By: Brandon Wolfe
On February 2, 1959, nine hikers in the Upal Mountains of Russia were mysteriously killed. There were no eyewitnesses and the circumstances were decidedly bizarre. Evidence showed that the hikers cut holes in their own tent from the inside and departed abruptly into the snow without clothes or supplies for unknown reasons. The bodies were found spread out around the area, two with their skulls fractured and one with its eyes and tongue missing. Russian investigators could only rule that the deaths were caused by a “compelling natural force.” The mountain pass where the incident occurred has been dubbed the Dyatlov Pass, after the group’s leader, Igor Dyatlov. The enigma surrounding the incident has led to over fifty years of speculation about just what happened to the hikers, most of it centering around supernatural folklore. While there is no shortage of theories, definitive answers remain elusive, likely forever.
The Discovery Channel “documentary” ‘Russian Yeti: The Killer Lives’ lays out the case that the fate that befell those hikers was dealt by the hands of, yes, a Russian Yeti, a mythical, Sasquatch-esque beast speculated to reside in that region. Spearheaded by adventurer and wilderness enthusiast Mike Libecki and his assistant Maria, the film sets out to investigate all the available evidence in a bid to prove that the hikers’ encounter with a “menk” (the Russian word for Yeti) led to their gruesome demises. Libecki looks at all the possible angles, conducts interviews with various so-called experts and goes over every clue he can get his hands on. In every instance, the conclusion he arrives at is, without fail, “Yeti”.
A tribe indigenous to that region, the Mansi, has been long held as possible culprits for the murders, the theory being that the hikers trekked into the Mansi’s terrain and were met as hostiles. In some of the recovered photographs from the expedition, Mansi symbols can be seen etched into trees and there was once a report of a journalist being killed by the Mansi prior to the incident. However, all Libecki needs to hear from a modern-day Mansi descendant is that the Mansi could not possibly have done something like this and that alone is enough for him to scratch them off the suspect list. Likewise, interviews with people who have discovered large footprints in the area are treated as smoking guns.
Libecki also gets his hands on what he claims to be physical evidence. Consulting an expert at something called the “Russian Yeti Institute”, which is apparently a thing that exists, he is shown plaster casts of enormous footprints, too large to be made by man. He also obtains what he claims is a secret military file on the incident, with photos said to have been taken by the hikers, including one of a large hairy creature peeking around a tree in the traditional, traditionally blurry Bigfoot pose (Libecki also shows a few alleged menk videos that are also shot the same; as Mitch Hedberg once theorized, maybe all Bigfeet are just blurry). The file also alleges that a secret military operation found the bodies before they were officially recovered, as evidenced by a military boot cover said to be found at the scene. Libecki theorizes that the military were conducting a large-scale investigation into the Yeti at the time, because of course they were. Finally, a note supposedly written by one of the hikers includes the quote “Now we know the snowman exists,” which is something you would stop to jot down for posterity as you were being hunted by a giant monster.
‘Russian Yeti: The Killer Lives’ is clearly hogwash. None of its presented evidence stands up to much, if any, scrutiny. Its arguments are specious at best, giant slabs of baloney at worst. At one point, commenting on the holes cut into the tent from the inside, Libecki speculates that these were made by the hikers to look outside to see what is stalking them and states “This is proof that the hikers were being hunted, watching out for a Yeti.” That is not how proof works, friend. The special seems to want to be a surreptitious found-footage horror movie as much as, if not more than, it wants to be a documentary. Everything is goosed up for maximum thrill delivery, every scene punctuated by ominous music and quick cuts. We get jumpy dramatized ‘Blair Witch’ footage of the hikers running for their lives. Most absurdly, Libecki and Maria insert themselves into the shenanigans, spending the night in a cave purported to have witnessed many Yeti sightings, as well as another night in the spot where the hikers made their camp, and in both instances, they are jolted by strange noises and unearthly wails, forcing them to run away for their lives. It’s all theater, and bad theater at that. It doesn’t help that everything Libecki and Maria say registers as plodding horror-movie dialogue flatly delivered by bad actors.
The shame of ‘Russian Yeti’ is that it could have offered up something truly interesting had it divorced itself from its tall-tale nonsense. The Dyatlov Pass incident actually happened, and it remains eerily unsolved to this day. A special that actually looked into that event and the little we do know about it, without trumped-up evidence, phony interviews and hambone theatrics presented in the service of proving an absurd, predetermined thesis, could have been captivating. It’s actually a bit shocking that the Discovery Channel is the network putting forth this hokum, given their long-standing association with actual science and nature. Presumably this was done because those Bigfoot reality shows on Animal Planet have done so well. A more even-handed approach that considered multiple possibilities for the deaths, even working Yetis in as one option, would have worked much better than forcing everything to fit that lone idea. In the ‘90s, many TV shows like ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ and ‘Sightings’ successfully got under the skin by presenting alleged true-life paranormal tales without cramming certain notions down our throats. At its best, ‘Russian Yeti’ calls to mind the mid-‘90s Fox special ‘Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction’, with its nutball conviction to selling us bunk without shame, but its ham-handedness and naked fallacy presented as investigative journalism does nothing more than render it laughable.
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