Dead Mountain

Maybe it is a bit sick in a sense, but I absolutely love mysteries, be it a serial killer, a disappearance, a John Doe corpse or anything unexplained. I love when I get the facts, also I really can't stand Hollydoow-ified, soap opera type approaches. This one actually wasn't like that all.
I understand that it must be hard making a story readable, actually engaging and somehow beating it into a book form and presenting it, without going overboard with describing the soft spring breeze playing on the unblemished skin of some beautiful girl who is going to fall victim of some horrible, satanic killer.
Well, in this one people just get majorly fucked by nature. So yeah.

In the 50's in Russia a bunch of university students decide to get a hiking certificate through completing an extremely hard, winter trip to the Urals. One of them has to turn back because of health issues, while the others never return. Later their frozen (and in some cases, seriously injured) bodies are found in various stages of undress out in the snow, with their tent slashed open from the inside. The government is all hush-hush about it.

Man, I love this case, which is probably extremely rude to say when people died. What I mean is that I find it extremely interesting and just crazy; think about how these people really faced the shit side of nature, basically. With roads everywhere and civilisation only ever a few miles from us, it's really hard to imagine these people being stranded out there, absolutely powerless to do anything. I find that fascinating and pretty hard to imagine.
There were also roughly my age, mostly. It's so obviously that they weren't even thinking about the possibility of things going SO badly. During the book we hear some anecdotes about them (like one guy chasing away a bear with a hammer on a previous trip), but this was way too big for them.

The book is also full of photos, just little snapshots of the group having dinner, messing around, acting silly. If they had colour, I could totally imagine them being youngsters now, on a skiing trip somewhere. It was eerily familiar. In one photo a guy makes a face that reminds me of an ex-bf. A bit of a surreal feeling.

What I really liked about the book was how it was actually informative. The author didn't actually try to sell some crappy idea about the yeti eating the people (have seen a “documentary” about that, it was ridiculous) or aliens messing with them. No mountain ghosts either.
I didn't really expect a conclusion, though, I was emotionally fine with the author just saying “we don't know, so yeeeah”, but he actually didn't do it. It's especially interesting as his methods of just going to Russia for whatever reason to look into the case and walk around was not exactly professional level.
The conclusion was satisfying. Scientifically sound, not over the top dramatic bullshit conjured out of nothing.

All in all, I really enjoyed this and I would love to read similar books. Non-fiction is generally not my thing, but this type, with interesting event and not a focus on what I call “suffering porn” is really up my alley.

Good night and stay inside while winter is coming!