In news that is incredibly on-brand for the absolute shit show of a year we’ve endured thus far, the famous Dyatlov Pass incident may have just been solved with a little help from, you guessed it (you probably didn’t)… the 2013 Disney film Frozen.
You truly could not write this.
For those unfamiliar with the spooky story of the Dyatlov Pass incident, sit down and let me fill you in real quick:
On February 1-2 1959 (exactly 62 years prior to the publishing of this article), a group of Russian mountaineers mysteriously perished in the Ural Mountains in Western Russia under extremely mysterious circumstances. Despite being experienced mountaineers who were fully capable of handling the area’s harsh conditions, the entire group perished after fleeing their tent in the middle of the night.
For reasons previously unknown, the hikers – barely dressed – cut their way out of the tent in the middle of the night and fleed across the snowy mountain, only for their bodies to be discovered weeks later.
Six were found to have perished from hypothermia – which is totally understandable. However, the other three died of extreme physical trauma; one hiker was found missing their eyes, while another was missing their tongue.
Naturally, the mysterious circumstances spawned countless conspiracy theories ranging from natural force to a full-blown Yeti attack. Cool and normal stuff, if you ask me.
But despite a plethora of theories, nobody actually had any idea what happened to the hikers on that fateful January night, until now.
Okay, so it’s worth noting that Frozen sisters Elsa and Anna didn’t just like… discover the dead tongue-less bodies of the Dyatlov Pass victims and work it out with a little hint of that Disney magic.
A recent article in the Communications Earth and Environment journal proposed the hypothesis that a small – but mighty – avalanche could’ve been the cause of the deaths.
At this point, you’re probably wondering why the heck nobody ever thought of an avalanche in the first place, and trust me – they did. But there was no actual evidence to back the theory.
Not only was there no evidence of a major avalanche, but there was precisely zero evidence of any avalanche whatsoever, let alone one big enough to cause the deaths of nine hikers, so the theory was promptly thrown out.
Until recently.
So this is where Disney comes into it, or at least their animation technology.
The team at the Snow Avalanche Simulation Laboratory at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Switzerland might’ve just solved the mystery by seemingly being able to prove how a small – yet deadly – avalanche could’ve occurred without leaving a trace.
In addition to using the regular stuff like simulations and analytical models and all the usual stuff you’d expect people at a simulation laboratory to use, they harnessed the power of Disney’s animation studios to work it out.
According to National Geographic, a small avalanche – in the perfect conditions – could potentially have compacted into a solid slab of ice, which would be covered by oncoming snowfall and perfectly hidden to the naked eye, while still posing a big enough threat to straight-up cut your way out of your tent and run for your life.
However, this doesn’t actually begin to explain the actual mystery of it all – the grievous physical trauma found on the bodies.
So this is where the team had to turn to, you guessed it, Disney’s Frozen for answers.
They basically called up their good mates at Disney and asked to borrow the animation models they used for the snow and avalanche scenes in the film to help analyse how such an avalanche would impact the bodies of the victims.
The whole theory really depends on how the hikers had their tent arranged (a question in which we’ll never have a definitive answer). But basically, if the avalanche hit the tent, it could’ve crushed the hikers between their solid skiing equipment, which would explain the scratches, bruising and physical trauma to the bodies.
From there, the team basically assumed that the least-injured hikers (aka the ones found to have perished from hypothermia) tried to help out their injured friends and travel to find help. However, they all eventually succumbed to the elements, which would explain why they were all scattered across the mountain with some more injured than others.
This *still* doesn’t explain the biggest mystery of all: the eyes and tongues.
Image: dyatlovpass.com
The scientists, however, were quick to put this down to animals feeding on the corpses in the following days and weeks after their untimely deaths.
The study definitely gives us a solid theory as to what happened, but as it currently stands, the full mystery remains unsolved.
Personally, I like to think that the Abominable Snowman from Monsters Inc just decided to attack them, but we’ll likely never know the real truth.
