Madness on the Mountain

The river is freezing cold. Snow melts from the Kamar Daban mountain range, which looms overhead.
Your kayak cuts through the water. You take in the fresh mountain air and the rugged landscape.
It's a long overdue escape from the city. Out here, the only signs of civilization are power lines running over the mountains, which are easy enough to ignore.
But out of nowhere, something catches your eye, and the peaceful atmosphere dissolves. There's someone standing on the far shore of the river, framed starkly against the trees.
It's a teenage girl. She's waving her arms frantically, screaming for you to stop.
From this distance, you can't quite make it out, but it looks almost like her jacket is stained with blood. You don't hesitate.
You dive into the frigid water and swim to shore. And when you reach the girl, she collapses into your arms.
She's delirious, inconsolable. You can barely make out half of what she's saying through her sobs.
She says she's scared, that she's all alone.

You want to see her? out half of what she's saying through her sobs. She says she's scared that she's all alone.

You wonder why this girl's out in the wild by herself. But what she says next answers your

question and makes your blood run as cold as the river. Everyone else is dead.
A week earlier, August 2nd, 1993.

Two hiking groups from Kazakhstan A week earlier, August 2nd, 1993.

Two hiking groups from Kazakhstan climb up a steep trail, away from the nearest town.

They're heading into the wilds of southern Siberia's Kamar Daban mountain range.

They're a school-sponsored hiking expedition, mostly in their teens and early 20s. One group is led by a man named Konstantin Kazantsev.
The other is led by Liudmila Korovina, an experienced hiker who has traveled these mountains before and who also happens to be the mother of one of Konstantin's student hikers. Liudmila's group will be taking a high-altitude route across the mountain range, before descending back down towards civilization.
On the map, their route follows a rough arc across the mountains and back to a small lake called Lake Padovoy. They have two tents and will camp along the 40-kilometer route.
While Lyudmila's group takes the summit, Konstantin will guide his group along a lower-altitude valley route following the river. Despite the lower elevation, Konstantin's group's route is technically the more difficult of the two.
The difficulty of the Russian alpine routes are measured on a scale of 1 to 6, with 1 being a beginner slope and 6 being near vertical, only to be attempted by experts. Liud Mila's route is rated a 3, which makes it a moderately difficult slope, around 35 to 45 degrees in IC.
This requires confidence and sure footing, but it's not a grain that requires special equipment. Constantine's route, by comparison, is a 4, which usually indicates some steep rocky sections at an incline of more than 55 degrees.
The plan is for the two groups to begin and end the multi-day hike together, with several days in between, in which the two groups will separate and hike their respective routes. So when the trail forks, the valley group will take the low road, the summit group will take the high road, and on August 5th, they'll meet back up at the designated lake.
While it's still summer, weather up in the mountains can be fickle in Siberia, with snowfall beginning as early as late August. Anticipating this, Liudmila contacted local weather monitoring stations ahead of time.
They told her the worst she could expect is a mild chance of wind and rain. Nothing to be too concerned about.
Well, except for this. They were given a stark, cryptic warning as they departed a nearby town for the mountains.

One of the locals urged the hikers to be careful

as wildlife in the area was behaving strangely, aggressively.

No one could explain why,

but something in the mountains was driving animals insane.

And most recently, bears in the area had been witnessed throwing themselves in front of trains. Lyudmila and Konstantin's groups arrive at the fork in the trail.
Lyudmila does a quick head count of her six students, Sasha, Denis, Timur, Victoria, Tatiana, and Valentina. They're all here, all ready to go.
The group say goodbye for now in part ways. Following her map, Liudmila guides her summit group along a river through a nearby pass.
Before long, their group is walking uphill at a steady pace, through the trees and into the mountains. So far, the weather is favorable, warm summer air.
Liud Mila is relieved that the weather forecast remains accurate, as there are some inexperienced hikers in her group. Liud Mila, aware that her group must keep up their strength, insists that they eat four times a day, including snacks during rest stops.
She knows that some people think of her as Hardin, a survivalist drill sergeant for her students, pushing them to their limits. But in her own mind, the safety of her hikers is always her first concern.
They're making good time and are able to summit the first ridge ahead of schedule. Even the least experienced hikers, the 24-year-old Tatiana and the 16-year-old Victoria, manage to keep up.
For both of them, it's their first grade 3 hike, a major milestone of any aspiring mountaineer. For now, the summit group is riding high, but they know a lot more terrain awaits them

over the coming days.

And something else awaits them, something they can't possibly know about, because they're

miles from any remaining civilization.

The winds and weather forecasts for Khmer Dabon are shifting, and it's clear it's for the worse. August 4th, two days into the hike.
Liud Mila's early confidence starts to wane. The group reaches a treeless alpine zone, and here their fortunes turn.
The weather sours. Heavy rain and wind whips and tears at the seven hikers.
Visibility is poor, and the temperature is dropping rapidly. Their progress slows to a crawl.
Liudmila clutches onto her map like a lifeline, making sure that they stay on the proper path. One of the worst things that can happen in these conditions is to stray off course and get lost.
Liudmila knows her students won't make the ridge before nightfall, and so she barks orders through the raging wind, instructing the group to make camp. The students spring to action and begin setting up their tents in an open flat area about two miles above the tree line.
It's exposed, but Liudmila reasons that they had better play it safe and not push themselves. She urges her students to forage before it gets too dark.
Keeping their strength up is important, and there's no telling how long they're going to need to wait out the storm the group manages to find deposits of golden root in the area and they hurriedly gather as much as they can it's rich in minerals and nutrients a perfect supplement to their cache of supplies once camp is set up they cluster into tents for the night, one for the boys and one for the girls. Lyudmila hunkers down with Tatiana, Victoria, and Valentina, trying their best to stay warm.
Outside, the temperature plummets and the rain turns to snow. Lyudmila does her best not to show it, but she's concerned.
This isn't where they were supposed to camp for the night. It's too exposed.
Also, for days, she's been growing increasingly concerned that her map of the area is inaccurate. At the summit, known as Taitren's Peak, there would be a sturdy structure and firewood waiting for them, but Liudmila can't tell how close they are to it.
She decides that it isn't worth the gamble to try and reach a wooden structure that may or may not actually be where her map claims it is. As of now, the students are shivering, but otherwise seem in good spirits.
Liud Mila's concern is growing. If the storm goes on for much longer, things could turn sour very, very quickly.
But even still, she puts on a brave face for her students. She's been on worse hikes than this, and they all know it.
It's her confidence and experience that gives courage to even the least experienced hiker, even if it's all for show. Meanwhile, far below, Constantine's Valley Group is having a perfectly pleasant time.
At their lower elevation, there's no wind or snow, and they all get a restful night's sleep in relative comfort. On August 5th, they arrive at Lake Padovoy, right on schedule.
The small lake is the agreed-upon rendezvous point where Constantine's valley group and Liudmila's summit group are to link back up. But there was no sign of the summit group when Constantine arrives.
So he tells his students to unshoulder their packs and relax a while. They can wait.
One of the members of this party is Natalia Corovina, Liudmila's 16-year-old daughter. She takes off her backpack and helps the others set up their tents.
She isn't concerned about her mother's tardiness. She understands better than anyone that Liud Mila is a cautious person.
Plus, the Summit group has several inexperienced teenagers. She'd want to make sure her group is safe before moving on.
When they're finished setting up the tents, she starts to wander along the lake shore, looking up at the Kamar Daban mountains. From the lake, she doesn't have a direct view of where her mother would be, but she notices something strange about the trees in the distance.
They aren't standing upright, but at an angle, like they've been smoothed over by an enormous comb. Combined with some scattered clouds around the peaks, she assumes that means there are pockets of bad weather at the high altitude.
Lyudmila and her students might be getting some rain and wind, which is concerning but nothing she hasn't handled before. Suddenly, however, Natalia stops in her tracks.
A set of eyes are staring out at her from the foliage nearby, unblinking. It's a moose.
Natalia's mouth falls open and she wants to call the other hikers, but she doesn't. Mooses always steer clear of hikers, but for some reason, this one isn't intimidated by their presence at all.
In fact, there's an almost aggressive air to its posture. It's an unsettling encounter, and that's when she remembers what the people in town told her about the bears in the area.
Something isn't right, and the animals can feel it. Slowly, she backs away.
The moose boldly stands its ground. Natalia returns to her

group and tries to put the moose out of her mind. She reminds herself that animals sometimes behave strangely, just like people do.
She'll have to remember to tell her mother about this. A day passes, then another.

The moon begins. A day passes, then another.

The mood begins to shift, and concern sets in.

There's a chance that the summit group isn't even on the mountain at all.

Maybe when the weather got bad, they retraced their steps and went back out the way they hiked in.

Or perhaps they hustled down to the rendezvous point early and continued on before the valley group arrived. But then again, maybe not.
The uncertainty of it all weighs heavily on them, especially Natalia. On the second night, she dreams about her mother.
In this dream, Lyudmila speaks directly to her, telling her that she can't get off the mountain. Natalia wakes in shock and has difficulty sleeping the rest of the night.
Thoughts and fears about her mother's safety keep her awake. She tries to tell herself that she's just being silly, that her mother's group is so late simply because Lyudmila is being cautious about the weather.

But after 48 hours,

these excuses ring more and more hollow.

At breakfast, she tells Constantine about her dream.

She pleads with him to go back up the mountain and search.

It is a grade three hike after all,

and they don't need special gear.

Constantine is sympathetic to her concerns,

but reminds her that they only have enough supplies

for the It is a grade 3 hike after all, and they don't need special gear. Constantine is sympathetic to her concerns, but reminds her that they only have enough supplies for their full trek.
They don't want to double back in search of Liudmila, only to run out of food and put their own hikers at risk. He's reassuring, firm, a good leader like her mother, and so she accepts his reasoning.
They're skilled hikers, sure, but they're not a professional search and rescue team. Soon after, they reach their final destination, a small town on the shores of the enormous Lake Baikal.
But a cloud hangs over their arrival, because there's no sign of Liudmila's group here either. Natalia is beside herself now.
They came together. The two groups were supposed to leave together.
Liudmila even has train tickets for the whole group. Natalia doesn't know what to do.
She's always looked up to her mother for strength, confidence, and this uncertain danger has no easy solution.

Constantine's eyes return to the high peaks looming in the distance. He begins to fear that he's made a terrible decision that'll haunt him for the rest of his life.
What on earth,

he wonders, is happening up on the mountain.

The night of August 4th.

On the peak,

Lyudmila and her students aren't getting any sleep.

In the early morning hours,

one of the students from the boys' tent

trudges over to Lyudmila's tent.

It's Sasha, an inexperienced 23-year-old hiker.

He's like a surrogate son to Lyudmila.

He tells her that the boys are uncomfortable.

The wind and the cold are too much to bear.

At this elevation, there's no tree cover, no protection from the storm.

Their tents are no match for the relentless wind. At four in the morning, the tethers snap.
Everyone scrambles out into the bitter cold, struggling to re-secure their shelters. Snow seeps into the tents, soaking through the sleeping bags.
It's a miserable, punishing night. Finally, at dawn, Liu and Mila tells them it's time to go.
They must descend immediately. After a quick breakfast of canned stew, the group begins hiking back down the mountain to the south.
While they're still roughly following their planned route, they've abandoned any attempt to summit the peak, and instead seek protection from the severe weather 2.5 miles below where there's tree cover. The heavy winds continue, making it difficult to progress.
Visibility is dismal. Then suddenly, at about 11am, Sasha falls down.
The other hikers help him to his feet, but soon he collapses again. He's starting to fall behind.
Liudmila hangs back to help him, telling the other hikers to go ahead. She and Sasha will catch up.
The five other students comply, grabbing onto each other to stabilize themselves against the wind. Like a phalanx of Roman soldiers, they make their way slowly and deliberately down the mountain.
They're making progress and the tree line is beginning to feel achievable. But soon, they hear Liudmila's voice shouting from behind them.
She's screaming for help. Leaving the phalanx, 17-year-old Valentina rushes back to help their leader.
She arrives to find Liudmila crouched by Sasha's body, despondent. The young man who had been complaining of cold mere hours before isn't moving.
Valentina looks closer, and she sees that his eyes are

vacant, staring off into the distance. Sasha is dead.

Overcome with shock, Valentina is momentarily unable to speak or breathe.

It feels like she's stumbled into a nightmare. But the nightmare is only beginning, because a moment later, Liudmila collapses as well.
The other students see her go down, and panic sweeps through the group like a wildfire. The phalanx breaks.
Valentina looks on in terror as chaos breaks out. Everyone is screaming, flailing, but not because they're afraid.
They're all in pain. Valentina's fellow students are bleeding from their ears, eyes, and noses.
They're foaming at the mouth. This doesn't make sense.
None of it makes sense. A couple of them are tearing at their clothes frantically, madly.
Valentina has never seen anything like it, and suddenly, to her shock, more of them begin to collapse to the ground, one by one. Valentina tries to pull Victoria to her feet, only for the girl to rabidly bite Valentina's hand.
She tries again, pulling the convulsing girl down the mountain with her. They're only able to make it a few more steps before Victoria fights free again, but she doesn't go far.
She falls to the ground and stops moving. Valentina keeps going.
Maybe if she makes it to a nearby cluster of rocks, maybe then she'll be safe from this madness. But when she nears the rocks, she halts, stopped in her tracks by yet another terrifying sight.
One of the other girls, Tatiana, is already at the rocks and is bashing her own head against them over and over again. A curtain of blood obscures her face from view.
Tatiana keeps smashing her head into these rocks until eventually she stops moving. Valentina is frozen, paralyzed by complete shock and panic.
In the span of minutes and with zero warning, her entire group has dropped dead. Suddenly, a hand shoves Valentina, shaking her out of her stupor.
Someone is still alive. It's one of the boys, Dennis.
He's on his hands and knees, bleeding from the ears and mouth. Yet he's able to muster up enough energy to give her one single command.
Run. This shocks Valentina into action.
She bolts downhill, making for the tree line. Behind her, Dennis tries to crawl after her, but he has no strength.
She glances over her shoulder to make sure he's following, yet he isn't. He's lying face flat in the snow, completely immobile.
By now, it's just Valentina. Overcome with fear and a burning desire to survive, she advances downhill through the swirling wind

and blinding snow, stumbling, crawling, before at last, she finally reaches the treeline and a

shelter from the wind. She digs a sleeping bag out of her backpack and crawls inside.

She huddles into a ball for warmth before she passes out.

A day later, the weather subsides.

Valentina wakes up on August 6th, and it's quiet.

No screams, no howling wind, just the gentle rustling of trees and the drip drip drip of the melting snow. She cautiously emerges from her sleeping bag.
The sun is out. Even though she slept for almost 24 hours, she doesn't feel rested.
The horrific sights from the day before are clear in her mind's eye. She wishes that she could dismiss it as a nightmare, something caused by a lack of sleep or exhaustion, but she knows the truth.
She can't kid herself. She's alone.
Valentina slowly starts to trudge back up the mountain. She's gotta see her fellow hikers.
She needs to have some sense of what happened. Before too long, the bodies come into sight.
A cluster of four of them by the rocks, and two farther up the slope. They're all still and silent.
Stealing herself, Valentina walks from body to body. She can't do anything for them now besides close their eyes.
She passes Tatiana, the 24-year-old secretary, the one who smashed her face into the rocks not long ago. She passes the small body of Timur, who was only 15 years old.
He was the youngest of the group. Victoria was also there.
Valentina couldn't help but feel some kinship with the other girl. Only a year younger than her, she had been so eager to hike that she had her parents persuade Liudmila to let her join them, even though she was an inexperienced hiker.
It breaks her heart to see Dennis, the boy who saved her, lying on the slope. If he hadn't told her to run, she might have died there as well.
Once she's closed all their eyes, Valentina does her best to cover the bodies with one of the tents. She gathers whatever supplies she can from their packs, food, Lyudmila's map, and a compass.
But as it turns out, the map and compass are of little use, because Valentina is lost. The snowdrifts make it impossible to follow the path that Lyudmila planned for them.
They were less than halfway through the 40-kilometer route, and Valentina doesn't want to risk hiking over the snowy peak alone. Instead, she decides to head back down in the general direction their group climbed up.
She needs to get to a more reasonable altitude as soon as possible. As she continues her descent, a promising sight greets her eyes.
Thin cables running above the treetops. Power lines which run to the nearby peak of the mountain.
Making her choice, she continues walking. Her eye on the power lines, trusting that they'll show her a way to safety.
After all, when there's power, there's bound to be civilization. Even though it's entirely downhill, it's an arduous journey.

Her supply of the world is a very a dried golden root, foraged by the group several days before. It's rich in minerals and keeps her going.
Her home feels impossibly far away in these desolate mountains, yet one thought pushes Valentina forward. The thought of her home back in Kazakhstan.
The thought of her family who had trusted Lyudmila to bring their little Valium home safe. Valentina has to survive to see them again.
She travels from tower to tower, pausing to catch her breath, but never stopping. She treks for four days, growing delirious.
And one fortunate night, she finds a winter hut unlocked. She collapses inside, grateful for the shelter.
But she's on her feet the next day, determined not to die alone in the mountains. She doesn't notice when she catches a cold, but she can feel a fever eating away at her and has to pause every so often to allow herself to cough.
At lower altitude, there is less snow, but aside from the cabin, she hasn't seen any civilization, not a town or even an outpost. Because of this, doubts begin to eat away at her.
Perhaps she should have tried to retrace her group's footsteps instead back to the town they started out from. Finally, Valentina reaches a river.
This gives her some hope. Many of the rivers in the area flow from Lake Baikal, which is where they started their trip.
She follows

the rocky shore, heading upstream in hopes that someone will see her. And eventually, by the grace of God, someone does.
On August 9th, 1993, tourists from Ukraine cross her path. One of the tourists, Alexander Kovidnitsky, sees her and swims to her side.
Valentina has done the impossible. She survived.
When she's rescued, she's incoherent and is only able to give local police a scattered account of what happened. Nevertheless, while Valentina is sent home to her family,

a search efforts mounted to find the bodies of her companions.

And what rescuers find def for weeks, trying to locate the missing group of hikers from Kazakhstan. Finally, someone sees something and the helicopters descend.
They found the summit group's final campsite, and with this, the bodies. The snow around the peak has melted, revealing a gruesome sight.
After 19 days of exposure to the elements, their bodies are in poor condition. The tent that Valentina draped over them couldn't prevent them from rotting.
None of the bodies have eyes, and worms writhe in their empty sockets. With increased visibility on the mountain, rescuers are able to see that the hikers died only a few hundred feet short of Titren's Peak.
A wooden tower is indeed there, which would have protected them against the elements far better than a flimsy tent on the side of a mountain. Why Liudmila hadn't fought to get there safely puzzles the search party, even as they gather the unfortunate victims.
More puzzling is the fact that they find only a single can of stew by the campsite. Nothing else, no other food, not even a candy bar wrapper.
It's this evidence that seems to indicate that this group was underfed and needlessly exposed to the elements. They zip up the bodies in bags and load them onto the helicopter.
The smell is unbearable as they take them back to be autopsied. The bodies are found to be protein deficient and malnourished.
The leader of the search party, Yuri Goliaths, has seen enough. The can of stew, the hazardous placement of their campsite.
To him, it's no mystery what happened to these

kids on the mountain, and he knows exactly who to blame. Liudmila herself.

Yuri is familiar with Liudmila and has long believed that she mistreated her students.

Based on his previous encounters with her, Yuri claims that she often pushed her teenage

students to their limits, including underfeeding them and not providing them with proper clothing

for the elements. In Yuri's mind, there's no doubt that Liud Mila's poor leadership

contributed to the deaths of the group at Kamar Daban. Even further, he claimed that he wouldn't

put it past Liud Mila to choose a poor campsite in order to, quote, toughen her students up. But even still, not everyone agrees with Yuri's assertion.
Valentina, after years of silence in the wake of this horrific event, spoke out in support of Lyudmila Korovina. She claims that the summit group was well-fed and cared for

throughout the hike, and that Liudmila knew that they were hikers of varying experience, and so she planned for a diet of 2,400 calories a day. The official cause of death for the five students is listed as hypothermia.
As for Liudmila herself, it's believed that she died of a heart attack upon seeing Sasha die before her eyes. But the details of the event itself defies such an easy conclusion.
For instance, why was Valentina able to survive if all of them were in the same state of malnutrition and exposure? How was she, a 17-year-old girl, able to outlast an experienced mountaineer and her own peers? And most of all, why did their deaths happen so suddenly and within such close proximity? Satisfactory answers, unfortunately, remain elusive. However, as it stands, the facts are these.
Six healthy individuals died very suddenly in close proximity to each other. All of them displayed strange, unexplained symptoms in their final moments that included self-harm, bleeding from the ears, eyes, or throat, and sudden debilitating pain.
All of these details come from Valentina herself, who describes the experience like a horror movie. Now, hypothermia could explain some of the symptoms Valentina noticed, such as the attempts to frantically disrobe.
This is a phenomenon known as paradoxical undressing. In extreme cold weather, a person's blood vessels constrict to save heat.
As hypothermia sets in, the constriction of these blood vessels fails, causing warm blood to flood back into the extremities, making someone feel like they're overheating even as they literally freeze to death. People in this state frequently tear off items of clothing, only hastening their own demise.
But smashing your own head into rocks? Sud inexplicable bleeding, neither of these are symptoms of hypothermia, nor should they be contagious in the way that they seem to be among Liud Mila's group. Another theory is that these hikers suffered from altitude sickness, which can trigger any number of adverse effects in the human body.
Among these can be pulmonary edema, a buildup of fluid in the lungs, which can trigger heart palpitations and bloody coughing. Perhaps it could have been something they ate or drank.
The strange behavior that Valentina witnessed could have been caused by a poisonous plant that the others had consumed and she had fortunately avoided. Or perhaps contaminated

water was the culprit. Lake Baikal is known for high levels of contamination, and if hikers filled their water bottles from one of its rivers, they could have poisoned themselves without even knowing it.
In the pursuit of truth, curious researchers have turned away from the direct events of the hike and towards increasingly elaborate conspiracy theories.

The most dramatic of these truth, curious researchers have turned away from the direct events of the hike and towards

increasingly elaborate conspiracy theories. The most dramatic of these is that these hikers were unwitting participants in a Russian weapons test, victims of some nerve agent that got unleashed under the cover of the storm.
Novichok chemicals, for instance, were developed in the late stages of the Cold War by the Soviet Union.

Phosphorus-based and designed to be undetectable, they cause disorientation as well as foaming at the mouth and can be administered in aerosol form. A similar, if slightly outlandish, theory assumes that the sudden hysteria and death among the group was caused by infrasound.
The term infrasound refers to low-level frequencies that can occur naturally, emitted by geophysical phenomena. These sounds, while not audible to the human ear, can be felt by the cochlea in the inner ear, causing extreme discomfort.
In certain extreme conditions, infrasound has been known to cause sudden sickness and even death. At certain frequencies, it's theorized that these sounds could cause the internal organs of someone to vibrate, causing internal damage.
But even still, what could have caused these sounds? Why would they have affected only six of the seven hikers? Every single theory inevitably runs up against the central question of this entire incident. How did Valentina survive? When a journalist asks her how she managed to live when the others didn't, her answer is simple.
She was in very good physical condition. She lived on a farm her whole life and was used to high altitude and strenuous exercise.
But this description could apply to any one of the hikers present. Even the youngest member of the group, 15-year-old Timur, was an experienced outdoorsman.
The only hiker with questionable experience was the 16-year-old Victoria who had previously suffered from fatigue on easy hikes. There just has to be something missing, some detail that got lost in the noise of Valentina's trauma and the punishing weather.
But if there is a key that helps us understand what happened at Camar deaban, it seems, unfortunately, to have been irretrievably lost.

Like the dead, the mountain keeps its secrets.

And if there's one thing to take away from all of this,

their campsites will forever hold a mystery. Late Nights with Nexpo is created and hosted by me, Nexpo.
Executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.
Our head of writing is Evan Allen. This episode was written by Robert Teamstrom.
Copy editing by Luke Barats. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman.
Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood.
Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Colt Locasio.
Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Thank you for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo.

I love you all, and good night.