In January 1959 a group of young Soviet students heads to the Northern Ural Mountains for a several days hike. They were all good skiers and mountaineers. Bound by friendship, love for Nature and Wilderness, experience in the hardships of the mountain regions of Siberia and Russia, the group had nothing but days of excitement and adventure ahead, an experience that surely would have bound all of them even stronger in the warmth of their friendship.
But it was not bound to be. The group never came back. Only one young student, not feeling well, left the party earlier on the hike. He remained the only survivor. About three weeks later a rescue party found the tent abandoned and torn apart. Five members were inexplicably found at a distance from the tent, almost naked, frozen to death. Four other members could be found only in May, their bodies showing signs of a blow from an inexplicable force and strange wounds.
Since then, hypotheses and investigations could never come up with a definitive and sound explanation of what could have happened on that hellishly cold night, beaten by blizzards. Understandably, after the termination of inconclusive investigations, hypotheses actually blew up, fuelled by the weird and the supernatural, until some more or less “plausible”, yet not confirmed, scientific theory that could wrap up all the events.
A couple of films, books, documentaries, even fantasy based documentaries and investigative television shows have piled up upon these mysterious events. Yet the events still have plenty of potential for further productions, with many aspects to be explored for narratives to be based on scientific, sci-fi-like, and even personal and introspective aspects of the unlucky story of the nine young Russian students.
TERRÆ INCOGNITÆ 