The Khamar Daban Incident (1993)

[SleepyPanda]

The Khamar Daban Incident aka The Buryatia Dyatlov Pass

In the summer of 1993, 7 hikers travelled through the Khamar Daban mountain range in Southern Siberia. Only one hiker would survive the trip.

Another experienced leader, more strange deaths.

https://zizuhotel.ru/en/registraciy...noi-samye-tainstvennye-neschastnye-sluchai-v/

https://www.theshockingdetails.com/home/khamardaban

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnsolvedMysteries/comments/8smp4g

 

[marhawkman]

Interesting... I'm not sure how much of a connection there is though. Different location, different decade(over 30 years later), but the basics of "hiking group freezes to death under mysterious circumstances" are there. I'm really not sure what to make of some of this though. It seems to suggest they died of injuries from extreme winds? Then later were found with no clothes?

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Have you heard of this pretty similar incident?

The Khamar Daban Incident aka The Buryatia Dyatlov Pass

In the summer of 1993, 7 hikers travelled through the Khamar Daban mountain range in Southern Siberia. Only one hiker would survive the trip.

Another experienced leader, more strange deaths.

https://zizuhotel.ru/en/registraciy...noi-samye-tainstvennye-neschastnye-sluchai-v/

https://www.theshockingdetails.com/home/khamardaban

https://www.reddit.com/r/UnsolvedMysteries/comments/8smp4g

Further account here, in better English, but doesn't really add much:

https://www.rbth.com/history/330020-russia-dyatlov-pass-mystery-analogues

 

[SketchyMagpie]

This may have been recommended already, but I read a book last year that was sort of a retelling of the events of this incident but with some supernatural/fortean elements. I found it a bit uncomfortable at times knowing these were real people whose lives and deaths have been fictionalised for entertainment (a bit like watching The Crown, I guess...) but I did enjoy it. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071G7CSHP

 

[RaM]

Women are often able to survive cold better than men, so maybe the lay on the dead guy in a attempt to warm him?
In the last stages of hypothermia, it is not unknown for people to believe that they are too warm and start to shred
cloths it happened near here when a student after a night out tried to walk home in very cold weather,
his cloths were found behind a wall his body was found some days later.

 

[EnolaGaia]

(1) Initial posts here were spun off from the Dyatlov Pass thread.

(2) This Dyatlov Pass site provides a detailed English overview and photos on the Khamar Daban / Hamar Daban incident:

https://dyatlovpass.com/hamar-daban

 

[SleepyPanda]

(1) Initial posts here were spun off from the Dyatlov Pass thread.

(2) This Dyatlov Pass site provides a detailed English overview and photos on the Khamar Daban / Hamar Daban incident:

https://dyatlovpass.com/hamar-daban

Ah, that's a good one, thanks!

I see that there is also a third incident: The Chivruay Incident, which I hadn't heard of.

 

[SleepyPanda]

What would cause this, do you think? Beedling from the ears and foaming from the mouth.


"On the morning of August 5, they got ready to go, when suddenly at about 11 o'clock one of the boys had foam coming from his mouth and bleeding from the ears. In front of everyone, Alexander Krysin became ill, and he died shortly after, - says Leonid Izmailov.

After that, according to surviving Valentina Utochenko, complete chaos broke in the group. "Denis began to hide behind the stones and run away, Tatyana beat her head against the stones, Victoria and Timur probably went astray. Lyudmila Ivanovna died of a heart attack" - these was recorded in the search and rescue report as testimony from the surviving girl."

I can imagine that seeing one of your friends drop dead in front of you would be really scary, and that fear and confusion could account for much of the strange behaviour, along with hypothermia, but what was it that caused the first death? An unknown illness or health condition? Poison? Infrasound?

 

[SketchyMagpie]

This may have been recommended already, but I read a book last year that was sort of a retelling of the events of this incident but with some supernatural/fortean elements. I found it a bit uncomfortable at times knowing these were real people whose lives and deaths have been fictionalised for entertainment (a bit like watching The Crown, I guess...) but I did enjoy it. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B071G7CSHP

Oh wait, I'm totally getting my incidents mixed up, I was thinking this was the Donner party. D'oh!

 

[Ogdred Weary]

Women are often able to survive cold better than men, so maybe the lay on the dead guy in a attempt to warm him?

Really? I presumed it would be men who were better suited, purely down to being bigger.

 

[EnolaGaia]

What would cause this, do you think? Beedling from the ears and foaming from the mouth. ...

I can offer only an initial impression at this time ...

First off ... The group was obviously under physical duress from the weather over the preceding 24 hours. They had been soaked from the rains, it was cold enough to snow, and there were strong winds. They were marching uphill toward a prominent local peak the whole time. All the accounts make reference to the group being fatigued / exhausted when they pitched camp the last time (the night before the deaths started happening).

Second ... They were hungry, and there were hints in the accounts that the food they were packing was 'summer' food rather than heavier fare that would have afforded extra calories to help them stay warm.

All these factors set the hikers up to be at significant risk for illness or death from 'exposure' and / or hypothermia.

One thing stood out for me in the English language account I linked earlier:

... before the onset of the fateful night, the group collected and dried golden root on the pass all day long. That day there was cold rain and snow with strong wind. The exhausted hikers are very cold and hungry. ...

This golden root would (or should ... ) have been Rhodiola rosea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodiola_rosea

This plant has a long history of alleged benefits in counteracting depression and especially fatigure. It's long been prescribed for reinforcing or stimulating the body in situations of duress or exhaustion. It's also long been touted as helpful in strengthening the body for high-altitude and / or cold weather conditions. The research on these claims has been inconclusive at best:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3541197/

On the final night the group was exhausted, hungry and challenged to spend the night in unexpectedly frigid conditions. They'd collected a bunch of plants recommended for aiding people in exactly those conditions. I strongly suspect they'd have been tempted to consume the golden root they'd collected, even though it probably hadn't had time to thoroughly dry out.

If their golden root had been contaminated (or misidentified, and wasn't even the correct plant) there might be a chance that this could have contributed somehow to the initial illness / death.

Still, the ensuing confusion and resistance to following the leader's advice is entirely consistent with the mental confusion and behavioral weirdness known to occur with severe hypothermia.

 

[Kondoru]

Woman have more subcutaneous fat.

 

[SleepyPanda]

Ahhhh that makes a lot of sense, EnolaGaia.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Woman have more subcutaneous fat.

True, but they are generally smaller than men. Women feel the cold more than men, for some reason.

 

[IbisNibs]

Muscle mass generates heat. Women usually have less muscle mass, so feel colder. (Just ask any office worker.) However, women generally have more endurance than men. That may be old science tho', I'm not exactly up to date on these things. I don't gravitate toward extreme leisure activities like hiking in blizzards.

 

[XBergMann]

Muscle mass generates heat. Women usually have less muscle mass, so feel colder. (Just ask any office worker.) However, women generally have more endurance than men. That may be old science tho', I'm not exactly up to date on these things. I don't gravitate toward extreme leisure activities like hiking in blizzards.

I used to hike in blizzards in my youth, in fact hike in blizzards up and down Scottish Tors and across the North Yorkshire moors with a wet tent on my back attempting the Lyke Wake walk.

We only had boys in our outdoors team, I suspect the girls were far too intelligent to join a club where cold, damp and extreme fatigue were considered enjoyable.

 

[Mikefule]

Woman have more subcutaneous fat.

Studies have shown that women who carry a little extra fat live longer than men who point it out.

 

[marhawkman]

One thing in the Khamar Daban incident that sticks out is that the group were very badly prepared. That article remarks multiple times that they were not eating properly to avoid hypothermia and that in turn caused them to do things they really shouldn't have.... Like that campsite they hastily broke down. It was not a good location, and was seemingly chosen because it was too late to finish the hill climb to the shelter area... which was not all that far, but out of sight.

 

[Nosmo King]

I can offer only an initial impression at this time ...

First off ... The group was obviously under physical duress from the weather over the preceding 24 hours. They had been soaked from the rains, it was cold enough to snow, and there were strong winds. They were marching uphill toward a prominent local peak the whole time. All the accounts make reference to the group being fatigued / exhausted when they pitched camp the last time (the night before the deaths started happening).

Second ... They were hungry, and there were hints in the accounts that the food they were packing was 'summer' food rather than heavier fare that would have afforded extra calories to help them stay warm.

All these factors set the hikers up to be at significant risk for illness or death from 'exposure' and / or hypothermia.

One thing stood out for me in the English language account I linked earlier:



This golden root would (or should ... ) have been Rhodiola rosea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodiola_rosea

This plant has a long history of alleged benefits in counteracting depression and especially fatigure. It's long been prescribed for reinforcing or stimulating the body in situations of duress or exhaustion. It's also long been touted as helpful in strengthening the body for high-altitude and / or cold weather conditions. The research on these claims has been inconclusive at best:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3541197/

On the final night the group was exhausted, hungry and challenged to spend the night in unexpectedly frigid conditions. They'd collected a bunch of plants recommended for aiding people in exactly those conditions. I strongly suspect they'd have been tempted to consume the golden root they'd collected, even though it probably hadn't had time to thoroughly dry out.

If their golden root had been contaminated (or misidentified, and wasn't even the correct plant) there might be a chance that this could have contributed somehow to the initial illness / death.

Still, the ensuing confusion and resistance to following the leader's advice is entirely consistent with the mental confusion and behavioral weirdness known to occur with severe hypothermia.

Are there any autopsys report to back up story that one of the party 'repeatedly hit their head against a rock'? in the information i read it only mentioned that all the deaths were cause by hypothermia (including the guy bleeding from the ears?).

 

[marhawkman]

Are there any autopsys report to back up story that one of the party 'repeatedly hit their head against a rock'? in the information i read it only mentioned that all the deaths were cause by hypothermia (including the guy bleeding from the ears?).

The one survivor claimed she saw it happen. This doesn't mean it was a cause of death though.

 

[Nosmo King]

The one survivor claimed she saw it happen. This doesn't mean it was a cause of death though.

An autopsy report would note any and all injuries upon the subject, regardless of whether they were linked to cause of death, also tests for toxic substances would be carried out, to rule out poisoning, alcohol, and drugs. To take a persons testimony for an incident is a poor way of going about an investigation, if it was mentioned by the witness, surely the investination would examine the bodies to determine whether what was reported is confirmed by forensic evidence.

 

[Bigphoot2]

What would cause this, do you think? Beedling from the ears and foaming from the mouth.

The first thing I thought of when I read about that was that he had suffered some sort of serious head injury.

 

[Nosmo King]

The first thing I thought of when I read about that was that he had suffered some sort of serious head injury.

My initial thought was a subarachnoid hemorrhage or brain aneurysm, although the foaming at the mouth suggests an epileptic episode, maybe the aneurism brought on a seizure?

 

[marhawkman]

An autopsy report would note any and all injuries upon the subject, regardless of whether they were linked to cause of death, also tests for toxic substances would be carried out, to rule out poisoning, alcohol, and drugs. To take a persons testimony for an incident is a poor way of going about an investigation, if it was mentioned by the witness, surely the investination would examine the bodies to determine whether what was reported is confirmed by forensic evidence.

I don't have access to the full autopsy reports. All I have is a summarized version that lists cause of death as hypothermia... and no other details other than an indication the deceased were suffering from some sort of malnutrition that caused a protein deficiency.

Here's a Reddit post about it with links to other things: Russia's second Dyatlov case : UnsolvedMysteries (reddit.com)

the actual sources are in Russian: Тайна гибели группы Коровиной: Хамар-Дабан - бурятский перевал Дятлова - Интересные факты (i-fakt.ru)
Трагедия на Хамар-Дабане (baikal-info.ru)
But do not have full autopsy details... they DO seem to suggest that the autopsies are... incomplete to put it mildly.

It seems to me as though there really wasn't a thorough investigation. Every retelling seems to be the same info, over and over. There was an investigation but it didn't start until a month after the deaths occurred and by that time the corpses had begun to decompose. The investigation didn't have a lot to say. It DID conclude that the malnutrition was caused by eating the wrong kind of food for hiking in snow, but not much else.

Valentina Utochenko's account of what happened is critically important because she's the only living witness.

 

[Nosmo King]

I don't have access to the full autopsy reports. All I have is a summarized version that lists cause of death as hypothermia... and no other details other than an indication the deceased were suffering from some sort of malnutrition that caused a protein deficiency.

Here's a Reddit post about it with links to other things: Russia's second Dyatlov case : UnsolvedMysteries (reddit.com)

the actual sources are in Russian: Тайна гибели группы Коровиной: Хамар-Дабан - бурятский перевал Дятлова - Интересные факты (i-fakt.ru)
Трагедия на Хамар-Дабане (baikal-info.ru)
But do not have full autopsy details... they DO seem to suggest that the autopsies are... incomplete to put it mildly.

It seems to me as though there really wasn't a thorough investigation. Every retelling seems to be the same info, over and over. There was an investigation but it didn't start until a month after the deaths occurred and by that time the corpses had begun to decompose. The investigation didn't have a lot to say. It DID conclude that the malnutrition was caused by eating the wrong kind of food for hiking in snow, but not much else.

Valentina Utochenko's account of what happened is critically important because she's the only living witness.

As i underatand it, even a semi-talented forensic pathologist can make a good stab of an autopsy of older remains, as to the malnutrition angle, i find this odd, maybe the state of the Kasakh economy is more pertenant to this finding, malnourishment was not uncommon in forner Soviet states for years after the bloc ended, i would have thought a basic autopsy would have noted and concluded on the bleeding from the ears, head wounds, missing eyes etc, in various reports it is stated that the tour leader died for a heart attack and the first victim died of the incident causing the bleeding/foaming, yet the autopsies find cause of death in all 6 victims to be hypothermia, the eyewitness/survivor states variously that the first victim died almost immediately, which is inconsistant with hypothermia, and that the leader was alive and aqake enough the next day to guide the survior as to which direction to head for help, on that matter, why didnt the eyewitness even try to help the 'alive' leader in the morning, at least she could have placed a sleeping bag/s on/around her to try and keep her alive, there were after all 6 remaining sleeping bags available.

 

[marhawkman]

As i understand it, even a semi-talented forensic pathologist can make a good stab of an autopsy of older remains, as to the malnutrition angle, i find this odd, maybe the state of the Kasakh economy is more pertinent to this finding, malnourishment was not uncommon in former Soviet states for years after the bloc ended,

The idea was that the people in the group were eating normal every day food, but the cold combined with intense activity needed extra nutrition(that they didn't have) to compensate for their activities.

i would have thought a basic autopsy would have noted and concluded on the bleeding from the ears, head wounds, missing eyes etc, in various reports it is stated that the tour leader died for a heart attack and the first victim died of the incident causing the bleeding/foaming, yet the autopsies find cause of death in all 6 victims to be hypothermia, the eyewitness/survivor states variously that the first victim died almost immediately, which is inconsistent with hypothermia,

I have yet to see an actual copy of the autopsy. I don't know if the autopsy has that or not.

and that the leader was alive and awake enough the next day to guide the survivor as to which direction to head for help, on that matter, why didn't the eyewitness even try to help the 'alive' leader in the morning, at least she could have placed a sleeping bag/s on/around her to try and keep her alive, there were after all 6 remaining sleeping bags available.

Valentina claimed that she tried to get the others to go down the mountain, but whatever was wrong with them affected them too strongly for them to be able to do so.

 

[Nosmo King]

The idea was that the people in the group were eating normal every day food, but the cold combined with intense activity needed extra nutrition(that they didn't have) to compensate for their activities.
I have yet to see an actual copy of the autopsy. I don't know if the autopsy has that or not.
Valentina claimed that she tried to get the others to go down the mountain, but whatever was wrong with them affected them too strongly for them to be able to do so.

I understand that she tried to get the others to go down the mountain with her the previous evening but why didnt she attempt to help her guide, who she says waa alive when she set out for rescue, by trying to keep her warm/alive before she left.

 

[marhawkman]

I understand that she tried to get the others to go down the mountain with her the previous evening but why didn't she attempt to help her guide, who she says was alive when she set out for rescue, by trying to keep her warm/alive before she left.

I doubt she had the strength to carry her. and also... Valentina may have thought she saw Lyudmila die. Valya's description indicates Lyudmila was unable to get up, then she saw Lyudmila lose consciousness. It's not a major leap of logic to think a person in that situation was dead. Lyudmila apparently spent the night laying on Alexander and not in a sleeping bag at all. She was probably more than half frozen to death by dawn. Valentina had found a place out of the wind where she could sleep in the sleeping bag in relative comfort(IE lack of frostbite).

Why Lyudmila did that is uncertain... but it was pretty much a given she'd die because of it. It's possible it was grief. Apparently he was someone she treated as a foster son.

 

[Nosmo King]

I doubt she had the strength to carry her. and also... Valentina may have thought she saw Lyudmila die. Valya's description indicates Lyudmila was unable to get up, then she saw Lyudmila lose consciousness. It's not a major leap of logic to think a person in that situation was dead. Lyudmila apparently spent the night laying on Alexander and not in a sleeping bag at all. She was probably more than half frozen to death by dawn. Valentina had found a place out of the wind where she could sleep in the sleeping bag in relative comfort(IE lack of frostbite).

Why Lyudmila did that is uncertain... but it was pretty much a given she'd die because of it. It's possible it was grief. Apparently he was someone she treated as a foster son.

I understand the reasons fir the guide to stay with her 'adopted son' but even if the survivor saw hwr lose conciousness, and she was half frozen to death, all the more reason to wrap her in the remaining unused sleeping bags, rather than just leave her as she was, just seems an odd thing to do.

 

[marhawkman]

I understand the reasons fir the guide to stay with her 'adopted son' but even if the survivor saw her lose consciousness, and she was half frozen to death, all the more reason to wrap her in the remaining unused sleeping bags, rather than just leave her as she was, just seems an odd thing to do.

I dunno. But I also don't know if Valya had more than one sleeping bag on hand.