially noted as definitely resulting from this attempted entry / opening frenzy. I frankly don't believe they tore into the tent and left only that one little slit.
The presumption the holes had been cut from the inside derived from a casual comment made by a seamstress / worker who happened to see the tent when it had been recovered and set up for display at the relevant local authority's headquarters. She noted that bare thread ends seemed to curl or bend outward, as if they'd been cut from inside the tent and forced outward. I've never seen any claim she examined each and every hole in the tent fabric. For all I know her comments may have been spot-on for one or more holes but ended up being over-generalized as if they pertained to all the damage.
I'd also point out the tent had lain in the snow for almost a month, been dismantled and dragged across the tent site, folded, transported, and unfolded / refolded any number of possible times before being hung up for the seamstress to see *in a heated building.* I've never been convinced any apparent directionality to the thread ends around the holes' edges necessarily reflected their state when discovered on the mountainside, much less provided reliable evidence for how they were made.
The shapes and edges of the holes are not uniform / identical. Some of the edges are quite ragged and strike me as more probably being tears or rips.
Some of the larger holes were cut or ripped in straight lines that curiously match the directionality within the weave of the canvas material. I suspect one or more of the larger holes were ripped to a larger size to gain access to the tent's interior and the missing party's belongings. This could have been done by Slobtsov and his companion or by the larger group of searchers and investigators once they arrived at the scene.
I have a hard time believing panicked trekkers could have consistently cut such straight lines through the canvas under duress.
We know there were notably high winds the night following the tent's final erection on the mountainside. The reports from the "geologists' party" miles away on Chistop are sufficient to establish that.
Dyatlov's tent was a homemade mashup of two smaller tents (both of which were already well used) that had been sewn together to make one larger unit. I have no problem believing some or most of the apparent damage to the down-slope side of the tent was the result of being buffeted by the winds.
The two searchers who discovered the tent on 26 February were Slobtsov and X (I don't recall), both of whom were friends with Dyatlov and other members of the missing party. By their own admission, they became greatly excited and immediately began attempting to get into the collapsed tent to check on their friends. They had ice axes, and these were the only tools (I've seen cited) they used to cut their way into the tent. With the exception of a single horizontal slit near the tent's peak and approximately halfway along its length, no other cuts or holes were officially noted as definitely resulting from this attempted entry / opening frenzy. I frankly don't believe they tore into the tent and left only that one little slit.
The presumption the holes had been cut from the inside derived from a casual comment made by a seamstress / worker who happened to see the tent when it had been recovered and set up for display at the relevant local authority's headquarters. She noted that bare thread ends seemed to curl or bend outward, as if they'd been cut from inside the tent and forced outward. I've never seen any claim she examined each and every hole in the tent fabric. For all I know her comments may have been spot-on for one or more holes but ended up being over-generalized as if they pertained to all the damage.
I'd also point out the tent had lain in the snow for almost a month, been dismantled and dragged across the tent site, folded, transported, and unfolded / refolded any number of possible times before being hung up for the seamstress to see *in a heated building.* I've never been convinced any apparent directionality to the thread ends around the holes' edges necessarily reflected their state when discovered on the mountainside, much less provided reliable evidence for how they were made.
The shapes and edges of the holes are not uniform / identical. Some of the edges are quite ragged and strike me as more probably being tears or rips.
Some of the larger holes were cut or ripped in straight lines that curiously match the directionality within the weave of the canvas material. I suspect one or more of the larger holes were ripped to a larger size to gain access to the tent's interior and the missing party's belongings. This could have been done by Slobtsov and his companion or by the larger group of searchers and investigators once they arrived at the scene.
I have a hard time believing panicked trekkers could have consistently cut such straight lines through the canvas under duress.
We know there were notably high winds the night following the tent's final erection on the mountainside. The reports from the "geologists' party" miles away on Chistop are sufficient to establish that.
Dyatlov's tent was a homemade mashup of two smaller tents (both of which were already well used) that had been sewn together to make one larger unit. I have no problem believing some or most of the apparent damage to the down-slope side of the tent was the result of being buffeted by the winds.