Astonishing Legends

Background: On January 27, 1959, a group of outdoor enthusiasts, known as 'tourists' in Russia, consisting of seven men and two women, mostly students and graduates of the Ural Polytechnical Institute (which is now the Ural Federal University) left the village of Vizhay in the northern Ural Mountains on a two-week ski trek, through a region called Sverdlovsk Oblast, the "gateway to Siberia" in Russia.  In Russia a 'tourist' is a serious outdoorsman. The goal was to reach Otorten Mountain at the end of their journey.  Their planned route would rank as a "Category III," the most difficult classification for a hiking expedition in winter, which if successful, would qualify them as "Masters of Sport."  On February 1st as they started to move through a mountain pass on their last leg of the trip, bad weather and decreasing visibility forced them off course, and the group decided to make camp on the eastern slope of a small mountain called Kholat Syakhl by the indigenous Mansi peoples, which translates to "Dead