Speaker 1: Hey guys, Steve here, you are listening to one of
Speaker 1: our original twenty six episodes. If you listen to any
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Speaker 1: to listen to. Yeah, bye bye, Thinking sideways. I don't
Speaker 1: you never know stories of things we simply don't know
Speaker 1: the answer too. Hello there, this is in case you're
Speaker 1: wondering thinking sideways. We are the people who take on
Speaker 1: unsolved mysteries and we solved them world and you know,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you know, I don't know. To solve them,
Speaker 1: we have to sort of make stuff. But now actually
Speaker 1: we've tried to solve them. But we usually don't succeed anyway.
Speaker 1: My name is Joe, and in this podcast we're going
Speaker 1: to tackle our toughest mystery ever, which was why did
Speaker 1: anybody ever buy a pet rock? Okay, okay, just kidding,
Speaker 1: and if you're one of those people, please don't be kidding.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're actually going to talk about is
Speaker 1: a little incident that one of our listeners recommended to us, uh,
Speaker 1: the Outloft Pass incident, which happened in Russia and the
Speaker 1: Ural Mountains back in It's one of those big mysterious
Speaker 1: things that's rocketed around the Internet, and of course it
Speaker 1: was rocketing around before the Internet existed, so there was
Speaker 1: a lot of speculation even way back in the day
Speaker 1: as to exactly what did in these nine intrepid ski
Speaker 1: hikers in Russia. A little background. These guys were their
Speaker 1: Their leader was Igor I'm not gonna try to pronounce
Speaker 1: his middle name, Igor the out Loft. He was twenty
Speaker 1: three years old. He was the organizer and leader of
Speaker 1: the group. Uh. And there were nine other people, one
Speaker 1: of whom dropped out due to illness, seven men and
Speaker 1: two women, and they headed off into the northern Urals
Speaker 1: to a place called the Mountain of the Dead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like one of those things, Hey, what do you
Speaker 1: say you want to go for a little hike to
Speaker 1: the Mountain of the Dead, and you're like, yeah, what
Speaker 1: could possibly go wrong? Yeah, Now it's apparently it's it's
Speaker 1: actually Dead Mountain and the local dialect of the local
Speaker 1: natives there, and it doesn't really mean like you're gonna
Speaker 1: eye if you're gonna go there. It's not quite like
Speaker 1: Skull Island. Apparently, it means that it's kind of a
Speaker 1: place where nothing's really going on from their point of view.
Speaker 1: If you know, if you can't go up there and
Speaker 1: kill animals for food and pelts, then it's really kind
Speaker 1: of useless. So they called a dead Mountain because this
Speaker 1: wasn't so good. I know, I know, I love Mountain
Speaker 1: of the Dead and all that stuff. That was that
Speaker 1: was very cool, Yeah, I know, it's very cool. The
Speaker 1: expedition was actually to reach a mountain somewhat beyond the
Speaker 1: Mountain of the Dead, and this was just a little waist,
Speaker 1: a little just a little stop over for the night
Speaker 1: on their journey, and they were practicing for a more
Speaker 1: arctic expedition. They were actually getting a little practice for
Speaker 1: a serious, serious, like really kick ass expedition. Uh. And
Speaker 1: it was really tells you something about these guys. They
Speaker 1: must have been really hardy people to go off and
Speaker 1: just say it's gonna be a little practice run and
Speaker 1: then head up a mountain side of deep deep snow
Speaker 1: and camp overnight and all this stuff and we were
Speaker 1: gonna be gone for days in the winter time. That
Speaker 1: they did this too. Yeah, yeah, it was that was
Speaker 1: they actually was they let in. They actually set out
Speaker 1: in late January, and they were due to arrive back
Speaker 1: in about February eleven, and of course they were overdue
Speaker 1: getting back, but people were too alarmed because expeditions like
Speaker 1: this can be laid obviously, and so but after a
Speaker 1: while people started sending out the alarm because these guys
Speaker 1: had not returned, and so eventually a search party was
Speaker 1: organized and sent up there. Eventually involved aircraft, helicopters, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And they eventually found one of their tents. The tent
Speaker 1: was in the snow. It had been It was on
Speaker 1: the hillside, about a mile above the tree line, on
Speaker 1: the hillside of this mountain, the Mountain of the Dead.
Speaker 1: If I didn't mention that before, Yeah, And interestingly, the
Speaker 1: tents had been slashed. I think they found one tent
Speaker 1: and then they found, to believe another, And that's one
Speaker 1: of the frustrating things about about investigating this thing, is like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how many tents there were. Some refer
Speaker 1: to just one tent, as if they all slept in
Speaker 1: one giant tent, but looking at the pictures, it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like any of the tents were big enough for
Speaker 1: all the entire groups. So I believe there were two
Speaker 1: or three or four tents, but I'm not really sure.
Speaker 1: It's frustrating. I mean, we'll have to travel to Russia
Speaker 1: really find it. Well, it is in Soviet Russia during
Speaker 1: the Cold War era, so a lot of suppressing details
Speaker 1: that in reports that have eventually surfaced still hit and
Speaker 1: miss things missing. So yeah, I wondered that too when
Speaker 1: I saw the pictures. So how long did it take
Speaker 1: before the rescuers finally found them? It was about three weeks,
Speaker 1: and they found the tent. They went down. They found
Speaker 1: footprints radiating away from the tents heading down the hill.
Speaker 1: Footprints like bootprints, but or like footprints footprints. You know,
Speaker 1: it's again after several weeks of exposure to whether it's
Speaker 1: it's probably a little hard to tell, but there was
Speaker 1: there has been a claim that made that appeared that
Speaker 1: from the footprints, as some of the people were not
Speaker 1: wearing shoes. Yeah, and again it's like you know, as always,
Speaker 1: and this is always a case. Can't get around the
Speaker 1: fact that people over the years have in started their
Speaker 1: own little weird things into these stories that may not
Speaker 1: necessarily be true. On the face of it appears that
Speaker 1: they went down the hill following the footprints. The footprints
Speaker 1: eventually disappeared, but they continued on in that general direction
Speaker 1: to the tree line. At the tree line they find
Speaker 1: a big pine tree that there was a fire under.
Speaker 1: The fire was obviously burned out at this but somebody
Speaker 1: had built a fire there. There was that the branches
Speaker 1: of the tree had been torn off to about fifteen
Speaker 1: feet up. Some of the accounts of this had talk
Speaker 1: about the sheer panic that these people must have been
Speaker 1: in because they were running from some incredible horror that's
Speaker 1: scared about of their tent made him run down the
Speaker 1: hillside in their underwear without boots on, and then they
Speaker 1: tried to scramble up this tree and tore off branches
Speaker 1: up to fifteen ft high, okay, so that they found
Speaker 1: a few of the bodies there. They were nine overall.
Speaker 1: Three of the bodies they found further up the hillside
Speaker 1: between the campfire and the tents, and they appeared to
Speaker 1: be headed, had to have been headed back up towards
Speaker 1: the tents. The four remaining bodies were found in a
Speaker 1: nearby ravine. Those bodies had suffered quite a bit of trauma.
Speaker 1: According to Soviet investigators, the cause of death was quote
Speaker 1: a compelling natural force unquote. In other words, as their
Speaker 1: chests to make a couple of chests have been crushed,
Speaker 1: skulls cracked, etcetera. Yeah, and so that has caused intense
Speaker 1: intense speculation about things like you know, the abominable snowman
Speaker 1: uh Soviet military tests. One theory is that the local natives,
Speaker 1: I forget the name of the local natives had were
Speaker 1: offended that they there, they trespassed into their territory, and
Speaker 1: so they had like brutally killed them. One of the
Speaker 1: one of the bodies, one of the women that was
Speaker 1: found in the ravine, was missing her tongue, so speculated
Speaker 1: that the same tribesmen had cut her tongue out before
Speaker 1: pushing her into the ravine. What how? What? What was
Speaker 1: the proximity of the ravine to the camp, to the
Speaker 1: camp and to the campfire. It's like, so if the
Speaker 1: campus up the hillside, then you go straight down the hillside,
Speaker 1: you find the campfire. If you go left from there,
Speaker 1: you go it's like several feet and there's a ravine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not not far away. The people found in the ravine
Speaker 1: were wearing pieces of clothing that had obviously been taken
Speaker 1: off the other the bodies of their compatriots. It appeared
Speaker 1: that they died the last of all of them because
Speaker 1: they were out in the snow and the freezing cold,
Speaker 1: because it was sub zero. It was sub zero. It
Speaker 1: was sub zero, and these people, after their friends had
Speaker 1: died of hypothermia, then they took their clothes obviously because
Speaker 1: they needed to survive, and then stumbled off and god
Speaker 1: knows exactly what they intended to do. Uh So, anyway,
Speaker 1: other other theories to see, there is a condition that
Speaker 1: when you when you go into deep hypothermia, you stopped
Speaker 1: thinking correctly need things like taking your clothes up because
Speaker 1: you think you're too hot and things like that. So
Speaker 1: that's another possibility. These people were just disoriented because of that?
Speaker 1: Was there any other weirdness about the bodies? Some supposedly
Speaker 1: they scanned the clothes for radioactivity and three articles of
Speaker 1: clothing out of all the articles of clothing and there
Speaker 1: were radioactive. Now I'm not really sure. There's been a
Speaker 1: little bit debunking about that whole thing, and apparently some
Speaker 1: people say that the whole radioactivity thing was basically just
Speaker 1: inserted into the story later and it would never actually happen.
Speaker 1: I'm not really I mean to me that the whole
Speaker 1: thing about it was is if the clothes were if
Speaker 1: three articles of clothing were radioactive, if they had been
Speaker 1: exposed to radioactivity, then shouldn't been Yeah, shouldn't all their
Speaker 1: tooth for example, the feelings in their teeth should be
Speaker 1: highly radioactive. And so so I'm not really sure, And
Speaker 1: so that leads me to be that leads me to
Speaker 1: be a little skeptical about the radioactivity thing. Sure, and
Speaker 1: you know, correct me if I'm wrong. But I remember
Speaker 1: reading about this and they said that some of the
Speaker 1: bodies had a weird orange que to them and their
Speaker 1: hung Yeah, and you know, I don't know how much
Speaker 1: of that is just if you lay on your son
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not sure what the effects of exposure
Speaker 1: in and of itself are, but it has been said
Speaker 1: that they might have been deeply tanned because they were
Speaker 1: laying in the sun for weeks and they lit out
Speaker 1: their shirts on. So so that's that's quite possibly what
Speaker 1: it is. Discolored, not rotting because it's too cold, but discolored. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure what the effects of prospite on
Speaker 1: your skin would be and if that would that would
Speaker 1: discolor your skin also, well they usually goes back, well
Speaker 1: if if it lasts long ago, but if you die,
Speaker 1: if you die, yeah, if you die before then, it
Speaker 1: might just discolor you a little bit. So I you know,
Speaker 1: So I'm not really sure. But apparently as some of
Speaker 1: the family members did did say that they were sort
Speaker 1: of orange colored. They might have just eaten all the
Speaker 1: carrots in the previous weeks. I don't know. So the
Speaker 1: what are the theories? Can you really lay them out for? Well,
Speaker 1: the most compelling theory is um they went to bed.
Speaker 1: Nobody knows exactly when they when they went to sleep,
Speaker 1: but it appears that this incident that set them down
Speaker 1: the hillside happened sometime between seven and eleven o'clock and
Speaker 1: that evening. I'm not sure how anybody managed to extrapolate that,
Speaker 1: but okay, we'll take them with their word for that.
Speaker 1: I remember reading that what they had done is they
Speaker 1: examined the contents of their stomachs, and they figure, you're
Speaker 1: hiking in the day and you're gonna make camp before
Speaker 1: the sun goes down the point you're gonna eat and
Speaker 1: then go to bed. So if there's less than eight
Speaker 1: hours of digestion, then they can kind of give it
Speaker 1: a time frame. That's how I'm guessing they know what
Speaker 1: the time frame is because a lot of things that
Speaker 1: I saw a reference that they looked at their stomach content.
Speaker 1: So anyway, so in the night, they were presumably asleep
Speaker 1: in their tents or tent. What happened They heard a noise,
Speaker 1: somebody turns on a light and in the doorway to
Speaker 1: their tent there's standing a cara. This is actually, this
Speaker 1: is actually. Uh So anyway, they are of course terrified
Speaker 1: that now there's it's not this is a theory that's
Speaker 1: out there. You're not just making this up. Well, we'll
Speaker 1: get to that. It's okay, okay, So it's unknown whether
Speaker 1: the cheap a Cabra admitted a hideous cackling laugh or not.
Speaker 1: But what is heard. But what is what is what
Speaker 1: is intensely speculated, is at that moment the cheoper Cabra,
Speaker 1: without even asking if it was okay, pulled out a
Speaker 1: cigar and lit it. Now we all know about the
Speaker 1: dangerous effects, so second hand smoke, Steve, so I can
Speaker 1: tell you if he's making this up or yeah, you
Speaker 1: know I'm making it up. Okay, Okay, So let's get
Speaker 1: back to Mr Chipikabra side. Okay, there has been talking
Speaker 1: about speculation, of course, about UFOs um and I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not really sure with the background. I mean, what
Speaker 1: what have you found that people have said supports the
Speaker 1: UFO theory. I haven't found anything to support the UFO theory.
Speaker 1: I mean the radiation, but I don't. I don't, so
Speaker 1: I don't really think that that's supported by the evidence.
Speaker 1: And you know, I've I've seen stuff that said that
Speaker 1: people had reported for months that they had seen weird
Speaker 1: orange glowing lights and that there was another group that
Speaker 1: was out at that same time, fifty miles away that
Speaker 1: had seen an orange light flying around in the direction
Speaker 1: of the mountain that they were on on that very
Speaker 1: same night. Yeah and so and so, you know, speculation
Speaker 1: could be that a UFO shoes and shows up, Lily
Speaker 1: Green Man pop up in their in their campsite, and
Speaker 1: they flee and terror. But the problem I have with
Speaker 1: this theory is that it's five degrees below zero, and
Speaker 1: so if I've got to say, if I have to
Speaker 1: choose between the possibility that the Little Green Man is
Speaker 1: going to eat me, which is just a possibility, and
Speaker 1: the certainty that if I run off into the into
Speaker 1: the arctic cold with my no clothes on, that I'm
Speaker 1: going to die. I'm gonna I'm gonna hang out and
Speaker 1: see what the Little Green Man's attentions are. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's not the it's not you know, to me,
Speaker 1: it's not credible. Okay, So I want to run down
Speaker 1: this path. There's some research that I came across that
Speaker 1: I'd like to to flesh out on this supposed UFO
Speaker 1: sighting in the area. Yeah. Uh, And I don't have
Speaker 1: the location markers to reference on this article that I found,
Speaker 1: but I think it was at the time they were
Speaker 1: testing there, it was a nuclear missile, the R forty
Speaker 1: seven is what I want to say, hauled. And they
Speaker 1: were launching it from a site that if you were
Speaker 1: to look at it on a map for where this
Speaker 1: other camp fifty miles away was where this group of
Speaker 1: skiers was at, and then the launch point, the launch
Speaker 1: point sent it directly across all of them to what
Speaker 1: was known as a testing ground for nuclear missiles. So
Speaker 1: it's very valid that this other group said we saw
Speaker 1: the strange George Lightnings guy, You're right. It was a rocket.
Speaker 1: It was the biggest rocket you had ever seen, and
Speaker 1: they had no idea because it didn't have any running
Speaker 1: like to on. They see this orange glow. It's just
Speaker 1: rocket obviously in very very low orbit because it's going
Speaker 1: let's say a couple hundred miles only to then explode,
Speaker 1: and they're going to test it. So that's why this
Speaker 1: other group of campers thought they saw the strange glow
Speaker 1: it was a nuclear test. Yeah, not even a nuclear test,
Speaker 1: just a rocket test. I mean, I'm sure they didn't
Speaker 1: have a warhead on that thing. That Yeah, it was testing.
Speaker 1: They were shooting it, yeah, yeah, so yeah, it could
Speaker 1: easily have been that. I Mean, the thing about you
Speaker 1: about UFOs is there's all kinds of stuff flying around
Speaker 1: up there. I mean there's airplanes and helicopters and rockets
Speaker 1: and meteors and all kinds of stuff. Other theories, let
Speaker 1: me see, we did I talk about the cheoper cabra. Okay,
Speaker 1: I did? Okay, right, Yeah, it's always a damn cheoper cabra.
Speaker 1: The other, well, you know, the other theories is that
Speaker 1: they were confronted with some hideous something god knows what.
Speaker 1: Um there was that talk about. You know, why would
Speaker 1: they why would they leave? Why would they flee their
Speaker 1: tense You know, they've left without footwear, without you know,
Speaker 1: their parks, without all conso, so why would they do
Speaker 1: that unless they were they cut their way out of it.
Speaker 1: They did. There was evidence that they cut their way
Speaker 1: up from the inside and then and then fled, and
Speaker 1: then fled and tear down the hillside from whatever hideous
Speaker 1: unknown thing it was, and then tore to a bunch
Speaker 1: of branches off this tree trying to climb the tree
Speaker 1: to get away from whatever this thing was. But of
Speaker 1: course there was a campfire right there they tried to build.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I think that it's pretty obvious the
Speaker 1: branches were torn off because they were desperately trying to
Speaker 1: get as much firewood as they possibly could to get
Speaker 1: a fire going. Well and crappy if I'm wrong, But
Speaker 1: the two that were found at the tree that the
Speaker 1: first ones to die, weren't their hands completely mangled from
Speaker 1: cold and then trying to break wood off, and they
Speaker 1: just they cut the holy hack out of themselves and
Speaker 1: tore their hands to pieces. Yeah, and one and one,
Speaker 1: yeah and one version of this the story is telling
Speaker 1: they tore their hands to pieces because they were that
Speaker 1: scared of whatever it was that was after them. But
Speaker 1: but really, and more likely, the tore they has to
Speaker 1: pieces because they were that desperate to get some firewood,
Speaker 1: right damn now, because really what it was and so
Speaker 1: and and and of course the weakness of that theory
Speaker 1: too is that it just speculates as some hideous unknown Well,
Speaker 1: and they were still with the sprints. Yeah, it's hideous creature,
Speaker 1: which lends creators to the troupe of copper theory. Well,
Speaker 1: the cidious creature left no footprints, isn't There Also, and
Speaker 1: I think that you briefly mentioned this, which is also
Speaker 1: falls apart in the face of no footprints, is the
Speaker 1: fact that the local natives that were blamed for In
Speaker 1: one version of it, we're blamed for killing them. Uh
Speaker 1: there a there was no other people footprints or at
Speaker 1: those people that same tribe helped in the search for them.
Speaker 1: And again in the tellings that are fantastical about well
Speaker 1: it's the you know, the yetie or whatever it is, Well,
Speaker 1: that creature punched them and broke their bones, that it
Speaker 1: was people doing it. It was too much force for
Speaker 1: a human to have exerted on another human were leaving
Speaker 1: like repeated beating marks or something. So but again this
Speaker 1: is all debacked by the fact that there simply are
Speaker 1: no footprints, no physical others whatsoever that any of this happened.
Speaker 1: And frankly, motive is kind of missing. Well what there is?
Speaker 1: Have you come across about why her tongue was gone?
Speaker 1: Small animals or medium sized animals? Yeah, my theory is
Speaker 1: that you know, they died. You know, the big mystery
Speaker 1: for me is this, like, first, why did they flee
Speaker 1: their tents? Because I think the timeline the I can
Speaker 1: totally understand the motives. Right, you're building the fire, You're
Speaker 1: cold as hell because you've got hypothermia. You know, some
Speaker 1: of you were in certain states of more undressed than others,
Speaker 1: you know, so you're like, all right, the threat is gone.
Speaker 1: We're going to go back up there, you know, freeze
Speaker 1: to death on your way up or whatever happened to them,
Speaker 1: you know, the other ones freeze down here. Everybody's just
Speaker 1: trying to survive, and then an avalanche comes along kills
Speaker 1: these last four people in this ravine. They fall into
Speaker 1: ravene or you know whatever. I expect an avalanche and
Speaker 1: small you know, she dies with her mouth open. Small
Speaker 1: animal comes along and it's like, well, that's an easy
Speaker 1: thing to eat, exactly, gnaws it out of her mouth
Speaker 1: first frozen. I'm not sure about the avalanche. Like, for example,
Speaker 1: I came across the site that supposedly deep at all
Speaker 1: all of this stuff and said the shredding and a
Speaker 1: tent for example, was consistent with just an avalanche. But
Speaker 1: the fact of the matter is is they found the tents,
Speaker 1: and so if they've been spared by an avalanche, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think that they would have been found every Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that was kind of my my thought at the
Speaker 1: beginning was that they heard an avalanche coming, so they
Speaker 1: you know, bailed. But it was my original understanding of
Speaker 1: this story. I had never heard the part about the
Speaker 1: the fire down below that had survived whatever they originally fleet.
Speaker 1: It was my understanding that in the flight, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody died in some no actually some of them for
Speaker 1: a while for a while. Yeah, So it was my
Speaker 1: understanding that I was like I, I always thought, well,
Speaker 1: this is obviously just an avalanche. You know, it could
Speaker 1: have torn the tents up a little bit, it could
Speaker 1: have been smaller up there and gained well, wanna, I
Speaker 1: actually have got to say that personally, the avalanche makes
Speaker 1: the most sense to me, and me flesh this out. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: so have we've all lived in areas where it's snowed
Speaker 1: a lot, so you've seen ice shifted and big snow
Speaker 1: chunks move, and it's sometimes it's not a giant, giant, traumatic,
Speaker 1: dramatic thing, and precisely it could be. Right. So here's
Speaker 1: here's what I I've seen the photos where because they
Speaker 1: recovered the cameras that they were taking pictures of themselves with,
Speaker 1: and somebody took a photo of them making camp, they
Speaker 1: didn't set their tents on top of the snow. They
Speaker 1: dug into the snow. They dug in what looks like
Speaker 1: a good two to three feet. What do yeah, what
Speaker 1: you do? Okay, there hadn't been any heavy snowfall in
Speaker 1: that area for a couple of weeks, so now it's
Speaker 1: evidently been I'm guessing relatively for the area temper weather,
Speaker 1: and now we get more snow. What happened to me
Speaker 1: would be that it wasn't a massive avalanche like you
Speaker 1: see on television, but more of this huge let's just say,
Speaker 1: five chunk of ice that's buried down suddenly shifts and
Speaker 1: drops a couple of feet and shakes everything up and
Speaker 1: scares everybody, and snow piles up and their tent kind
Speaker 1: of gets buried, so they have to cut their way out.
Speaker 1: That yeah, okay, it's a massive avalanche, but it's enough
Speaker 1: movement to get everybody in a panic where I want
Speaker 1: to take time to put all my clothes on. Oh gosh,
Speaker 1: the big ones coming and we gotta get I guess
Speaker 1: I just think that like in that circumstance, if they're
Speaker 1: at all seasoned mountaineers of any kind, especially in Russia,
Speaker 1: right where as cold as hell, you grab something parker,
Speaker 1: you grab your boot, you grab your sleeping bag. But
Speaker 1: in the panic of the moment. But you know that
Speaker 1: is the thing too, is I was I was speculating.
Speaker 1: It was exactly what you were talking about. Their tent
Speaker 1: got a little bit buried to where they had to
Speaker 1: hack their way out of it, and they were all scared.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, these people should be rational
Speaker 1: enough to know that, uh, we're not moving anymore. There
Speaker 1: might be a couple extra seconds, Yeah, there might be.
Speaker 1: There might be an avalanche right about to smack me.
Speaker 1: But if I run away now with no clothes and
Speaker 1: no shoes, I'm going to die for sure, you know.
Speaker 1: And so you're you're putting rational thought into a very
Speaker 1: irrational senses. So I wonder, actually, I have this question
Speaker 1: every time I've ever gone camping. You take a bottle
Speaker 1: of camping whiskey with you, right, do you take? Or
Speaker 1: if you're in Russia, maybe you vodka, you know whatever.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if they found if they were
Speaker 1: inebriate at all, you know, they had made camp for
Speaker 1: the night, maybe they were, you know, having a drink
Speaker 1: or two. I think that if I were a little
Speaker 1: drunk woke up to what I thought was an avalanche,
Speaker 1: you know, I would probably I would be more prone
Speaker 1: to believe that these people would just bail because I
Speaker 1: think that, you know, it's my impression that if when
Speaker 1: an avalanche comes, you can kind of hear it coming.
Speaker 1: So if you wake up in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night and it's shifted but everything is still still and quiet,
Speaker 1: you cut your way out and you're like, gosh, it's cold,
Speaker 1: you know, and I don't hear anything, I don't see anything.
Speaker 1: You kind of assess your situation. And I have been
Speaker 1: in situations in the outdoors of survival before, just personally,
Speaker 1: and I know that if you were at all trained,
Speaker 1: if you're at all seasoned, the first thing you do
Speaker 1: when you're in that situation is, you know, to take
Speaker 1: the like five extra seconds to analyze your situation, unless
Speaker 1: you're drunk, yeah right, you know, like it's built in
Speaker 1: its second nature for you to take that extra five
Speaker 1: seconds to say, am I in absolute immediate danger? Or
Speaker 1: am I you know, screwing myself over in the future?
Speaker 1: And you know, that's really all it takes. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, avalanches happened really fast, and that's
Speaker 1: totally fair. But I think that if they had any
Speaker 1: kind of experience with this, they would know, well, enough
Speaker 1: in my mind, at least they would know well enough
Speaker 1: to just say, I'm grabbing something a backpack. You would
Speaker 1: think something you would think, and it's it's It's also
Speaker 1: possible that if they if their turk got buried for
Speaker 1: a while, then they were and they were buried under
Speaker 1: icy snow, then you know they were already by the
Speaker 1: time they cut their way out, experiencing hypothermia on top
Speaker 1: of being drunk. So that might have interfered with their
Speaker 1: thought process is just a little bit. But but what
Speaker 1: it does appear that they fled in panic, probably because
Speaker 1: they thought an avalanche was coming. They ran down, they
Speaker 1: tried to build a fire, and they built a fire.
Speaker 1: They succeeded in that, but then they realized fire or not,
Speaker 1: they were screwed unless they got back and got their stuff.
Speaker 1: Three of them headed back up the hill and never
Speaker 1: made it. And those three when their bodies were found,
Speaker 1: they weren't found together. Yeah, that was what why they
Speaker 1: didn't when when they initially found the camp and then
Speaker 1: they found the tree, they didn't find those three bodies
Speaker 1: along the way. Those three people were like a hundred
Speaker 1: meters apart or something. Yeah, probably right, they were spread
Speaker 1: out like one dropt and I I gotta go, and
Speaker 1: then finally, you know, I can't do it anymore. Which
Speaker 1: were the three that were found? Were one of them?
Speaker 1: One of them? So that one some credence to that theory,
Speaker 1: if you know, if the guy who's leading it, who's
Speaker 1: probably the most clear minded, says, all right, it's mean
Speaker 1: like you two, we gotta go. You guys can and
Speaker 1: you guys stay here and keep the fire going and
Speaker 1: tear branches off the tree by the way and keep
Speaker 1: it going, and so and then as for the other ones,
Speaker 1: apparently they had taken clothing articles off the people that
Speaker 1: were left there by the campfire and who were wearing
Speaker 1: their underwhere, so they must they must have all found
Speaker 1: each other. But then these guys, I don't know why
Speaker 1: I took off wind up. I think, in my opinion
Speaker 1: that you're you're thinking about an avalanche as possible, it's
Speaker 1: also possible they just fell into the ravine and sustained
Speaker 1: you know, massive traumatic injury. Well that's the thing with ravines,
Speaker 1: especially when there's snow and ice covered. You don't see them,
Speaker 1: especially in the dark. Yeah, yeah, I guess, okay, And
Speaker 1: then again I'm just gonna keep poking holes in these theories.
Speaker 1: Is that I know, mountain climbers and the way you
Speaker 1: go anywhere is you go on a single file line, right,
Speaker 1: So like you're walking behind, I've been there, right, and
Speaker 1: he goes down, You're not going to be like, well,
Speaker 1: I'll just keep walking, right because he's just like die.
Speaker 1: Unless your mind is followed from hypothermia, keep forgetting the hypotheria. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, think about what's the best way to prevent hypothermia.
Speaker 1: Huddled together and you hold and you share body warmth.
Speaker 1: So if you're trying to forward through the snow and
Speaker 1: you're bunched up together and one person falls and you're
Speaker 1: all tangled together, you'll all go over together. That's entirely
Speaker 1: possible to so know I any other thoughts, you guys know,
Speaker 1: I I personally I leaned towards the avalanche idea. Yeah, really,
Speaker 1: I think the mini avalanche. I mean obviously it wasn't, yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's been my thinking, is that it's just a
Speaker 1: small avalanche bared them, scared the hell out of them,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think an ice sheet underneath where they
Speaker 1: were just shifted and you know whatever, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: panics and that's that's the one that I go, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm willing to accept that with the added caveats, either
Speaker 1: alcohol or they were experiencing hypothermia a little bit from
Speaker 1: cold Barry Games. I still understand why they were sleeping
Speaker 1: in their underwear. But yeah, I guess when you're when
Speaker 1: you're camping out in the freezing weather, I understand that
Speaker 1: you take your shoes and socks off so you get
Speaker 1: good circulation when you're in sleep. But yeah, you keep
Speaker 1: your long Joan's in. Heck, when it's really cold, I
Speaker 1: will sleep in pants and all a sugar too. So
Speaker 1: I don't understand the they were not in. So I
Speaker 1: can tell you what my theory is to add to
Speaker 1: your theory. My theory has to do with their events
Speaker 1: prior to them going to sleep. You know they had dinner, right,
Speaker 1: You think they were having no, I think they were
Speaker 1: having their drinking vodka. I think they got drunk. And
Speaker 1: when you're drunk, like and you're with a bunch of people,
Speaker 1: what do you do? Sometimes people do you know if
Speaker 1: you're if you're getting drunk or you like get in
Speaker 1: and you're suffering because you like get your hot flashes
Speaker 1: or whatever you're getting your thing and you take off
Speaker 1: your clothes because who knows, but I think that there
Speaker 1: I think I suspect heavily that there was some kind
Speaker 1: of alcohol involved. And even if they and if they
Speaker 1: were taking clothes off, it was getting colder, they weren't
Speaker 1: feeling it because of the alcohol, and then they weren't
Speaker 1: feeling it because of the hypothermia. You know, one of
Speaker 1: the symptoms of hypothermia is that you actually think that
Speaker 1: you're hot, often so you start to peel clothes off
Speaker 1: severe hypothermia. Yeah, an, the reason, the reason they were
Speaker 1: wearing it just or underwears, and and this is something
Speaker 1: I learned years ago camping as a boy scout and
Speaker 1: a kid and everything, is that you actually stay warmer
Speaker 1: if you stripped down, if you keep your clothes on,
Speaker 1: for some paradoxical reason, you will actually be colder than
Speaker 1: if you're wearing your underwear. Yeah. No, it's just totally
Speaker 1: the truth that it goes against everything I've ever learned
Speaker 1: in survival. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that is, well, that's
Speaker 1: a whole subject for another episode. Yeah, I mean, because yeah,
Speaker 1: that is like that was at least back, you know,
Speaker 1: two or three decades ago. That was the accepted wisdom
Speaker 1: is that you will stay warmer if you stripped under
Speaker 1: your shorts, that if you keep it then if you
Speaker 1: keep all your clothes on. So that's my speculation as
Speaker 1: to why they were in their shots. All right, Okay,
Speaker 1: so mystery Salt. Congratulations you guys. Good job. Actually yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this one is not not exactly up in
Speaker 1: a shut, but I think we came close to it. Yeah. Uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you'd like to contact us, and I know you do,
Speaker 1: our email addresses Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you'd let check our website. It is Thinking Sideways
Speaker 1: podcast dot com anyway, So anyway, check out our website
Speaker 1: for lots of links on it. It's got links to
Speaker 1: the show and lots of other unsolved mysteries out there
Speaker 1: if you haven't listened to us before. Okay, and also
Speaker 1: a shout out to Andrew, our listener who suggested this
Speaker 1: topic for tonight. Yes, thanks again that this was a
Speaker 1: good one. I had, I know, when we talked about before,
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard this one, and this was definitely a
Speaker 1: really interesting you know, it was actually an amazing coincidence.
Speaker 1: I stumbled across this like a week before we got
Speaker 1: the suggestion from Andrew, and that was like the first
Speaker 1: I had ever heard of it, an interesting little mystery,
Speaker 1: which of course we solved. I like getting you know,
Speaker 1: listeners suggestions. Yeah. Absolutely, people find things all the time
Speaker 1: that we don't know about. I love to hear from folks.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've we've gotten stuff before, so it's great. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and Andrew, after you've heard what we have to say
Speaker 1: about it, if you think we're full of it, we'd
Speaker 1: like to hear from you again. Please. Anyway, that's it
Speaker 1: for now. I'm Joe. Goodbye, bye, bye bye,