Nexpo
Appearances
Late Nights with Nexpo
Buried in the Wych Elm
Lamont Jones is shattered when his cousin dies just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. Wondery presents Death County PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Late Nights with Nexpo
Buried in the Wych Elm
Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.
Late Nights with Nexpo
Buried in the Wych Elm
Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Late Nights with Nexpo
Buried in the Wych Elm
You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
Late Nights with Nexpo
Buried in the Wych Elm
I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
We're talking explosive revelations, perhaps multiple arrests, and there will be many people, perhaps even people standing in this crown today, who will have to answer for why they didn't come forward earlier and volunteer information. The reporter's scribbling fast on his small notepad. He's completely buying this secret theory angle, but Sheriff Stewart isn't so sure anymore.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
As he listens to the deputy talk, he begins to doubt the legitimacy of the tip he received. He squeezes his eyes closed and prays that the diver comes back with something good. Bubbles break on the surface of the quarry near where the diver went in. The sheriff, the deputy, and the reporter all crane their necks in anticipation. A hush falls over the crowd.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
At last, the diver emerges from the water, and in his hands, he has nothing. There's no car in the quarry at all. The dive, the search, it's all a bust. Inside, Sheriff Stewart is seething. He's irritated at himself for revealing anything to the public before they had actual proof. He was just so hopeful and so determined for the people of his county to not think of him as a joke.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
And now he looks like an even bigger fool than ever. What was it about this case that makes it so hard to solve, he wonders. It's as though the harder he tries to find answers, the further from the truth he gets.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
1959 five years after william bird's girlfriend mary grimes wallace was found dead on the train tracks her head nearly severed from her body bird sits at the bar inside the lone pine tavern nursing a beer the tavern's lights are dim and the music is loud the place is packed some are here looking for action others looking for trouble William, though, just wants to have a drink alone.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
But he's never really alone. Not in and around Xenia, at least. A woman sits down next to Bird. She casts a glance in his direction, and immediately a look of disgust comes over her face. Bird knows the expression well by this point. She recognizes him. Everyone here does. The woman immediately leaves to find another place to sit.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Bird was never formally charged in connection with Mary's death, but he was held in county jail for a month. That alone ruined his reputation. Every day since, he's had to endure the whispers of passers-by. He knows what they all think of him. But now, a man sits down on the empty stool next to Bird. He doesn't give the typical disapproving side-eye, and he doesn't glance around for a new seat.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Instead, he turns to Bird and asks him if he heard the rumor going around town. Bird has no idea what the man is talking about. And so, the man proceeds to tell him that Mary was recently seen by someone in Cincinnati, alive. Unable to believe what he's hearing, Bird asks the man to repeat what he just said. The man obliges. People are saying that Mary Grimes might not be dead after all.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Bird takes another swing of his spear. His mind starts to race. This rumor is the opportunity that he desperately needs to cease. The next morning, Bird shows up unannounced at the Greene County Sheriff's Department. He inquires on speaking with Sheriff Russell Bradley, who replaced Sheriff Stewart two years prior. Bradley's familiar with Mary's case, and so too with William Bird.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Bird manically tells the sheriff what he heard about Mary being alive and living in Cincinnati. At first, Bradley's suspicious of Bird's story. After all, this man is driven by a motive to clear his name once and for all. But after Bird leaves, Sheriff Bradley does some digging, and it's here where he learns that Mary's family has also caught wind of this rumor and is seriously looking into it.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Because unlike Bird, who heard the rumor through the grapevine, Mary's family got it directly from the source. One of Mary's old friends told them that she did indeed run into Mary at a bar in Cincinnati. The friend was stunned. It was like she saw a ghost. But according to her, Mary was very much alive.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Most haunting of all, though, is that Mary allegedly told this friend to never speak of their encounter. Remember, Mary said as the two parted ways, you never saw me. Bradley decides to entertain this lead, just to see if it goes anywhere. He leans back in his chair and lets his mind wander for a moment.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
He's intoxicated by the idea that he could be a local hero, by solving a mystery that no one in Xenia has been able to crack for five agonizing years.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
He goes to see her siblings and father at her sister's house, where they all sit snug together around a small kitchen table. Bradley's laid out some of the original post-mortem photographs. With difficulty, Mary's brother and sister look carefully through the grisly photos, but they can't say with any certainty that it's actually her.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Sheriff Bradley then asks Mary's father, Ollie Grimes, about the day he positively identified her body back in 1954. Ollie remembers that though he did identify her, he only took a quick glance. If he was slightly unsure then, he's even more so now. That evening, the sheriff goes back through the case file and rereads his predecessor's notes.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
The sun hasn't yet risen on the rural outskirts of Xenia, Ohio. In these last few moments before daybreak, all is perfectly silent and still, but now a train approaches from the east. The locomotive's engineer rubs his eyes as he gazes warily out the windshield. He's driven these tracks, from Columbus to Xenia, dozens, maybe hundreds of times over the years.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
The murder that Mary had witnessed just nine days before her death seems like an awfully big coincidence. He begins to wonder, could Mary have fled town fearing for her life? Could her entire death on the tracks somehow have been staged so that no one would go looking for her? Sheriff Bradley's becoming more convinced with every passing moment that Mary's somehow alive and living 60 miles away.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Driven by his desire to crack the case and become the hero, he clears his calendar later that week and takes a day trip to Cincinnati. He visits the bar where Mary was supposedly spotted. The place is quiet. Not yet happy hour. The bartender's cleaning mugs with a rag when Bradley steps up to the counter with his badge and a photograph of Mary. The bartender takes a good look and shakes his head.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
She's definitely not a regular. In fact, the image of Mary isn't ringing any bells. He waits around for his meeting with Mary's friend, the one that supposedly saw her here in this very bar. When she arrives, Bradley questions her. The friend tells him precisely what she told the Grimes family. Mary was here. She even points to the exact spot where they briefly spoke.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
But when Sheriff Bradley presses the friend for a way to get in touch with Mary, the friend can't help him. She has no phone number, no address for Mary, and she hasn't seen or heard from her since that night. Bradley sighs. Cincinnati, as it turns out, is looking like a dead end. But then the sheriff has another idea.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
He remembers from the case file that Mary once worked at the nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. This means that her fingerprints are on file with the FBI. He can exhume the grave that they believe to be Mary's, get a set of the body's prints, and send them to Washington. If they're a match, then he can be sure that Mary Grimes Wallace is truly dead and gone.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
In June of 1960, Sheriff Bradley obtains a court order to dig up Mary's grave. Along with the undertaker and a few cemetery workers, he walks into Silver Creek Township Cemetery in nearby Jamestown. Although it's summer, there's an unseasonably crisp chill in the air. They approach a plot marked with the name Grimes. Bradley gives the go-ahead.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
The cemetery workers plunge their shovels into the earth, and they uncover two coffins. Mary's corpse is not inside either one. After they hear the news, Mary's siblings tell Sheriff Bradley that they thought Mary was buried in a different part of the cemetery, and so they lead the sheriff to the spot where they believe she is.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
The grave site is unmarked, so the cemetery workers must use long steel rods to locate the coffin. One of the workers jabs a rod into the earth. Nothing. He pulls it out and jabs it again, just a few inches to the right. This time, it hits something beneath the ground. He gives the sheriff and the undertaker a nod. This is where the body is. They start digging.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Once the coffin comes into view, the undertaker notes that this is the exact type of coffin Mary was buried in. The sheriff has a good feeling about this, one of those tried-and-true policeman hunches. The cemetery workers pry open the coffin's lid with crowbars. The smell of death and decay wafts from inside the small wooden box. Sheriff Bradley looks inside, and he's stunned into silence.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
It's not Mary's body at all. It's the decomposing body of a man. Three coffins, three corpses. None of them Mary Grimes Wallace. Sheriff Bradley knows he can't continue digging up bodies based on a rumor. He finds himself at an impasse.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
It's a remarkably uninteresting route, so when he notices something unusual up ahead, a flash of fabric near the tracks, he's immediately on alert. As the train pushes through the morning haze, the scene comes into view. The fabric is a man's pant leg. He's walking briskly away from the tracks, as though he'd been loitering there until the train appeared.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
He can't explain why Mary's body is not in the plot marked Grimes, nor is she in the spot where her siblings believe she was laid to rest, or even how it now seems like her body has up and vanished. He's now arriving at the same realization the previous sheriff did, that the case of Mary Grimes just might drive him mad until the day he dies.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
The mystery of Mary Grimes is one of the deepest rabbit holes that I have ever been down. It's so haunting, so baffling, that people still talk about it to this day. What separates it from your typical mystery is that this isn't a case of too little evidence. It's rather a case of conflicting evidence. There are multiple answers to the question of what happened that make perfect sense.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
It makes sense that her boyfriend killed her. He had a bad temper and a gun. And there's that mysterious man seen walking away from the train tracks when the body was found. It also makes sense that Mary took her own life. Life had dealt her a bad hand. And besides, is it even possible to kill someone against their own will on train tracks without tying them down?
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
It makes sense that she was killed due to her proximity to the Lone Pine Tavern, where multiple murders took place around that time period. And like Mary, those victims were also African American. And it makes sense that she went into hiding. She witnessed a murder only nine days prior. But on the other hand, the rebuttal to any and all of these answers feels just as obviously true.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
If Mary was alive in Cincinnati, then who was the woman on the train tracks? And why did no one come looking for her? And what about the timing here? If Mary Grimes actually did escape Xenia with her life, it means a laundry list of happy accidents would have had to occur at the exact right time.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
First, a woman matching Mary's description just so happened to die the exact night Mary left town forever. Even if we allow ourselves to believe that it's no coincidence at all and that Mary somehow knew about the woman's death and used it as a cover for her own disappearance,
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Even then, we still have to believe that Mary got extraordinarily lucky again when the burial records for this unidentified woman turned out to be shoddy and the location of her grave couldn't be found. When approached from this direction, the situation begins to take the form of an unbelievable conspiracy. And yet, we still can't rule out that Mary might have fled to Cincinnati.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
A person who knew her personally not only saw Mary alive, but spoke with her. And the questions don't end there, either. Why did Sheriff Stewart claim to be so confident that a submerged Plymouth would link her case to another murder? Was he simply trying to save face? Or had he really developed a theory that hinged on something hidden inside that car?
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
And why was he so certain that a car existed when it was never actually found, neither in the quarry or anywhere else? If Mary did commit suicide, why wasn't there a note left behind? Why didn't that man at the train tracks hang around to talk to the police like the innocent bystander he supposedly was? And if Mary actually is dead, then where in the world is her body?
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Today, more than 70 years later, the story of Mary Grimes still taunts us with the impossible question it poses. How does a woman vanish from her own death? This case defies resolution. Each clue contradicts the next. Each answer opens a new door. Yet somewhere in that tangled web of fact and fiction, of memory and myth, must lie the truth.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
The man keeps his head turned away so that the engineer can't make out his face. Now, this could be because the train's headlights are so blindingly bright. Or maybe it's because the man doesn't want to be identified.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
But until we unearth more answers, it looks like the mystery of the woman on the tracks just might never be put to rest. 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 Zeth Lundy. Copy editing by Luke Baratz.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman. Mixed and mastered by Schultz Media. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beamer, and Stacey Wood. Fact-checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Colt Ocasio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Claxton Kiner and Robin Vane. Theme song by Ross Bugden.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo. I love you all, and good night. You can listen to new episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. You can also watch episodes of Late Nights with Nexpo on my YouTube channel, youtube.com slash nexpo.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Out of an abundance of caution, the engineer prepares to pull on the cord that'll sound the train's whistle, just to make absolutely sure that this man hears and sees the locomotive, even though he's no longer right next to the tracks. But before he can sound it, something else catches his eye.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
More fabric, a pile of it even, lying across the eastbound train tracks, which run directly parallel to the westbound tracks the engineer's train is currently traveling. As he draws closer, the engineer finally realizes it's not a pile of fabric at all. It's the body of a black woman, and her head, or rather, what's left of her head, is positioned squarely across one of the track's metal rails.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Evidently, an eastbound train has already passed through this morning. The engineer quickly initiates the brakes, and the deafening squeal of metal on metal echoes amongst the bare trees. As the train comes to a stop, the engineer jumps from the locomotive to the ground outside. Shivering, he rushes over to the body. He abruptly stops in his tracks once he gets near.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
A strange, animalistic sound he's never made before inadvertently escapes his lips. The scene is unthinkably gruesome. The woman's head is almost entirely decapitated from her body. The engineer turns to look for the man that was here just a few moments ago, but there's no one. He listens for footsteps, but he hears only trees creaking in the breeze, in the guttural growl of the train engine.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
The man is gone. Later that same morning, 60-year-old Ollie Grimes is in the kitchen of his small home in Xenia, taking in the morning paper. The phone rings, and somehow, deep down, Ollie knows it's about Mary before he even answers it. And calls about Mary are rarely good news. He's been worried about his 32-year-old daughter for some time. Life has been rough on Mary for these past few years.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
With all your strength, you jam the long steel rod straight downward, deep into the grassy soil. There's a muffled thud. The rod has hit something hard. Something six feet below the surface. You glance over at the sheriff. He gives you a nod. Dig it up. It takes hours to get there, but eventually, that familiar thud rings out again. The blade of your shovel has made contact.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
First, her husband deserted her and their two children. Last time Ollie heard, the deadbeat was living in Oklahoma. Then, unable to secure welfare and earning a meager weekly salary, Mary was forced to give up her two small boys and place them in children's homes. Mary works the late shift at a supper club, and that's another thing Ollie worries about.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
The Alpha Supper Club is situated in a rough part of town, near the Lone Pine, a seedy roadside tavern where illegal gambling, knife fights, and allegedly prostitution take place. Out in the back of Lone Pine, a woman was murdered some years back, and more recently, a man who worked at the tavern was beaten to death in a separate incident.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Nothing good happens in that part of town, Ollie's convinced. Not that Mary's home life is any better. She's currently living with her boyfriend, a man named William Bird, who is 13 years her senior. Bird has a wicked temper and once threatened Mary with a shotgun. Ollie's always told Mary that her boyfriend was trouble. Well, tried to, anyway. The phone lets out another ring.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Embracing himself for the worst, Ollie picks up the receiver. The voice on the other end asks for George Oliver Grimes. No one has called Ollie by his given name in years. This is gonna be bad news, alright. The voice goes on. They're calling from the Greene County Sheriff's Office.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
They believe that Ollie's daughter, Mary, was the one found earlier that morning on the train tracks just outside city limits. Xenia is a small town, so it wasn't difficult to put together an educated guess. Still, though, Ollie's presence is requested at the coroner's office to identify the body. Minutes later, Ollie Grimes is there, looking down at the mutilated corpse on the slab.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Fighting through tears and grief, he positively identifies the body as his daughter, Mary Grimes Wallace. The sight is so ghastly that he quickly looks away. It's all too much. He feels like he's going to be sick. The coroner takes his cue and covers the body back up. Once Ollie regains his composure, he turns to face the other two men in the room, the coroner and Sheriff Clarence Stewart.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Ollie asks the men how it happened. How did his daughter wind up with her head on those tracks? The men take a moment, as though formulating the right way to put it. Finally, the coroner explains that based on his examination, they're considering it a possible homicide. Ollie knows what the possible is meant to mean.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
They think Mary committed suicide by laying her head on the railroad tracks just outside of town. And Ollie can't bring himself to disagree with their theory. His daughter had not been in a good mental state for quite some time. Ollie nods sadly and informs the sheriff of an incident from nine days prior, when Mary witnessed a murder.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
It happened in an apartment in Dayton, a lover's quarrel gone horribly wrong. The sheriff knows all too well the kind of effect that sort of trauma can have on a person. He asks if Ollie could describe Mary's mental state as of late, to which Ollie admits that she's been depressed.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
He tells the sheriff about how her husband left her and how she was forced to give up her kids, both of whom she rarely saw anymore. Ollie's prepared to accept this as an open and shut case, but what the sheriff says next turns Ollie's entire world upside down.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
He mentions the eyewitness report from the train engineer that a mysterious man was seen walking away from the train tracks the moment Mary's body was discovered. When the police arrived on scene and scoured the area for any sign of him, he was gone. Ollie interrupts the sheriff. His eyes lit up with rage. As calmly as he can, he explains that he knows exactly where they can find this man.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Because there's no doubt in Ollie's mind who it is. It's Mary's boyfriend, the one with the bad temper and the loaded shotgun. Sheriff Stewart takes out his notepad and jots down the name. William Byrd. Hey, Nexpo here. As many of you know, Mr. Ballin and Ballin Studios have been a huge help in bringing this podcast to life.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
You brush away the dirt with your hands, uncovering the lid. This could definitely be the one. It's the exact style of coffin she was buried in. But then again, it's the style a lot of people around here get buried in. The sheriff is peering down at you from the edge of the hole. You receive another nod. Pry it open. There's a palpable energy in the air as you take up the crowbar.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
And if you like to believe you are something of a storytelling connoisseur, then you have to check out Mr. Ballin's podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious. Every week, Mr. Bolin weaves gripping tales of the strange, dark, and mysterious, diving into true crime, unsolved mysteries, and paranormal events that keep you on the edge of your seat.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Mr. Bolin's podcast, Strange, Dark, and Mysterious, is available on all podcast platforms, and it's free, just like ours. There are hundreds of episodes available to binge right now, with new episodes twice a week. So don't wait. Go listen to the Mr. Ballin podcast today.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
The image of Ollie Grimes' rage-filled face is all that Sheriff Stewart can think of as he makes his way to Mary's house. He knocks on the front door, and as expected, her boyfriend, William Byrd, answers. Byrd seems shocked by the news of Mary's death. He's even more shocked when the sheriff informs him that he's under arrest. Byrd insists that he's innocent.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
He says that Mary came home from work at around 3 in the morning, and which time he went to sleep. Sheriff Stewart isn't buying it, though. He's heard every excuse before. Besides, the picture Mary's father paints of Bird is one of a man capable of great violence. So, Bird is placed in a holding cell. And he waits. Weeks go by. The sheriff finds no concrete evidence linking Bird to Mary's death.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
In fact, the sheriff finds no evidence at all. The case has him bewildered and frustrated. He effectively has no other choice but to set Byrne free. Two months later, Sheriff Stewart is no closer to solving the mystery of Mary's death than he was on day one. He's failed to generate any leads. He knows he looks like a bumbling fool.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Half the town thinks he let the murderer go, and the other half thinks he's incompetent. But unbeknownst to everyone, he's recently received a tip. And that very tip has led the sheriff to develop a strange theory. He's keeping the details of this theory to himself, but he does let one detail slip out to the community.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
He now believes that there's a car submerged in the muddy water at the bottom of the quarry just outside Xenia. And inside that car is evidence that'll help him solve the Mary Grimes Wallace mystery. It's March 26th, 1954. Sheriff Stewart watches a professional diver suit up. One of the sheriff's deputies rows the diver out to the middle of the quarry. The rowboat stops.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
The diver jumps into the frigid water and begins his descent to the murky depths below. Sheriff Stewart is not alone on the shore. A crowd has gathered. Hundreds of spectators are on site. People from Xenia and surrounding towns. Mary's decapitated body is all anyone's talked about for these last two months, and so they all stand riveted, waiting for the diver to surface.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
The mystery that has plagued this town for so long is at last on the cusp of being answered. But as the lid comes off, your face falls. You know it right away. There are no answers for you here, only more questions. Because Mary Grimes is not in this coffin, and at this point, you have to wonder if she's even dead at all. January 10th, 1954.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Perhaps no one's more anxious in this moment than Sheriff Stewart. He's desperate to score a win, to avoid humiliation. He spots a reporter making his way through the crowd. The last thing he needs is some newspaper man distracting him while he's focusing on what's happening out in the quarry. The reporter approaches and asks for a statement.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
The sheriff directs the reporter to a deputy standing close by. The deputy's already been briefed by Sheriff Stewart. He knows that Stewart's strange theory must remain a secret, at least until they find more evidence. But there are some details he can offer up on the record. The deputy explains that they believe that there's an old Plymouth sedan at the bottom of the quarry.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
The sedan once belonged to a man named Robert Betts, another local African-American who was brutally murdered in 1951. After Betts was killed, his Plymouth disappeared and was never seen again. Well, until today. At least, that's the home of the Greene County Sheriff's Department. The reporter wants to know what the connection is between Robert Betts and Mary Grimes Wallace.
Late Nights with Nexpo
The Woman on the Tracks
Yet all the deputy can disclose is that Betts worked as a janitor at the Lone Pine, the Seedy Tavern next to the Supper Club, or Mary worked as a cook. He has to keep any other information under wraps. But if they find what they think they're going to find in that Plymouth, Mary's case will break wide open.
Late Nights with Nexpo
Ballen Studios Presents: A Twist of History
Hey, it's me, Nexpo. Thank you so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo. Today, we're going to dive into something different. Something that I know you're going to like. My good friends at Ballin Studios have brought to life another captivating, brand new podcast for you to listen to. one that'll completely reshape how you see the past. This isn't just history, it's history with a twist.
Late Nights with Nexpo
Ballen Studios Presents: A Twist of History
Each week, this show will peel back the layers of familiarity and reveal the hidden, often forgotten origin stories of the people, places, and things that define our world today. This isn't just talking about dates and names. These are incredibly immersive stories about the moments, the decisions, the twists that changed everything. Do you know how Hollywood came to be the movie mecca?
Late Nights with Nexpo
Ballen Studios Presents: A Twist of History
Alright, if you enjoyed that clip from A Twist of History, head over to the show and tap the follow button so you don't miss any of these incredible origin stories. New episodes come out every Wednesday.
Late Nights with Nexpo
Ballen Studios Presents: A Twist of History
Or how true crime first went viral? Or even why we don't use the metric system? These stories will not only answer these questions, but they'll blow your mind. History is never a straight line, and pretty often we can pinpoint a remarkable, thrilling twist which affects everything that follows. The show's called A Twist of History, and it's live right now.
Late Nights with Nexpo
Ballen Studios Presents: A Twist of History
I'm about to play you a clip from Episode 1 called How Murder Went Viral. After you finish listening, go follow A Twist of History wherever you get your podcasts and listen to the full episode. Enjoy.
MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
Ballen Studios Presents: Late Nights with Nexpo
Lyudmila 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.
MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
Ballen Studios Presents: Late Nights with Nexpo
What on earth, he wonders, is happening up on the mountain? The night of August 4th. On the pink, 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.
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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 tether snapped. 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.
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Finally, at dawn, Liudmila 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.
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The heavy winds continue, making it difficult to progress. Visibility is dismal. Then suddenly, at about 11 am, Sasha falls down. The other hikers help him to his feet, but soon he collapses again. He's starting to fall behind. Lyudmila hangs back to help him, telling the other hikers to go ahead. She and Sasha will catch up.
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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 treeline is beginning to feel achievable. But soon, they hear Liudmila's voice shouting from behind them. She's screaming for help.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 treeline. 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.
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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.
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She huddles into a bowl 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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, Liudmila's map, and a compass.
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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 Liudmila 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.
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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.
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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 wonder why this girl is out in the wild by herself. But what she says next answers your question and makes your blood run as cold as the river.
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After all, when there's power, there's bound to be civilization. Even though it's entirely downhill, it's an arduous journey. Her supplies wear thin fast. She eats 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.
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The thought of her home back in Kazakhstan, the thought of her family who had trusted Lyudmila to bring their little Valya 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.
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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.
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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 began 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.
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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, Aleksandr Kovidnitsky, sees her and swims to her side. Valentina has done the impossible.
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She survived. When she's rescued, she is 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 defies explanation, even to this day. August 24th, 1993. Helicopters fly over the peak of the Qamar Dabon mountain range.
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They've been searching 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.
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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 Tytran's peak.
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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.
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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.
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The leader of the search party, Yuri Golias, 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. Lyudmila herself. Yuri is familiar with Lyudmila and has long believed that she mistreated her students.
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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 Lyudmila's poor leadership contributed to the deaths of the group at Kemar Daban.
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Even further, he claimed that he wouldn't put it past Lyudmila 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 Korovinna.
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Everyone else is dead. 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 Khmar Dabon 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.
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She claims that the summit group was well fed and cared for throughout the hike, and that Lyudmila knew that they were hikers of varying experience, and so she planned for a diet of 2400 calories a day. The official cause of death for the five students is listed as hypothermia. As for Lyudmila herself, it's believed that she died of a heart attack upon seeing Sasha die before her eyes.
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But the details of the event itself defy 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?
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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.
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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.
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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? Sudden, inexplicable bleeding?
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Neither of these are symptoms of hypothermia, nor should they be contagious in the way that they seem to be among Lyudmila'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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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These sounds, while not audible to the human ear, can be felt by the cochlea and 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.
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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.
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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.
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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 de Bon, it seems, unfortunately, to have been irretrievably lost. Like the dead, the mountain keeps its secrets.
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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 Teamstroh. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman.
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Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beemer, and Stacey Wood. Fact checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Cole Locasio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Clarkston Kiner and Robin Vane. Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo.
MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
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I love you all, and good night.
MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories
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The other is led by Lyudmila 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. Lyudmila's group will be taking a high altitude route across the mountain range, before descending back down towards civilization.
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On the map, their route follows a rough arc across the mountains and back to a small lake called Lake Padovoi. They have two tents and will camp along the 40-kilometer route. While Liudmila's group takes the summit, Konstantin will guide his group along a lower altitude valley route following the river.
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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. Liudmila's route is rated a 3, which makes it a moderately difficult slope, around 35 to 45 degrees in icy.
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This requires confidence and sure footing, but it's not a grain that requires special equipment. Konstantin's route, by comparison, is a 4, which usually indicates some steep rocky sections at an incline of more than 55 degrees.
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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.
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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, Lyudmila 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.
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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.
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Liudmila and Konstantin's groups arrive at the fork in the trail. Liudmila does a quick headcount of her six students. Sasha, Dennis, Timur, Victoria, Tatiana, and Valentina. They're all here, all ready to go. The groups say goodbye for now and part ways. Following her map, Liudmila guides her summit group along a river through a nearby pass.
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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. Liudmila is relieved that the weather forecast remains accurate, as there are some inexperienced hikers in her group.
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Lyudmila, 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 hardened, 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.
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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 three 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.
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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 Camar de Bon are shifting, and it's clear it's for the worse. August 4th. Two days into the hike. Liudmila's early confidence starts to wane. The group reaches a treeless alpine zone, and here their fortunes turn. The weather sours.
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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.
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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 bring to action and begin setting up their tents in an open flat area about two miles above the treeline. It's exposed, but Liudmila reasons that they had better play it safe and not push themselves.
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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.
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Once camp is set up, they cluster into two tents for the night, one for the boys and one for the girls. Lyudmila hunkers down with Tatyana, 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.
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Also, for days, she's been growing increasingly concerned that her map of the area is inaccurate. At the summit, known as Titran'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.
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As of now, the students are shivering, but otherwise seem in good spirits. Liudmila'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.
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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.
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The small lake is the agreed-upon rendezvous point where Konstantin's valley group and Liudmila's summit group are to link back up. But there was no sign of the summit group when Konstantin 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 Korovina, Lyudmila's 16-year-old daughter.
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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 Lyudmila 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.
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When they're finished setting up the tents, she starts to wander along the lake shore, looking up at the Camar de Bon 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 are at an angle, like they've been smoothed over by an enormous comb.
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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.
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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.
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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 mood begins to shift, and concern sets in.
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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.
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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.
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She tries to tell herself that she's just being silly, that her mother's group is so late simply because Liudmila 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 3 hike after all, and they don't need special gear.
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Siberia, August 1993 The river is freezing cold. Snow melts from the Camar de Bon 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.
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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.
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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.
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Lyudmila 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. Konstantin'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.
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What on earth, he wonders, is happening up on the mountain? The night of August 4th. On the pink, 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.
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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 tether snapped. 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.
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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.
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The heavy winds continue, making it difficult to progress. Visibility is dismal. Then suddenly, at about 11 a.m., Sasha falls down. The other hikers help him to his feet, but soon he collapses again. He's starting to fall behind. Lyudmila hangs back to help him, telling the other hikers to go ahead, she and Sasha will catch up.
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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 treeline is beginning to feel achievable. But soon, they hear Liudmila's voice shouting from behind them. She's screaming for help.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 treeline. 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.
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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.
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She huddles into a bowl 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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, Liudmila's map, and a compass.
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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 wonder why this girl is out in the wild by herself. But what she says next answers your question and makes your blood run as cold as the river.
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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 Liudmila 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.
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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.
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After all, when there's power, there's bound to be civilization. Even though it's entirely downhill, it's an arduous journey. Her supplies wear thin fast. She eats 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.
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The thought of her home back in Kazakhstan, the thought of her family who had trusted Lyudmila to bring their little Valya 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.
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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.
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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 began 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.
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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.
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She survived. When she's rescued, she is 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 defies explanation, even to this day. August 24th, 1993. Helicopters fly over the peak of the Qamar Dabon mountain range.
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They've been searching 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.
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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 Tytran's peak.
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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.
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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.
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Everyone else is dead. 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.
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The leader of the search party, Yuri Golias, 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. Lyudmila herself. Yuri is familiar with Lyudmila and has long believed that she mistreated her students.
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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 Lyudmila's poor leadership contributed to the deaths of the group at Kemar Daban.
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Even further, he claimed that he wouldn't put it past Lyudmila 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 Korovinna.
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She claims that the summit group was well fed and cared for throughout the hike, and that Lyudmila knew that they were hikers of varying experience, and so she planned for a diet of 2400 calories a day. The official cause of death for the five students is listed as hypothermia. As for Lyudmila herself, it's believed that she died of a heart attack upon seeing Sasha die before her eyes.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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? Sudden, inexplicable bleeding?
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Neither of these are symptoms of hypothermia, nor should they be contagious in the way that they seem to be among Lyudmila'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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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These sounds, while not audible to the human ear, can be felt by the cochlea and 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.
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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.
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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.
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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 de Bon, it seems, unfortunately, to have been irretrievably lost. Like the dead, the mountain keeps its secrets.
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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 Teamstro. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman.
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Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beemer, and Stacey Wood. Fact checking by Abigail Shumway. Production supervision by Jeremy Bone and Cole Bocasio. Production coordination by Samantha Collins and Avery Siegel. Artwork by Jessica Clarkston Kiner and Robin Vane. Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo.
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I love you all, and good night.
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The other is led by Lyudmila 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. Lyudmila's group will be taking a high altitude route across the mountain range, before descending back down towards civilization.
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On the map, their route follows a rough arc across the mountains and back to a small lake called Lake Padovoi. They have two tents and will camp along the 40-kilometer route. While Liudmila's group takes the summit, Konstantin will guide his group along a lower altitude valley route following the river.
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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. Liudmila's route is rated a 3, which makes it a moderately difficult slope, around 35 to 45 degrees in icy.
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This requires confidence and sure footing, but it's not a grain that requires special equipment. Konstantin's route, by comparison, is a 4, which usually indicates some steep rocky sections at an incline of more than 55 degrees.
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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.
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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, Lyudmila 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.
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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.
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Liudmila and Konstantin's groups arrive at the fork in the trail. Liudmila does a quick headcount of her six students. Sasha, Dennis, Timur, Victoria, Tatiana, and Valentina. They're all here, all ready to go. The groups say goodbye for now and part ways. Following her map, Liudmila guides her summit group along a river through a nearby pass.
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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. Lyudmila is relieved that the weather forecast remains accurate, as there are some inexperienced hikers in her group.
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Lyudmila, 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 hardened, 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.
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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 three 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.
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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 Camar de Bon are shifting, and it's clear it's for the worse. August 4th. Two days into the hike. Liudmila's early confidence starts to wane. The group reaches a treeless alpine zone, and here their fortunes turn. The weather sours.
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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.
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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 bring to action and begin setting up their tents in an open flat area about two miles above the treeline. It's exposed, but Liudmila reasons that they had better play it safe and not push themselves.
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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 this 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.
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Once camp is set up, they cluster into two tents for the night, one for the boys and one for the girls. Lyudmila hunkers down with Tatyana, 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.
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Also, for days, she's been growing increasingly concerned that her map of the area is inaccurate. At the summit, known as Titran'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.
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As of now, the students are shivering, but otherwise seem in good spirits. Liudmila'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.
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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.
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The small lake is the agreed-upon rendezvous point where Konstantin's valley group and Liudmila's summit group are to link back up. But there was no sign of the summit group when Konstantin 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 Korovina, Lyudmila's 16-year-old daughter.
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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 Lyudmila 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.
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When they're finished setting up the tents, she starts to wander along the lake shore, looking up at the Camar de Bon 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 are at an angle, like they've been smoothed over by an enormous comb.
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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.
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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.
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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 mood begins to shift, and concern sets in.
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Siberia, August 1993. 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.
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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.
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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.
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She tries to tell herself that she's just being silly, that her mother's group is so late simply because Liudmila 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 3 hike after all, and they don't need special gear.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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On the pink, 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.
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At this elevation, there's no tree cover, no protection from the storm. Their tents are no match for the relentless wind. And four in the morning, the tether snapped. 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.
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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.
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The heavy winds continue, making it difficult to progress. Visibility is dismal. Then suddenly, at about 11 am, Sasha falls down. The other hikers help him to his feet, but soon he collapses again. He's starting to fall behind. Lyudmila hangs back to help him, telling the other hikers to go ahead, she and Sasha will catch up.
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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 treeline is beginning to feel achievable. But soon, they hear Liudmila's voice shouting from behind them. She's screaming for help.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 treeline. 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.
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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.
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She huddles into a bowl 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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, Liudmila's map, and a compass.
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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 wonder why this girl is out in the wild by herself. But what she says next answers your question and makes your blood run as cold as the river.
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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 Liudmila 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.
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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.
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After all, when there's power, there's bound to be civilization. Even though it's entirely downhill, it's an arduous journey. Her supplies wear thin fast. She eats 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.
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The thought of her home back in Kazakhstan, the thought of her family who had trusted Lyudmila to bring their little Valya 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.
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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.
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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 began 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.
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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.
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She survived. When she's rescued, she is 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 defies explanation, even to this day. August 24th, 1993. Helicopters fly over the peak of the Qamar Dabon mountain range.
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They've been searching 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.
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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 Tytran's peak.
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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.
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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.
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The leader of the search party, Yuri Golias, 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. Lyudmila herself. Yuri is familiar with Lyudmila and has long believed that she mistreated her students.
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Everyone else is dead. a week earlier, August 2, 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 Khmar Dabon 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.
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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 Lyudmila's poor leadership contributed to the deaths of the group at Kemondaban.
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Even further, he claimed that he wouldn't put it past Lyudmila 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 Korovinna.
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She claims that the summit group was well fed and cared for throughout the hike, and that Lyudmila knew that they were hikers of varying experience, and so she planned for a diet of 2400 calories a day. The official cause of death for the five students is listed as hypothermia. As for Lyudmila herself, it's believed that she died of a heart attack upon seeing Sasha die before her eyes.
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But the details of the event itself defy 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?
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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.
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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.
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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? Sudden, inexplicable bleeding?
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Neither of these are symptoms of hypothermia, nor should they be contagious in the way that they seem to be among Lyudmila'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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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These sounds, while not audible to the human ear, can be felt by the cochlea and 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.
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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.
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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.
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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 de Bon, it seems, unfortunately, to have been irretrievably lost. Like the dead, the mountain keeps its secrets.
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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 Teamstro. Copy editing by Luke Baratz. Audio editing and sound design by Alistair Sherman.
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Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain. Research by Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Evan Beemer, 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 Jessica Clarkston Kiner and Robin Vane. Thank you all so much for listening to Late Nights with Nexpo.
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I love you all and good night.
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The other is led by Lyudmila 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. Lyudmila's group will be taking a high altitude route across the mountain range, before descending back down towards civilization.
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On the map, their route follows a rough arc across the mountains and back to a small lake called Lake Padovoi. They have two tents and will camp along the 40 km route. While Liudmila'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.
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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. Liudmila's route is rated a 3, which makes it a moderately difficult slope, around 35 to 45 degrees in icy. This requires confidence and sure footing, but it's not a grain that requires special equipment.
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Konstantin'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.
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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, Lyudmila contacted local weather monitoring stations ahead of time.
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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.
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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. Liudmila and Konstantin's groups arrive at the fork in the trail. Liudmila does a quick headcount of her six students. Sasha, Dennis, Timur, Victoria, Tatiana, and Valentina. They're all here, all ready to go.
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The groups say goodbye for now and 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.
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Liudmila is relieved that the weather forecast remains accurate, as there are some inexperienced hikers in her group. Lyudmila, 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 hardened, a survivalist drill sergeant for her students, pushing them to their limits.
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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 three hike, a major milestone of any aspiring mountaineer.
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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 Camar de Bon are shifting, and it's clear it's for the worse. August 4th. Two days into the hike.
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Liudmila'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.
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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 bring to action and begin setting up their tents in an open flat area about two miles above the treeline.
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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.
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It's rich in minerals and nutrients, a perfect supplement to their cache of supplies. Once camp is set up, they cluster into two tents for the night, one for the boys and one for the girls. Lyudmila hunkers down with Tatyana, Victoria and Valentina, trying their best to stay warm. Outside, the temperature plummets and the rain turns to snow.
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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 Titran's Peak, there would be a sturdy structure and firewood waiting for them, but Liudmila can't tell how close they are to it.
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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. Lyudmila'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.
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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.
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On August 5th, they arrive at Lake Padovoy, right on schedule. The small lake is the agreed-upon rendezvous point where Konstantin's valley group and Liudmila's summit group are to link back up. But there was no sign of the summit group when Konstantin arrives. So he tells his students to unshoulder their packs and relax a while. They can wait.
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One of the members of this party is Natalia Korovina, Lyudmila'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 Lyudmila 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.
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When they're finished setting up the tents, she starts to wander along the lake shore, looking up at the Camar de Bon 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 are at an angle, like they've been smoothed over by an enormous comb.
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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.
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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.
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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 mood begins to shift, and concern sets in.
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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.
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Siberia, August 1993. 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.
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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.
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She tries to tell herself that she's just being silly, that her mother's group is so late simply because Liudmila is being cautious about the weather. But after 48 hours, these excuses ring more and more hollow. At breakfast, she tells Konstantin about her dream. She pleads with him to go back up the mountain and search. It is a grade 3 hike after all, and they don't need special gear.
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Konstantin 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 Lyudmila, 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.
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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. Lyudmila even has train tickets for the whole group. Natalia doesn't know what to do.