“They tell themselves that this is a rescue mission, not a recovery.”

Perseverance and Determination motivates the rescue team in the days after the hikers’ disappearance. For people who already know that the hikers died in the incident, this passage is a moment of dramatic irony—readers are aware of something that the would-be rescuers have not yet learned.

“The lead investigator, Lev Ivanov, wrote in his final report that the hikers had died as a result of ‘an unknown compelling force,’ a euphemism that, despite the best efforts of modern science and technological advances, still defines the case fifty-plus years later.”

Rumor, conspiracy, and Political Repression clouded the truth about what happened to the Dyatlov nine. Ivanov’s inability or unwillingness to give a more concrete answer raises far more questions than it answers. Determining what that force could be is Eichar’s main goal for the rest of the book.

“I was learning that everyone had his or her own ideas as to what happened to the hikers, and none seemed to match the others.”

The number of theories about what happened to the Dyatlov hikers and the strange circumstances of their discovery make untangling the truth almost impossible. The best Eichar can hope for is to craft a plausible explanation, as nobody will ever know the whole truth for sure.