Yuri Yudin is the only survivor of the world-famous tourist trip of the Dyatlov group, who tragically died in 1959 under unexplained circumstances. The tourist was able to survive only because he had to abandon the continuation of the path due to the ensuing illness.
Biography
Yuri Yudin was born in 1937 in the village of Tabory, Sverdlovsk Region. Together with his brother and sister, he was brought up by his mother, his father died at the front in 1942. The future tourist tried to support his family in everything and not let them down. He studied diligently and successfully completed ten years of school. In 1954 he became a student of the Kirov Ural Polytechnic Institute in one of the engineering and economic specialties.
Already in his student years, Yuri's health began to fail: he suffered from rheumatic heart disease, then dysentery. Despite this, the young man loved risk and since 1955 became interested in tourism, having been on hikes of varying degrees of difficulty. At the end of 1958, he joined a group of young tourists led by Igor Dyatlov from the same Polytechnic Institute. Students (ten people in total) had to go on a hike of a high category of difficulty to the Northern Urals.
The trek began on January 23, 1959. At first everything went well, the tourists moved forward without deviating from the planned course. But already on January 26, Yuri felt unwell: old rheumatic heart disease broke out. It became difficult for the young man to move, and he decided to leave the group, returning to Sverdlovsk.
The tragedy at the Dyatlov pass
"Dyatlovtsy" (as the group was called later) went north to Mount Otorten. In early February, they set up a tent for spending the night on the slope, which would later be called the "Dyatlov Pass". About what happened after, nothing is known. A group of tourists did not get in touch on time, and an extensive search began. After some time, the search engines found a rugged and abandoned tent, and below the slope and near the trees at the beginning of the forest - the frozen and half-naked bodies of five tourists. Four more were found only at the end of spring in a ravine located in a small distance.
The investigative process began. Law enforcement authorities were taken aback by the strange injuries on the students' bodies. The impression was that they could be physically dealt with (for example, local hunters, prisoners who escaped from the Ural camps, special services, etc.). Yuri Yudin, who was recruited to participate in interrogations and identification procedures, was inclined to the same version. He made a significant contribution to the investigation, reporting that among the items found there was one outsider who did not belong to anyone from the group - a soldier's footcloth.
Future life
The investigation into the death of the "Dyatlovites" was soon closed, and the cause of the death was recognized as "an irresistible spontaneous force." Yuri Yudin continued to engage in tourism, and also got a job at the Solikamsk magnesium plant near Perm, where he worked until 1985, becoming a labor veteran. Then he continued his work already in the administration of Solikamsk. In 1998, Yudin retired.
Until the very end of his life, Yuri helped everyone to get to the bottom of the true reasons for the death of the Dyatlov group, wrote many memoirs. He never found happiness in his personal life, being left without a wife and children. In 2013, Yudin died and was buried at the Mikhailovsky cemetery in Yekaterinburg, next to the grave of the dead "Dyatlovites".
