Content Warning: This section includes discussions of the violent deaths of nine people, including graphic descriptions of corpses.

Two members of a search party hike across the Ural Mountains in the USSR. They are looking for their friends, a group of mostly university students who were meant to return home from a challenging hike 10 days ago. The searchers locate the group’s tent, which is partly covered in snow. It seems to be fully intact, with the nine missing hikers’ belongings still inside. Everything is tidy, and the group’s stove is unassembled at the center of the tent. Strangely, all of the hikers’ shoes are lined up by the door. There are no bodies. The searchers are cautiously optimistic that their friends are still alive, but they acknowledge that it is very strange that all of them would have left their tent.

Author Donnie Eichar hikes toward Dyatlov Pass through deep snow. It is winter, and despite his best efforts, he is unaccustomed to the extreme cold. This is his second visit to Russia to try to unravel the mystery of Dyatlov Pass. He first became obsessed with the case in 2010, despite being American and having no mountaineering experience.

He recaps the case: In January 1959, a group of nine experienced hikers journeyed north from their home city of Sverdlovsk with the intention of scaling Otorten Mountain.