RedHanded - Episode 355 - The Khamar-Daban Incident: Mystery in the Mountains

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

Bleeding from the eyes, foaming at the mouth, and bashing themselves to death against the rocks. That was the fate of six skilled hikers in the Russian mountain range Khamar-Daban – at least according to the single survivor Valentina Utochenko. Yet if the Russian authorities are to be believed, it was just a simple case of hypothermia.With speculation over what happened still rife, this mystery has been chalked up to everything from secret Novichok testing to accidentally ingested magic mushrooms. We know what we think, but you’ll have to listen to find out.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramXVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to a very exciting episode of Red Handed. Are we more excited than usual? I am. Because Siberia, just a fun place to imagine oneself. Yeah. Not actually be mountains. Yeah.

Lakes, creepy lakes. Though the lake has very little to do with this episode, but still, it's there. And we will mention it. So I'm pumped. And it's time for you to get pumped too, listeners. Because if I mentioned a group of Russian hikers going missing and then turning up dead under highly mysterious circumstances, your mind might go straight to the Dyatlov Pass incident,

a case in which nine young Soviet hikers died in the northern Ural Mountains. Questions like, why did they cut their way out of their tents? And who attacked who if they all ended up dead? Have bothered like-minded enthusiasts for decades. And other than a brief rundown by us over and under the duvet three years ago, we haven't actually covered

the Dyatlov Pass incident on Red Handed. And we will get to it one day. But seeing as every other true crime podcast and their mum has already done it, and since the Dyatlov Pass incident took place way, way back in 1959, during a time when the Soviet authorities controlled every single shred of information that crept past the Iron Curtain, any hopes of getting real answers to that particular mystery seem almost impossible. So today we thought we'd take a look at another story. Because 30 years later, in 1993, another group of hikers again died under some very strange circumstances in the mountains of Siberia.

Only this time, there was a survivor. Though, as we'll go on to discover, that doesn't necessarily mean that the answers to this mystery are any more straightforward. Valentina Utochenko survived a horrifying ordeal and lived to give descriptions of that day that defy belief. This is the story that Valentina gave to the authorities when she was found clinging to life on the side of a remote mountain river by five Ukrainian kayakers, which sounds like a joke. It sounds like a football chant.

Ukrainian kayakers.. Ukrainian guy hackers. Five Ukrainian guy hackers. A story in which Valentina claimed to have seen her friends drop to the floor one by one like flies. And already I'm sure we're making this episode very un-Evergreen, but the reason that jumped to my mind is obviously because the Euros are currently on. Americans, look it up i was in the states for the super bowl this year and obviously i refuse to call american football football and my friend darcy who's american

she was like it's literally the Super Bowl weekend. Can you drop it? And then her husband was like, on this high holiday, our most sacred weekend, please stop calling it hand. Never. Her story, Valentina, not my story about the Super Bowl, which was boring, by the way. We haven't seen this story is one in which the hikers inexplicably started bleeding from their eyes, clutching at their throats and even uncontrollably bashing themselves to death against a rock like Bird Box. I can't believe you remember that. That film, I watched it and it fell straight out of my brain. I was just like, what the fuck was this?

But sure. I quite like Bird Box, but I love Tramonte Rhodes. No, I was like, ugh, kill me. So what happened to Valentina's friends? Was it aliens? A Russian military experiment gone wrong? Murder? An accidental poisoning, perhaps? Let's find out. So our story today starts in the city of Irkutsk,

a place that is no stranger to outdoorsy folk. And that's because Irkutsk is the closest major city to the Kamar-Daban mountain range, a 350-mile stretch of beautiful peaks that snake along the southern edge of Russia. The city sits almost dead center in Russia lengthways, but just a few hundred miles from its southern border with Mongolia. In the summer the city teems with tourists, who use it as a stop-off point, before getting on a train or coach out to one of the small villages at the base of the mountains. And on 1 August 1993, Valentina Utychenko and her friends arrived.

The group was led by Lyudmila Korovina, a 41-year-old certified master of sports in hiking. So essentially, she had a Masters in difficult walking. And the Master of Sports title is actually an honorary title awarded in Russia to outstanding athletes. So Lyudmila was very much the real deal. Yeah, you have to, like, have that title bestowed upon you by, like, judges who deem your worthiness to be a Russian master of sport.

And she was one. Like when the Vatican decides someone's going to be a saint and then they have to have a big debate of the pro and against. And the person who's against is literally called the devil's advocate. And for Mother Teresa, it was Christopher Hitchens. Well, there you go. Unexpected facts. That's red-handed. And this very Russian outdoorsy qualification of master of sports

shows us just how seriously the Russians take hiking. Now, it's not the only thing for which you can become a master of sports, but Ludmilla literally has a fucking master's in hiking. Now it's not the only thing for which you can become a master of sports but Ludmilla literally has a fucking master's in hiking. That's how seriously they take it. In Russia hiking isn't just seen as like a hobby or as Hannah puts it difficult walking. They view it as a proper sport and popularity for hiking really took off in Russia after World War II with many people across the country whose ancestors had once lived rurally at one with Mother Russia, now feeling keen to rediscover that part of their heritage

after the rampant urbanization of the Soviet era. And you can imagine, like, okay, you've left being a peasant behind, you've moved into the big city, you've got a job, you're living in one of your depressing, like, Soviet blocks. Yeah, men are on the moon. Yeah, you're like, okay, maybe I want to keep in touch with our ancestral heritage of living,

living off the land, you know? So lots of people in Russia joined hiking clubs. And I think it's still like a pretty common thing today. And they'd regularly take part in challenging multi-day hikes across the wildernesses of their vast nation. But these hikes were about more than just summiting and then making it back down. That's the tricky bit. It is. These trips were also intended to hone people's survival skills. So foraging, fire starting,ing, navigation, handling camping equipment and learning to read maps, compasses and even the stars. And in these pursuits, you didn't get instructors much more experienced, well-respected or as highly regarded than Ludmilla Korovina. She was known to push her students hard, that's true.

But people loved her because when you went out with Ludmilla, She was known to push her students hard. That's true. But people loved her because when you went out with Ludmilla, you knew you were going to be tested. But you were going to learn some serious shit as well. And that is exactly what this group of six students were hoping for. She's like Mother Russia personified. She's Mother Courage. She is. She's like, I'm personified she's mother courage she is she's like i'm gonna take you out there i'm gonna fucking scare the shit out of you yeah but you're gonna come back a better russian yeah and we'll all live in a gypsy caravan together and my deaf daughter will beat a

drum if only this story had ended like that instead of in horrible death so let's take a look at who was on this particular trip now of course we have 17 year old Valentina Utyachenko then we have 23 year old Alexander Sasha as he was known Krasin it's very common they're like uh anyone called Alexander in Russia is a Sasha Sasha see it's a very Russian name. I immediately think, oh, OK, I know who you are. Now, those are the easy names. I'm going to continue to butcher everybody else's name, but bear with me. Because then we have 24-year-old Tatyana Filipenko,

19-year-old Denis Shvakin, 16-year-old Victoria Zelisova, and 15-year-old Timur Bapanov. Now, 15 might seem a bit young to be going up into the mountains for a multi-day trek, but Timur Bapanov had plenty of experience. He was actually born and raised in the Russian mountains and was very comfortable looking after himself out in the wilderness. And Timur and Lyudmila had hiked together on many occasions. She knew he was good, he was all set. If anything, Ludmilla was more

worried about 16-year-old Victoria, because Victoria had gone on a trip with Ludmilla the previous winter, and she'd not quite risen to the challenge. In fact, she'd got tired, hungry, and quote, capricious. Ludmilla hadn't really wanted to take Victoria on this particular trip to the Camadaban Mountains, but Victoria's mother had personally called Ludmilla to beg her to reconsider. I know. It's like when your mum calls someone else's parents being like, your son's being a bit like uh i hate it it is so many things to this because firstly i feel like her mum is like yes my daughter is capricious you need to take her on this fucking hike and beat that out of her but secondly as we already know

because there's fucking little suspense going on in this episode only valentina survives imagine how that mother felt for the rest of her life. I'm Jake Warren and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came

across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me. And it him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA

embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Start your free trial today. So yes, she calls Ludmilla, convinces her and Ludmilla caves and agrees to take Victoria on this trek. Victoria was also close with the other members of the group and she promised to bring a whole new can-do attitude this time. So everyone was like, all right, Victoria, but none of your shit. Denis Shavushkin had actually been a backup choice. An original member of the group pulled out because his parents wouldn't let him go.

Those parents have the sight, I think. Since Dennis's parents were on holiday when he got his last-minute invite, he just left a note on the kitchen table telling them that he'd left to go to the mountains and that he would be back soon. But obviously, he was not. And that leaves us with 24-year-old Tatiana Filipenko, a student teacher, and Alexander Christian, or Sasha.

Sasha had studied in Moscow and had known Ludmilla since he'd joined the local hiking club when he was just 12. They were quite close, and in fact, Ludmilla actually thought of Sasha as kind of a son more than anything else. And we've even seen it reported that Sasha was in a relationship with Ludmilla's daughter Natalia, and he was planning to propose to her after this trip, which again compounds the closeness between the two of them

and the tragedy that we're about to tell you about. So now that we've met our team of ill-fated hikers, let's get going. From Irkutsk, Ludmilla took her six students to the village of Marino, about 90 miles away at the base of the mountains. Here, she did the responsible thing and double-checked the weather forecast at the local weather station. And once she got the all clear, the group set off for a five-day hike. And their planned expedition was pretty simple. They were to follow the barren Yunkatsuk River

before reaching Mount Triptrans. They would then summit the mountain, traverse its ridge, and then find their way to a large plateau, before making their way to an end point roughly halfway between the village of Merino and the city of Ikutsu. The route was essentially a large semicircle around a small section of Lake Baikal. And I am obsessed with lakes. I will watch all of the YouTube videos there are about lakes. I fucking love it. The deeper and more mysterious, the better.

And Lake Baikal takes the cake. It is absolutely bloody enormous. In fact, it is the largest freshwater lake in the entire world. It is the deepest lake in the world at a staggering one mile deep. And it is also, get this, the oldest lake in the world. A cue for you. How do they know that? I don't know.

I don't care to ask. I am just going to take it. Some lake's got to be. And maybe it's this one. Sure. Fine. And yes, that all might sound very mysterious and intrepid, but at this point, it's really important to stress

that the trip that they all went along on that day was not that outrageous. Sure, the group were young, but they had Lyudmila. She's a master of ceremonies. Sports ceremonies. Yeah. Sports days. She's a master of sports day. I literally only computed last night that MC stands for Master of Ceremonies.

It's fun to keep learning things. And I'm happy for you about that. And also, sometimes people spell it like it's a word. They do. I don't know why they do that. Just trying to catch me out. Anyway, they had Lydmilla, the MC, and they also had planned this whole trip for six months. And they were all experienced, difficult walkers in their own right.

They all belonged to a hiking club and they regularly took trips into the mountains. And they'd given themselves five days to cover about 50 miles. Naturally, they had to summit a mountain during that time. But they were all well trained and they knew what they were doing. On top of that, the sound of vast lakes and misty mountains in the Siberian wilderness might sound dangerous, but like we said, it's actually a very popular tourist route. Every summer, hundreds of tourists hike around the Kamar-Daban Mountains. In fact, that day, Ludmilla's group was just one of three tourist groups

in that area alone. One of these other groups was actually being led by Ludmilla's 19-year-old daughter, Natalia, and clearly Natalia knew what she was doing. Her mum was a certified master of sports, but it does go to show that it was seen as an extremely safe place to be hiking. Yeah, I mean, if a 19-year-old can lead a group through it, it's not the most difficult place in the world. So the group set

off on the 2nd of August, but it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, quite literally. The forecast of blue skies and easy hiking had been wrong, by quite some degree. Almost immediately, the weather turned on them. It was much colder than they had expected, with heavy rain and violent winds slowing the group down. But despite this, they actually made good progress over the first two days. And this is where it starts to get a little bit fuzzy. For this story, although it happened in the 90s, the facts out of Russia are still pretty all over the place. And some of it is also definitely down to dodgy translations and exaggerations over the decades. So it's been very difficult to like, unpick what is real, unpick what's not, unpick what's sort of just been like, overblown. It's really, really

hard to know with this case. But we are going to try our best to give you as close to the truth as we can. And whenever we don't know if something is true or not, we'll just tell you. Sound good? Good. So, they wake up on the 4th of August and the weather is much better. Relieved, the group spend the day continuing their hike and doing some foraging, which Russians fucking love. Yeah, very much better. Relieved, the group spend the day continuing their hike and doing some foraging, which Russians fucking love. Yeah, very much so. And it's a big part of this trip. You know,

we keep saying that they were really experienced. And then we keep saying like, it's not that hard a hike. So people might be like, why are they bothering? The point of it wasn't really the hike. It's like we said, it was really about learning these foraging skills from Ludmilla. It was about learning to set up camp, take it down, survival skills, essentially. And it seems, based on what would eventually be found at the campsite and in their backpacks, that the group focused on collecting quite a lot of something called golden root, which is a very popular herb used in traditional Russian medicine. And it's known to help with everything from altitude sickness to migraines to inflammation. So there they are,

trotting along, foraging, generally in pretty high spirits. But then, on the afternoon of the 4th of August, the storm comes back with a vengeance. The rain was lashing down on them, and they were not prepared for this at all. In fact, in a photo taken by 15-year-old Timmer, you can see that the group are all at one point wearing these sort of flimsy emergency ponchos, the kind that you get at like a festival or Alton Towers. And this says it all. None of the group had brought the gear to deal with these conditions. Because remember, they were expecting clear skies

and temperatures of around 13 degrees. It was August. They weren't expecting it to be boiling, but pretty bang on for hiking. In fact, it got so bad that at about 4pm, Ludmilla decided to end their day early and set up camp. This in itself isn't that weird,

it was raining, the kids were getting grouchy and they were all getting totally soaked, so it was time to call it a day. However, what is strange is that Ludmilla decided to set up camp on a very exposed part of the mountain range, despite being within easy reach of a nearby forest which would have provided much-needed shelter. As we discussed in our recent shorthand on survival, in extreme conditions, shelter is your first priority and Ludmilla, master of sports, would have known that. So it is strange that she would set up camp somewhere so open to the elements. And things just got worse and worse. Because they were in such an exposed spot, the group just couldn't get a fire started that night. Which again, is obviously incredibly important

when you're stuck out in the wilderness, especially if you're cold and soaking wet like they were. So with no fire, the gang had to settle for cooking their food on a little gas stove. Then they went to bed, divided up across two tents. But they wouldn't be getting the peaceful night's sleep that they desperately needed. They were woken up several times in the night as their tent pegs were ripped from the ground by the stormy weather. Then the gale force winds began tearing open their tent linings and letting rainwater flood in. Then it started to snow. I haven't been camping in a while. The last time I went camping though was also quite a windy night, shall we say, was during lockdown and it was

when they sort of lifted like restrictions for a bit and I hadn't seen like two of my very good friends in a while and we were like, you know know they both got kids and we were like oh you know we shouldn't go somewhere that's like an airbnb or something let's go somewhere we can still socially distance so like let's go camping oh my god what a fucking terrible decision so we got our tents together we'll go to this campsite we set up they're fine because they're like there's like three of them in each of their tents and then there's me on my fucking own in this tent and we all like helped each other set up the tent so it wasn't like mine was not properly set up

but that night oh my fucking god the wind was insane and my tent i think some parts of it may have been missing in hindsight. Or it was flexing so that it wouldn't blow away. You know, like how a tree that bends is much less likely to break. So maybe it was part of the construction of it. But the tent was like being blown about so much in the wind that it would like touch me in the night. Like it would fall enough or like move enough that it was like stroking me in the night. And I would like wake up in sheer panic that i felt like somebody was in there touching me but it was just the tent

leaning against me oh my god i did not sleep a wink after that it was so stressful and i genuinely thought i can't even get out of the tent because if i get out of the tent the tent is going to blow away like the reason the tent wasn't blowing away because I was inside it. And I was like, this is fucking horrible. It's absolutely horrible. Oh, unsubscribe. I do not like that at all. No. And I spent many a year in my younger years being a brownie and then a guide. And we used to do a lot of camping, but we had really, really shitty canvas tents. And if anybody listening was ever a brownie or a guide in the UK will know exactly what I'm talking about these like acid green ancient canvas tents that weigh a fucking

ton and they take like an hour for like 12 people to put one up and then take it down it's like a mini marquee and those like proper old school with like a sod cloth and everything so if anything is touching the side of the tent and it rains everything inside gets soaked so you could just have one girl in the tent that's pushed something up against it everyone's wet so i don't know exactly what type of tents these guys had maybe they were better than that but it is 1993 i don't know but yeah everyone's fucking soaking and now it's snowing i just don't like camping i don't i don't know. But yeah, everyone's fucking soaking and now it's snowing. I just don't like camping. I don't like it. I don't want to do it.

I don't see the point. I'm not going to try to convince you. I just think I used to enjoy it. Yeah. I used to have a great time camping. But now I'm good. So anyway, they're putting up with it. They're dealing with it.

But by 6am, everyone in the group has had more than enough. They're now absolutely freezing, exhausted because they haven't slept, and they're now surrounded by snow. They do their best to pack up camp, have breakfast, and then head off. Ludmilla decides it's best that they all just try and get off the mountain as quickly as possible. And so they begin their descent. And as they trudged their way down,

it was miserable. But at first, pretty uneventful. Until suddenly, at 10am, 17-year-old Valentina Utychenko heard the sound of screaming behind her. She spun round to see Sasha screaming at the top of his lungs. He was a few hundred metres behind them, bringing up the rear, and he'd stopped in the middle of the path. As he screamed, Valentina says blood started to pour from his eyes and ears, and he began frothing at the mouth. Suddenly he went limp and fell to the ground.

He briefly convulsed and then went stock still. Naturally, panic swept the group and soon everyone was screaming, I bloody would be. I mean, I would be as well, yes. It's fucking terrifying. It's just such a terrifying image to paint in your head that it doesn't feel real.

Ludmilla sprinted over to Sasha and started shaking him, trying to get him to wake up. But then suddenly, Ludmilla, master of sports, began screaming as well. Her students watched on as the 41-year-old in charge of their survival began bleeding from her eyes, from her ears, and then she started frothing at the mouth and clawing at her own throat.

Then she too went limp, convulsed, and then stopped moving altogether. 24-year-old Tatiana was the first to run over to her two downed companions, but as soon as she got close, she also collapsed to the ground and began grabbing at her throat, unable to breathe. Tatiana screamed wildly before slowly crawling on her hands and knees to a nearby rock. And then Tatiana beat her head against that rock until she passed out. 15-year-old Timur and 16-year-old Victoria, both absolutely horrified, quite understandably decided it was time to run the fuck away. They started sprinting down the mountain towards Valentina,

who was furthest away at the front of the group, but they never made it. After less than 100 metres, the pair both collapsed to the ground, grabbing their throats and tearing off their clothes. They too then convulsed and went still. That left 17-year-old Valentina and 19-year-old Dennis as the only two left alive. Dennis was hiding behind a rock a few meters away from Valentina and she shouted that they had to go. So they started

running through the snow down the mountain. However, within minutes, Dennis also dropped to the floor and died. Valentina though, somehow, stayed on her feet. She moved down the mountainside as quickly as she could until she got to some trees, where she set up her tent, crawled into her sleeping bag and eventually fell asleep, like I did, at three o'clock in the morning in Logan Airport. Because I had no choice. I think it's like the idea,

because this is like a big point in the story that a lot of people debate online. It's like, how could she have fallen asleep at such a moment of like panic? And I think we should hand over to our sleeping specialist, which is you. Okay, bloody vehicle narcoleptic over there the reason was like my friends were like i don't understand how you were like the only way i'm going to solve this problem is to have a nap i think you need to maybe set up the story have we explained it anywhere except under the duvet maybe not because hannah did get a missing persons report filed against her not that long ago in America. I've done my self-loathing so

you turn your judgy ears off listeners. I flew to America, I was going to a wedding and somewhere between getting off the plane and getting through customs I managed to lose my phone, all of my credit cards, and also my antidepressants, which I was going to keep to myself, but they showed up again. So I realized what has happened. I'm running through the airport. One in four people were very helpful. Three out of four absolute dickheads like there were so many people at the airport who worked there and I'd be like please can you help me and they'd be like what do you want me to do about it and I'm like you you work here you're a security guard anyway it was awful and so I get my laptop out to do find my iPhone and i can see my phone right like it's on the other side of the

door but it's like through an area you can't get back into yeah oh and i tried yeah yeah um but they didn't like that very much which is one of the major reasons i was convinced i was on a no flight list after this uh but i'm not it's fine uh get my laptop out and i put it on top of my suitcase, and it crashes to the floor. So I can no longer use Find My iPhone. Then I went to the car hire place, and I was like, I don't have my driving license or any cards, but I have already pre-booked this car. Will you give it to me?

And he was like, no, I promise I am who I say I am. Exactly. And he was like, oh, oh actually there's a phone on the ground floor and if you ring it it's like a like a like an accident hotline basically so I'm like okay I'll go and find the magic phone I pick up the magic phone and it's it's the middle of the night by this point I've been running around for hours and I'm on the phone and it's it's the middle of the night by this point I've been running around for hours and I'm on the phone and it's just like I can't even remember if it was ringing or it's just like a long like voice message but and then this guy came up to me and he was like oh no one's no one's going to answer that until 5am so I was like right I also loved that it was just like just go call the generic emergency like just be, I've lost everything.

Help me. They're like, have you been in a car accident? What's the problem? Yes. So the reason I went to sleep was like, well, I'm fucked till 5am. You're right. Because nobody's going to be here. It's a very logical decision.

So I was just like, well, this is me, I guess. Oh my God. And you were meant to drive from the airport to your friend's house. And obviously when Hannah didn't turn up at her friend's house. And also you text your friend saying, I'm off the flight, just in the queue for immigration, and then just didn't turn up like eight hours later. So obviously they called the police and reported Hannah missing. Thinking you'd like swerved off the road in an icy mess and like crashed your car into the black woods of wherever you were. Oh my god. You're just asleep at the airport.

I love it. It's one of my favourite stories. And eventually I went to, I think I slept for a few hours and then I went to, I was like right someone at the airport Hilton is going to help me. I think this is a good plan. We should have included this in our survival shorthand. Yes. Find an airport Hilton. And refuse to leave. Yeah, basically.

Also, don't put Saruti Bala down as your emergency contact. Because I am in the UK receiving multiple calls from Boston I'm like looking at my phone like what the fuck who keeps calling me from Boston whatever and I just keep cancelling the calls or ignoring them it was only after the fourth time I cancelled a call I was like oh shit Hannah's in Boston I was actually probably fine sorry and the only reason I have your number is because it's in the back of my passport I was actually probably fine. Sorry. And the only reason I have your number is because it's in the back of my passport. Oh my God, I felt so bad after.

Anyway, eventually, someone at the airport Hilton did help me. Many fucking didn't. And I was like, she was like, can you not just call the receptionist? She was like, can you not just call yourself an Uber?

And I'm like, no, bitch. I don't have a phone phone any money or a computer and your computers are not letting me log in to my email account so i can't even email anybody to tell them where i am because it kept giving me like two-factor verification codes which i obviously couldn't do because i didn't have a phone and or laptop. The system is flawed. Oh, God, it was awful. Anyway, eventually I went up to the like, there's a little, if you've ever been to the Boston Logan Airport Hilton, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. There's a little desk and it says bell captain. And I was like, if anyone's going to help me, it's the bell captain. And eventually, he was basically like, okay, so because I only have $60 60 in cash which is not enough to get to where

i needed to go and he was okay but if you go and i had the wedding invitation in my bag so i had the stroke of luck stroke of luck i was like this is where i need to get to i have no money no phone i'm fucked please help me and he was like we going to figure this out. That's all you need to hear in a moment like that. Bell captain to the rescue. He was like, okay, if you show up in a taxi, will there be someone there to pay for it? And I was like, yeah, but you know, I don't feel like I can just show up to someone's house at 5am asking for money.

Least of your concerns at this point. He was like, you don't have loads of options. That just feels a bit rude. You're right, you're right, you're right. Anyway, we Googled the address that was on the wedding invite and this is at five o'clock in the morning and a number comes up. And I'm like, I know Darcy's mum's name is Janet and I know her sister is, everyone calls her Katie.

Her real name's Kathleen. And Kathleen was registered to that number. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. This is it. So then poor Janet, who was in her 70s, by the way. Oh my God. Thank God picked up the phone. And I was like, I'm so sorry about it.

She was like, who is calling me? And I'm like, my name's Hannah. You just kill your friend's great aunt fucking hell uh and then ben came to get me that's absolutely but they were literally going to cancel the wedding they thought i was dead top tier top tier falling asleep anyway i completely believe that val Valentina could have fallen asleep. Good. It's good to have solid first-hand primary source references for these kind of things. Yes, which, you know, is the only thing I will get to keep that's positive from that story.

But, you know, any hole's a goal. She was exhausted. She hadn't slept the night before. And she was probably also in shock and on a comedown after the adrenaline rush of watching what had just happened. And I think that's a really significant point, is that, like, her brain is going to be so full of endorphins. And they all just go at the same time. You're falling asleep. Yeah.

So Valentina woke up the next day. And the reality of her situation hit her like a ton of bricks. Her friends and her mentor had just died an inexplicable death on the side of this mountain. She was now left all alone out in the wilderness with no idea where she was going and with no food or supplies. She's 17 years old. So after sitting with her situation for a while, Valentina realised that she had no other choice. Horrifyingly, she was going to have to go back to where she'd left her friends. Because the only thing she has is her tent and her sleeping bag. All of the food they have, all of the water they have, the rest of the group have got it.

So the teenager slowly crept her way back up the mountain to where her friends lay dead. When she got there, none of them had moved. Valentina searched through their belongings, gathering any food, water and maps. She then says that she closed their eyes and covered them with tarpaulin to protect their bodies from the elements, which like is very together. I don't know that I would hang around the dead bodies for that long. Also, this is a point I've seen mentioned on the internet, is obviously I'm not saying that she's not telling the truth, and we'll go on to talk about her story in more detail later, but the blood pouring from the eyes. Would you then go touch the eyes to close them?

Because she very specifically says she closed the eyes because she felt like it was the last thing she could do for her friends. Are you touching the bloody eyes? Maybe with a leaf. Maybe. She doesn't say that. But anyway, she shows a hell of a lot of fortitude, whatever is going on at this point. Now, Valentina knew that Ludmilla's daughter, Natalia, was supposed to be waiting for them with her group at the next stop-off site. But the problem was, she had absolutely no idea where that was. And also the problem is the snow has covered a lot of, like, the markers

that they might have been looking for. So she really is kind of all at sea. And the other problem was she knew that if she didn't arrive at that next stop-off point quickly enough, Natalia might just assume that her mother's group had been and gone and carry on herself. It might take days for Natalia, therefore, to realise that her mum's group had been and gone and carry on herself. It might take days for Natalia, therefore, to realise that her mum's group was missing

and it might take weeks then for anyone to find Valentina. So Valentina knew she had no choice but to try and find her own way home. So she walked and walked and walked down the mountain until eventually she found some power lines. So she walked and walked and walked down the mountain, until eventually she found some power lines. Given that power lines generally connect civilizations together, she had the bright idea of following the lines until she found someone to help her, which is smart.

And it did pay off, kind of. After walking along the lines for a few days, Valentina found a river that she recognised from her map. I'm not going to say it because it's hard. So, Valentina began following the river instead. Because she knew, like anyone who listened to our survival shorthand, that water often leads to villages, towns and therefore people. However, as she walked further and further, Valentina began to lose hope. She'd

been walking out in the wilderness for days on her own with absolutely no idea where she was or where she was going. And then came the final nail in the coffin. The riverside that she'd been walking down became so steep and so rocky that she couldn't continue any longer. And so, Valentina sat down and gave up. She hung her sleeping bag up on a tree next to the river, which apparently, top tip, is a symbol to show passers-by that you need help. And then she began to slowly take off her clothes and clean them in the river. After putting them out to dry, Valentina got in the river herself. She washed for the first time in days.

She then got out, put on a fresh pair of clothes, and waited for death. Later, Valentina would say that she knew she was going to die at this point and that she just wanted to be clean when she was found. But Valentina did not die. On the 9th of August, seven days after the group had set off for their hike, a group of Ukrainian kayakers spotted the teenage girl screaming and waving at them from across the riverbank.

As they reached the shore, Valentina sprinted across the rocks, fell into the arms of one of the kayakers and sobbed uncontrollably. They tried to calm her down, so they gave her a drink of not water or tea, but something that Ukrainian kayakers famously really, really like. Vodka, which I don't think anyone in the world was in more need of a drink than Valentina at that particular moment. So I'm not going to take that away from them. After they vodka'd her up, they took her to a police station where they tried to get some understanding of what had happened to her. And this is where the story splits. Some sources say

that Valentina was crystal clear in her recollection of exactly what had happened and where the authorities needed to look for her friends. After all, she knew the route that they were taking. But some sources say that Valentina was so exhausted, shaken up and generally on edge that she couldn't even string a cohesive sentence together for several days. I honestly, I've seen both. I don't know which is the truth. So take your pick. Regardless, it was obvious to the authorities that the rest of Valentina's group were somewhere in the mountains, either dead or in serious trouble. Bizarrely, though, no formal search effort was launched until 20 August.

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When they did eventually discover the bodies, the hikers had been on the mountainside under tarpaulings, dead for almost two weeks. Now, once more, we have to explain that the state of the bodies when they were found is totally up for debate. Some sources claim to have seen the video footage of the recovery mission itself. And in these videos, it's claimed that the bodies look ripped apart. Now, this sounds horrific. Of course it does. But remember, the bodies were left in the wilderness for two weeks. Of course, the animals up there would have had a go. Some reports also suggest that all of the victims' eyes were missing.

Again, horrific. And perhaps this is true. That is, after all, a very soft part of the human body and one that no doubt scavengers would go for first. Cats do. Yeah. Even your own cat. If you die... Especially your own cat. They're starting with your eyes. There are also mixed indications of what the dead hikers were wearing.

Some places say that they had on no shoes and most of them were apparently in various states of undress. The Valentina in her original story, which is the version we've told you so far, never mentioned anyone removing their clothes and we can't verify this one way or another so the best we can say is we don't know. Whatever the case, the bodies were wrecked and Yuri Goligos, the man who led the search effort, has since said in interviews that he'll remember the smell from inside the return helicopter for the rest of his life. The bodies were taken to a nearby city called Ulan-Udi. Oud?

Hood? Sure. Where post-mortems were carried out and a cause of death was established, the coroner officially stated that every single one of the students had died of hypothermia. That included Tatiana Filipenko, who Valentina said she'd watched beat herself to death on a rock. Only 41-year-old Ludmilla was ruled to have died in a different way. Her death was chalked up to a heart attack. The coroner also reported a protein deficiency being present in all of the hikers' bodies, which he suggested had come from malnutrition or

starvation, maybe. And the coroner says that despite the fact that the group had only been out in the wilderness for four days, and they'd eaten breakfast on the morning they died. Finally, the report also mentioned that all of the six people who'd died had bruising on their lungs, which again was chalked up to hypothermia. As you can imagine, given Valentina's story of the sudden and violent deaths of the group, these calls of deaths don't exactly satisfy many people. And this is where suspicions of a cover-up started to rage, which I understand.

Yeah, we'll come back to the hypothermia chat. I think I do have to be fair and say there are a lot of people who do believe the hypothermia theory, and we will talk about it later, but we're going to talk about everything else first. So a few weeks after the bodies were brought down a large ceremony was held for the hikers in the city of Ulan Ud and hundreds of locals came to pay their respects. After this 17 year old Valentina, the only survivor, went back home to her parents to try move past this horrific incident and get on with her life. But at some point, Valentina's grisly description of the deaths on the mountain made it into the press,

and she, of course, became the centre of wild media speculation. After graduating, Valentina moved away to try and avoid the constant questions about what happened and how she alone had survived. But even though Valentina effectively went into hiding, the questions didn't stop. And unlike the Dyatlov Pass incident, this story did not stay suppressed behind the Iron Curtain. From the moment the news of the hiker's bizarre demise spread, theories began to circulate online. People in Russia and across the world started to question what had really happened to Ludmilla and her students and most of the theories on what happened are basically split into two camps. There are

people who believe Valentina and there are people who don't. So firstly let's assume that what Valentina reported and the chain of events we have told you so far is actually what happened. What could possibly have caused six seemingly healthy people to drop like flies, bleeding from their eyes and their ears and clawing at their own throats? One theory that comes up quite a lot is the group stumbled upon something they weren't supposed to see. This idea comes from the fact that Soviets, and later the Russian military, have been known to use the Karmadaban Mountains to conduct military tests, experiments, and do training and stuff like that. So at first glance, the idea that Lyudmila accidentally led her students into some kind of military test or operation

might seem like it has legs, especially given Russia's record for dealing with state secrets. However, this theory has two major flaws. Firstly, the area of the Kamar-Daban mountains that Lyudmila and her group were walking in was absolutely, like we told you, full of tourists. It was and still is a really popular place to go hiking. So it would be a strange place to conduct some kind of secret military experiment, especially in a country the size of Russia. Secondly, if for some reason the Russian military did decide to use the Russian equivalent of the Lake District as a secret testing ground, and they did decide the group had seen too much, and that's why they killed them,

why would they let Valentina live and run around telling people what she saw? On the day it happened, she only made it a few hundred metres down the mountain before putting up a tent and falling asleep. She was hardly hiding away. She was also lost in the woods for days. Why not take her out then, just to cover your tracks? Okay, let's say that the Russian military that have done this and just executed six people because they saw something they shouldn't have, couldn't find this 17-year-old girl lost in the woods. Why not, in the decades after, take her out? Why wouldn't the Russian state just kill Valentina later, make it look like, I don't know, a survivor's guilt suicide or something? Why risk leaving someone alive? It doesn't make much sense.

I'm kind of surprised that they haven't. So let's talk about another very popular theory on the interwebs, the idea that the group died of some sort of nerve agent poisoning, like Novichok, which, it does sound like that. Let's talk about it. I don't know. I feel like when I first heard about this case, I was fully like, yeah, it's Novichok,

it's some other things we're going to talk about. I don't know. Let's have a look. We know what you're thinking. We literally just said that it wasn't some kind of military experiment. So why, on God's green earth, are we talking about a nerve agent? Well, according to some of the Russian articles that we have translated and then read in English, Novichok was being tested in the Komarban Mountains up until 1993, which is the very year that our hikers met their ends.

Did testing stop after Ludmilla and her students died? Did the Russian state realise that they well and truly fucked up and Homer Simpson into the hedge away from throwing Novichok around in the mountains up there? Or was it just a coincidence that testing halted the very same year? Pass. Because, yes, it sounds very convincing when you say that. When I read that they stopped testing Novichok in 1993

in the Kamar Divan mountains, I was like, bingo. But if we're putting on our real, like, detective hats, this piece of information is not enough to convince me that this whole incident was down to Novichok. As we've just said, it seems incredibly unlikely that the government, even the Russian government, would have been testing a nerve agent where they knew tourists would be wandering around. Now, you can say that they are doing it in a place that's quite populous because they want to see the impact on people. I'm not saying I put that past the Russian government, but it does seem a little bit wild. But again, I have to be honest, the Comadreban Mountains were a place where the government was testing Novichok. We know that to be true. But we also have to say that the Comadreban

Mountains are hundreds and hundreds of miles long. So just because they're saying they're testing it in that area, it is a massive area. And this was a particularly touristy area. So why would you choose this spot? If you look at the Kamar-Daban mountains they get progressively more and more remote the deeper into the range you go. I could believe that the Russian government were testing it somewhere a little bit more off the grid so it could absolutely be possible that at the time our hikers were on the mountain the Russian military was testing Novichok somewhere else in the mountains at the time. And Novichok is practically invisible, and more importantly for our story, water-soluble. So could it be that the Russian military were testing Novichok somewhere

much deeper in the mountains, higher up the water column. Then could the unexpected rainfall have washed that Novichok downhill? Given how incredibly potent Novichok is, even a trace amount would have an incredibly lethal effect. If you want to know more about Novichok, you can go back and listen to our episode on Salisbury and we tell you just how bad it is in there. And also how casually the Russians just fling it around. So, is it possible that Sasha stepped in, touched or even drank some water that had been contaminated with Novichok? Maybe.

The autopsy could, after all, easily have covered up their true cause of death. Nerve agents affect your airways, and as Valentina described, all of the group members were clawing wildly at their throats before they died. The bruising to the lungs found in all of their autopsy reports could also give credence to this theory. My question is, like, why would you include the bruised lungs if you're trying to cover up the fact that it was Novotroc poisoning?

It's all just a bit mixed. But the crucial point that makes me wonder about this, and I'm not saying it's the only point, but it is something we have to point out because I have seen places that incorrectly talk about this next bit. Crucially, Novichok and other nerve agents do not make you bleed from the eyes. A lot of places saying, ah classic, they're bleeding from the eyes and the ears, classic Novichok. That is not true. We've read about this on various sites and yes, Novichok can absolutely affect your vision. It can blur your sight, constrict your pupils and make your eyes water uncontrollably. But nowhere could I find a credible source that says that Novochok or any nerve agent makes your eyes or ears bleed. It also doesn't make you go crazy and smash your

head against rocks. So then some people wonder if this was perhaps a new type of chemical weapon that the Russians were testing out. And yeah, okay, maybe. But again, there's no evidence for this. And we've never seen anything like this since. So where did it go? Did they just try it out and they were like, oh, that was fucking crazy. Let's never use that again. Maybe. But as fast and as loose as the Russians tend to play it with nerve agents like Novichok and perhaps other chemical weapons, when it comes to their enemies, why would they risk using a new untested chemical on their own civilian population? That is my question.

I don't know if Russia loves civilians, you know. Some places make a good point of like, they had loads of prisoners. Why wouldn't they just test it on them? Why are they just releasing it out into the mountains where God knows what's going to happen? Again, I'm not saying the Russians are beyond this. It just seems like there's no evidence to prove this is what happened. The bit that does fit with the idea that the group died as a result of some sort of poison, if you believe Valentina, is that the hikers started to show symptoms one by one,

spreading from the epicentre of Sasha, who was the first to die. There is a pretty clear correlation in Valentina's first version of events between those who got closest to Sasha and those who died the fastest. According to Valentina, Ludmilla physically touched Sasha and died almost instantly. Tatiana also ran over to Sasha, Ludmilla physically touched Sasha and died almost instantly. Tatiana also ran over to Sasha and Ludmilla and she too was struck instantaneously. 15-year-old Timur and 16-year-old Victoria were roughly halfway between Valentina and Sasha and they took a little bit longer to be affected.

Dennis was the closest to Valentina and he was affected last. And Valentina was the furthest away from the rest of the group and therefore could argue that that's the reason she lived. And this makes total sense. Like I said, if we hang our hats, coats, boots, gloves, scarves, everything else we've got on Valentina's first story. The hypothermia doesn't make sense if the group all died one by one suddenly and violently. And there's also one more little bit of circumstantial

evidence that could point to a nerve agent being at play. As we mentioned earlier, despite Valentina being found on the 9th of August, a search effort wasn't launched until the 20th, 11 days later. Could it be that Russian authorities knew that the bodies were still contaminated and were waiting for further rainfall to wash away any remaining Novichok before they went up there? Well, it's certainly a possibility. But again, it kind of puts this idea out that loads of people knew about it, but somehow it all stayed a secret. Which is like, I don't know, can it be both?

Maybe. It's certainly a possibility. But it is also far from the only explanation. As many people have pointed out, the weather was atrocious. So maybe they just couldn't get a rescue team up there until they did, which was 11 days later. So, was it Novichok or some other chemical weapon being tested by the Russians? Maybe. But again, there's just no clear evidence one way or another. And that brings us on to our next theory.

Shrooms. Magic mushrooms. We have seen it suggested on multiple outlets that Ludmilla and her students may have accidentally consumed magic mushrooms. They were foraging, after all, the day before they died. Had one of the group, probably not Ludmilla since she was such a foraging expert, had someone accidentally picked some magic mushrooms or some other type of funky mushroom and then put them in the team's breakfast. Because mushrooms do take a while to kick in. No one freaked out straight away after they ate their breakfast.

Possibly. But this was actually a theory that at first we put the most stock in. Because it could explain some of the panic and the batshit behaviour, like bashing your head on a rock. And we've also read in various places that the effect of a magic mushroom overdose, or to be more specific, the active ingredient psilocybin, can include psychosis, convulsions, cardiac arrest, and even entering into a coma. And a lot of places on the internet will also tell you that Valentina could have been affected, but to a lesser degree perhaps.

Because an incredibly common experience for those going on a bad mushroom trip, but not overdosing, is to see other people crying blood. But, sorry to break it to you, there seem to be quite a few issues with this theory. You'd have to eat like a kilo. Yes, exactly. Firstly, before we even get to that,

I want to clear up this idea that seeing people crying blood when you're on mushrooms is an incredibly common experience. It seems to be one of those like internet, I don't know, like internet story bombs. I don't know what the phrase is. It's like in one article that says this point, incredibly common experience to see this. I can't see it backed up anywhere else. I don't know. From what I can see, seeing people crying blood when you're on mushrooms is not an incredibly common experience. It's like when our producer Alex, I can't remember if I've told you this. You know when like you would just change things on Wikipedia to see how long it would take to get it taken down? This is on Wikipedia.

This particular story bomb. Our producer Alex Briand, once upon a time in university... Oh, I know this. ...said that he went on Alexa Chung's Wikipedia page and said that he was in a relationship with her and it stayed up for years. It's like, oh, Alex Turner and Alex Briont. Not going to lie, Alex, creepy.

So, yes, i don't know if people out there regularly take mushrooms please let me know is this an incredibly common experience it doesn't really seem like the person who wrote this in the wikipedia article or in the article where this started seems to be able to back this up. And as for the overdose idea, Hannah is right. You would have to eat so many fucking mushrooms to get anywhere near the required level for a fatal overdose of psilocybin. You'd be much more likely to get sick and throw up from eating before you manage to ingest enough mushrooms to hit the six grams needed of psilocybin to get you into a fucking coma or whatever. Like, it's just not possible. It's like when people are like, oh, well, you know, almonds have got cyanide in. And I'm like, you'd have to eat a stone of almonds, like 14 pounds of almonds or something before you died of cyanide poisoning. Like, you would have to eat so many fucking mushrooms

that it just beggars belief that this could be a possibility. Now, I could believe that perhaps the group had enough dodgy mushrooms to make them freak out and pass out and then succumb to exposure. So if you think of the scene in Valentina's story, she's saying Sasha freaks out first, then one by one, everybody starts to freak out. If anybody's ever been on mushrooms, yes, possibly if one person starts to have a bad trip, maybe it sets everybody off, like in a domino effect, everybody starts to panic. And then does it make it more likely that they then sort of

panic to the point that they stop moving, they stop doing what they need to do to survive and then end up dying because it's so cold and they're wet. I could believe that. But if the team say they're making breakfast and suddenly there's a bunch of mystery mushrooms there, do you really think that Ludmilla, who's such an experienced forager, would just have let them all eat these mushrooms without A, noticing or B, stopping them? I could kind of believe it if Ludmilla was the only one who didn't eat them. And the others kind of were like, we're fucking starving. I'm fucking cold. I found these mushrooms.

Do you want to eat them? But she takes them as well. I just don't believe she would be that reckless. Not when she's got kids with her. No. And I know people who forage. They don't fuck around with mushrooms. Because you can die.

And surely, say we suspend all of our disbelief about that. And Ludmilla did eat the mushrooms. They all ate the mushrooms. Surely Valentina would remember eating mushrooms at breakfast. And she would have mentioned that in any of her statements. But she never does. Also, do magic mushrooms even grow in that part of the world? I don't know.

I think they do. Yeah, I have no idea. There's loads of them up on the Yorkshire Moors. Yeah, because I thought they grew like in meadows where cows have shat. I thought that's where you got magic mushrooms from. So do they just grow in the woods of Russia? Again, it could have been some other type of mushroom that just made them trip out. But yeah, lots of questions with this that just kind of don't really make it work for me as a theory,

even though when I first heard about this, it was the one that I felt the most sure about. So what else could have happened? Well, there are people who suspect Valentina of lying and having killed the entire group herself. But we're just going to disregard that right from the gate. She was 17 years old. The idea that she killed six of her friends and a mentor, dooming herself to wander the wilderness alone for days, and then also the idea that she spent decades getting away with it, doesn't really make that much sense. And then also the idea that she spent decades getting away with it doesn't really make that much sense.

There's also no answers and no evidence as to how or why she did it. I mean, if she, you know, I don't think she did, but if she is just completely lying and she knocked them all off herself and then conveniently leaves them for two weeks to get wrecked by animals so there would be no way of knowing. I just, why would you? Unless it's, you know, the most astonishing double bluff. She didn't know she was going to bump into Ukrainian kayakers.

No. And I've seen some theories on the internet being like, she was in love with Sasha and she was jealous that he was in a relationship with Natalia, Ludmilla's daughter, and she did it out of some sort. I was like, what the fuck? Like, look, I'm not here to say like, oh, she definitely didn't do it because I don't have the evidence one way or the other. But there is nothing other than the fact that she is the only survivor that makes me think it's even a theory that is particularly interesting to discuss. It doesn't really make much sense for me. So let's come back to the hypothermia as it was reported in the autopsy. Could this be a viable explanation? It could well explain the

damage to the victim's lungs. I've actually spent some time looking at medical reports for people who have died of confirmed hypothermia and their lungs were severely damaged so that's one tick for what we see in the report. Hypothermia could also certainly account for some of the bizarre behavior that Valentina describes as it can lead to disorientation and confusion but my problem is that I would think if you're getting hypothermia, which they well could be because their clothes are soaking wet because all of their stuff is wet and it's snowed, so it's definitely cold. If you get hypothermia or you're on the brink of it, I thought people would like get very slow and like start to want to sit down, start to want to fall asleep.

Because obviously we all know the number one thing you don't let people do if they're cold in the wilderness is go to sleep because you're just not going to wake up again. Would it make them run around screaming? I don't know. I'm not an expert and I couldn't really find a definitive answer. Also, maybe there's lots of different things that affect people in different ways, but I did find that a little bit weird. Then, of course, there's the paradoxical undressing. Everybody knows about this, a true crime classic. We've talked about it before. It's the idea when somebody gets so cold and they're on the brink of death, they actually start to feel as though they're overheating and they start to rip their clothes off. This could be why several of the

bodies were reported as having been found in states of undress. Though we can't confirm this one way or another because again it's just not clear. Some people do wonder how the group managed to get so cold to contract hypothermia but as we said it had been pissing down with rain, it snowed and none of them had the appropriate gear and the night before everything went to shit their tents and sleeping bags were drenched with freezing water too. And as we said in our survival episode, it only takes three hours of exposure for extreme weather to kill you. And everything credible that we've read on this topic

says that the minimum temperature for somebody wearing wet clothes to start becoming dangerously cold is It's just about 10 degrees Celsius. That's not even that cold. So given the freak weather, it's definitely not out of the realm of possibility that the group did indeed get hypothermia. So you see a lot of people kind of dispelling this straight away, saying it wasn't cold enough. It absolutely was cold enough.

That said, the possibility of hypothermia was not one taken particularly seriously by the team that found the bodies. Valery Tatarnikov was part of the search and rescue team and had this to say. Taiga is not a desert, not polar ice. If you are an experienced tourist, like Korovina, if you are in the forest in the summer, it is impossible to die from the cold. 20 minutes to make a fire and you're saved. I don't know. Look, Valeria, I don't want to question you, but I kind of feel like it is enough to die.

And they couldn't start a fire because everything was fucking wet. They were soaked. She's looking after all of these kids. I don't know. I would challenge what he has to say. I guess the question really is like, again, if you believe Valentina's story, how did the hypothermia so suddenly and violently kill everybody one by one within such a short space of time?

That's the part that doesn't really fit. I feel like if you're in a big group and you're all sort of suffering from being very cold and you're wandering through the wilderness, I feel like it would pick people off slowly one by one as you would drop off rather than a sudden explosion of violent hypothermia. Do you know what I mean? Also, to mention briefly the protein deficiency that they found in the autopsy, or at least that was reported in the autopsy. Valentina says throughout that they had plenty of food.

Some of the search and rescue crew disagree with this. They say when they got to the camp, there wasn't that much food there. But again, scavengers could have run off with the food like it's not beyond the realms of possibility i also do find it hard to believe that they would have been suffering from malnutrition within four days in the wilderness like they're normal healthy people like i don't know i think i've heard a lot of other people and people on the internet talking about say it's absolutely possible because obviously your body's just exhausted it's a lot colder than they expected your body is burning more calories because it's so cold to keep you warm i don't refute those things but i don't know when your body stops burning like the glucose that's in your bloodstream it's gonna start burning fat like i don't know

four days is that enough you can do a fucking three-day water fast you can do a five-day water fast and not kill you granted you're probably not hiking through the fucking wilderness in the snow but i did find that a bit hard to believe not impossible but strange yeah there was that guy who made that documentary only drank apple juice for a year yeah so i don't know he's fine part of it i have seen reported it's because they didn't take that much food with them because a part of the plan was that they were going to forage a lot of their food. But because the snow fell, foraging was more difficult and they didn't have as many calories from the foraged food as they had perhaps anticipated. But still, malnutrition and starving within four days, it's a small part of it, but it's something that I thought was worth mentioning. So that concludes the main theories

on what happened to Ludmilla and her band of students in the Camarda Band Mountains. But there's actually one person's theory that we haven't discussed yet. That of Valentina herself. Now, it's pretty hard to track down and even harder to verify this, but allegedly in July 2018, Valentina gave an interview to the Russian news site kp.ru.

During that interview, she dispelled several theories about what happened on the mountain that day. Firstly, she made it very clear that the group had eaten well and saying that they'd eaten at least four hot meals a day, snacks. So of course this goes against the suggestions of starvation that the autopsy made. Valentina also made it extremely clear that it had been an easy route, not one that should have caused so many issues. Okay, standard stuff. The really interesting part of her 2018 interview is actually in her retelling of the incident itself 30 years after the fact. Because Valentina's memory of events is a little bit different now. Again, we do have to say that it's quite hard to get to grips with any of this, given that this interview has been translated from Russian via a fairly

dodgy looking news site. We have to put our hands up and say we haven't seen this interview. But let's look at what has been widely reported to be what Valentina said in 2018. According to this interview, Ludmilla woke them up early that morning and told them that they needed to head down the mountain very quickly. Apparently, the wind was so them that they needed to head down the mountain very quickly. Apparently the wind was so strong that they couldn't walk down the path rather they had to slide down on their bums instead. And then suddenly

Sasha went down, foaming from the mouth and over time the others fell too. Valentina says she can't remember how long it lasted, but that it looked like something from a horror film. Valentina ends the interview by saying she believes the group died of successive pulmonary edemas, a condition in which fluid fills the lungs, and it can be caused by high altitude. Now this account of the

story might not sound that different, but if you look closely, it does remove a few of the factors that have left people confused over the years. Most notably, the blood coming from anybody's eyes, and also the head bashing against the rock. Now, of course, it's entirely possible that Valentina simply didn't want to relive such a gruesome part of the story all those years later. But it does feel quite a bit toned down compared to the story that she first told back in 1993. Now again, I'm not accusing Valentina of lying back then or now. She was a traumatised girl who had just been through a nightmare, not just watching her friends die, but also then having to survive on her own for days, eventually losing hope and resigning herself to death. Also, we know from the world of true crime

just how unreliable eyewitness testimony is, let alone where Matt Witness is in shock. So perhaps this is what happened on the side of the mountain in 1993. Given that Valentina was frightened, perhaps she connected some extra dots when she was retelling her story. And that does make sense. Maybe Sasha did die of a pulmonary edema. It would explain the blood pouring out of his eyes and his ears.

And Ludmilla was maybe so shocked to see this man, who she considered to be her son, and who was possibly going to be her son-in-law, die like that, that she had a heart attack. Like the post-mortem said she did. And then maybe the others panicked, and maybe Tatiana just fell and hit her head on a rock. They were trekking over snow and not wearing the correct shoes. And then maybe the others just slowly died of exposure and hypothermia, while Valentina fled, set up her tent, and survived because she was in her sleeping bag. Or maybe that's just what the Russians want us to think. So, yeah.

What do you think? I have thoughts, feelings, and concerns. I think, like, what is crucial in her original story is that she doesn't actually confirm that they're dead they just stop moving and then she leaves right so i can buy that maybe they weren't dead and then because the weather's so awful and they're on their own there and then they just die of exposure later on down the line i I don't find that impossible to believe. But I think it's very difficult to discount that the only story we have

is from a 17-year-old girl who was traumatized. So that's why, you know, if you look at the autopsy, which again, granted, it's not something we can just take at face value because it's a Russian state autopsy. So yes, of course, I understand people that are being like, you know, suspicious of what's said in there and not taking it at face value. But if we look at what happened, I don't believe that Valentina had anything to do with it. The idea that they saw something they shouldn't have and the Russian state killed them. Again, it's like, why would they leave Valentina alive alive so that kind of rules that one out for me then the idea of

the mushrooms like we said they'd have to eat so much for that to actually be the reason for their death I could buy that that's what led them to sort of slow down to the point that they succumb to the weather but again I find it hard to believe that Ludmilla would have let them eat something like that. So I kind of do buy the idea that maybe Sasha was getting sick already, which explains why they camped in such an unideal spot the night before, why they didn't keep going the extra bit in order to get into the tree line. Why did they camp in such an exposed spot? Maybe it's because Sasha couldn't keep going. And Ludmilla loved him like her son. She wasn't going to leave him behind. I mean, she wouldn't have done that to any of them but you know she might have been like look as a group we can't go any further we're making camp that

would explain that particular mystery as well the next day they wake up Sasha's still not okay maybe he does have a pulmonary edema that they just don't realize yet he starts bleeding freak out she has a heart attack the whole group descends into fucking chaos and yeah maybe tatiana like you said just falls hits her head valentina sees that and processes it in her head like manic behavior because they were all panicking and one by one they fall and they don't have the energy to get back up and they succumb because they're wet, they're cold. It is extremely cold. And Valentina, like we said,

she's the one that runs off and sets up camp, which is probably what saved her. It's not quite as fun as maybe people want this story to be, but I think that is probably what happened. So yeah, that's the story, guys, of the Camar de Ban case and the death of the six hikers back in 1993. There you go. I had never heard of that before.

Well, there you go. Thank you. You are all very welcome. So, you know, go hiking, but be safe. Don't take a canvas tent. Don't take mushrooms with you unless you're really fucking sure you're not going to eat like a million stone of them and go mental um and don't worry if you have mushrooms you're probably not going to see blood pouring out of everybody's eyes and whatever you do don't wear a black coat don't do it always wear a bright coat so that your body can at least be spotted from wherever the rescuers are looking for you

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