Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident
Written and Narrated By: Donnie Eichar
Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
This story TOTALLY giveth what the narration taketh away
First, lemme just say up front that I was very much looking forward to Dead Mountain by documentary filmmaker, Donnie Eichar. I mean, I had the fluff and such-all set for the week’s Listening, so what I reeeeally wanted was something eeeeeerie!
And the story, to me (And if you trot over to Amazon you’ll find many who disagree), the mystery, was provocative. Plus, Eichar’s journeying and musings to find out what happened were engaging. One reviewer felt the book was all: Me Me Me MY Excursions MY Thoughts No Facts Just Meeee.
Well, okay then…
It kinda sorta is… But it’s like this, see. I felt I was being invited on Eichar’s dogged quest to find out what really happened to nine students of the Ural Polytechnic Institute’s Hiking Club in 1959. All were in the Ural Mountains to gain mastery and certification in hiking, and all were found dead, many days after they were last seen alive. As Eichar researched what happened on the trip, through journal entries, through photographic evidence left behind, through interviewing relatives and the lone survivor (Who was too ill to continue and who had to turn back at the very last moment), I felt I was sitting across from him, a beer in my hand, listening intently.
Cuz the bits and pieces of “evidence” (And I have to use quotes cuz some/most of it is conjecture based upon biases) are enough to make you hold your breath as you wait at the edge of your seat. What could be creepier than nine bodies found frozen more than a mile from camp, in various states of, well, they were dressed a bit, but not enough for frigid below zero temperatures, and they were either barefoot or with a sock or with a sweater wrapped around a foot. What could be creepier than three suffering blunt force trauma to ribs, to skull (Oh I dunno… maybe a young woman with her tongue ripped out might be creepier)? What could be creepier than a slit knifed through the back of their tent, evidence that it was cut from inside by someone who wanted desperately to get out?
Oh I dunno again… maybe raised levels of radiation found on their clothing? Maybe reports of blinding lights that appeared in the night sky on that ill-fated night? Maybe government conspiracies abounding, like the hikers were at the wrong place at the wrong time and saw secret things they really shouldn’t have?
This all has, quite simply, the most lingering fragrance of the juuuuust post-Stalin era; it’s still the Cold War, and there are still people Listening in on You, and you’ll still get harassed for playing the mandolin while you’re waiting for transport—but you won’t get thrown into prison. As Eichar journeys to Russia in 2012-13, he finds a Russia that is still foreboding, forbidding, but there are new freedoms. But the people he talks to are still firmly planted in the Past, with the fears and paranoias that are the foundation of their being. So we don’t know who’s open and who’s paranoid—cuz everybody is right; it’s just that they’re oh so different.
And I found it all fascinating even, yes, Eichar’s tiny digressions to tell us he had an attack of vertigo at this point or that.
Now onto what the narration taketh away: Eichar himself narrates this and good golly gosh. This is just a guy reading the words, it really is. It could easily be called monotone, robotic, unemotional. But I kinda got that this was a guy who’s felt a great deal about this and, thus, has had to cut himself off emotionally from his own work. It reminds me of The Mirror Test by J. Kael Weston (Will get around to listening to and reviewing that someday). In that audiobook, narrated by Weston himself, it’s obvious that the man is carrying a LOT on his shoulders, and that he’s had to die to himself in order to keep on living.
Okay, Eichar isn’t carrying around baggage like that, but still, he is indeed quite emotionally involved in this quest of his (And people are always confronting him with: What? Why are you here? You don’t have mysteries in your country?!?). So I’m willing to give him a pass on this, plus I’m totally behind him wanting to slooowly (Uhm, like, I had to jack the speed up to x1.8) pull hypnotic tidbit after hypnotic tidbit out, making us savor each fact of the hikers’ grisly deaths, making us savor each last line of each chapter cuz they’re cliffhanger sentences.
This was an utterly compelling listen, just be ready for yes, it’s a LOT of the author’s sleuthing, and for an ending that doesn’t have the disclaimer: Ehhhhh, Who Knows? Sometimes Cold Cases Just Stay Cold.
Whatever. It may’ve been a stretch the way it came together at the end. But I thought it was really cool and, while it was a harrowing conclusion, I felt there was respect given to them.
As though, in those utterly horrifying last hours, we’re there with them; and they didn’t die alone.
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