Parts of
https://www.kp.ru/daily/26859/3901807/


ПРОСТО БЫЛО ОЧЕНЬ ХОЛОДНО
 IT WAS JUST VERY COLD

Valentina's family - she, her husband and two sons - live in two small rooms. Everything is clean and tidy. You can feel a woman's firm hand.

- It happened on the fifth day of the trek,’ Valentina began the conversation. - Everything had been normal until then. Korovina had made a request to the weather station in advance, and she was assured that the weather would be good. That's why three groups of us went out on the routes. Nobody expected that the weather would change to cold and rains... Landslides started.

- All the groups are from Kazakhstan?

- Yes, from Petropavlovsk. The main route was carried out by a group with Korovina's daughter Natasha. She was 16 years old then, and she was the leader. Our task was to insure her group. If something happened, we would come to help.

- Did you have radios?

- No. But our routes had several points of intersection.

- Can you remember the route from a map?

- I don't think so, it's been years.

- Was it a difficult route?

- No, easy.

- How many times a day did you eat?

- Four times a day for sure. Always hot food. We made a fire, cooked. Besides that, we had snacks on the breaks. We had cereals, milk powder, breadcrumbs, stew, carrots, beetroot, onions, candies, chocolates... I think the calculation was based on 2400 kilocalories per person per day.

- They say that you were travelling through the mountains where there is no forest, so you cooked on primus. And they say you can't cook much on them.

- I don't remember primus. We used to go down to the forest and make fires. (In August 1993, Valya wrote in her explanatory note that they cooked food on primuses. - Auth.) It was my third hike with Lyudmila Korovina. First we went near Petropavlovsk, then to the Tien-Shan. Lyudmila Ivanovna taught drawing, drawing and physical education. I studied on two specialities - the teacher of school labour and the instructor of school tourism, that's why I found myself in a tourist club.

- What kind of person was Korovina?

- Oh! She was a bright woman. Tall, slim and beautiful. Curls, some kind of bow with a flower or something. Extravagant, always well groomed.

- Married?

- No, she raised her daughter alone.

LIKE IN A HORROR FILM

- There's a theory that she's responsible for the boys' deaths.

- No way! It was very cold at the summit. It was early morning. We were asleep. Korovina woke us up, told us to pack up and go down into the gorge. She tried to save us. She just didn't have time. The wind was so strong that we were sliding down instead of walking. Suddenly Sasha fell. He was foaming at the mouth. Korovina sat down next to him, hugged him, and that was it. She never got up again. And such a madhouse began. And I still don't understand how long it lasted. It was like a horror film. Everyone falls, everyone is bleeding, foaming at the mouth, nosebleeds.
- How did you get saved?

- Denis Shvachkin saved me. He kicked me and said, ‘Crawl down.’ I crawled down. He didn't make it. I crawled into my sleeping bag and fell asleep. Or not sleep, but oblivion. I don't know. I woke up in the morning. I went upstairs.

- Did you hope someone was alive?

- No. I saw they were all dead. I went upstairs to get the map and compass. I also closed everyone's eyes. I don't know how I got to the Snowy River. I remember I saw the power poles and followed them. I guess I wasn't completely crazy by then. It was like someone was leading me the whole time.

- Who? There were some strange rumours that special services were leading me...

- (Smiles.) Guardian angel. I survived with God's help.

- How long did it take you to walk?

- They died on the 5th of August, and the watermen picked me up on the 9th. That makes four days. I remember standing on the bank, and catamarans were sailing down the river.

- Tourist Kvitnitsky, who picked you up, told me that you washed yourself in the river and washed your clothes.

- I don't know, maybe I really did that. But I remember that I washed up much later, when we were rafting together. I remember they were stunned to see me in such a taiga hole. They docked, started asking questions. I was hysterical. They started giving me valerian and corvalol. I remember frying tortillas for them on the kettle lid. Water, flour, salt. Now it's called lavash, but at that time there were no lavash.

- Why do you think they died?

- I think it was pulmonary oedema. It fits the symptoms - foaming, bloody mouth, crazy.

- What happened when you got home?

- I got a lift from Kiev to Petropavlovsk. I didn't say anything to my parents. I kept quiet. Although they saw that I was blacker than a cloud. And then someone congratulated them on my second birthday. So they pressed me: ‘Don't you want to tell us anything? And I just burst into tears - I told them everything as it was, and they cried. After that, my arms, legs and back collapsed at once. I was in hospital for a month or two. I also didn't eat for a long time. I didn't want to. But they cured me, put me on my feet.

- Why did you leave Kazakhstan?

- Life happened that way. There was no work.

- Valya, why do you think you survived?

- I grew up in the countryside. Always on the farm. We did the hardest work there from a young age. Grazing cattle, haymaking, and travelling to the woodshed for firewood. From the 4th grade I was engaged in cross-country skiing. I was always hardy, not afraid of difficulties and physical exertion. Probably, that's why.



FINAL VERDICT.

It was hypothermia. But why protein dystrophy?

In 1993 Buryat forensic experts established at autopsy that all the tourists died of hypothermia. Here is how Konstantin Yugov, head of the Forensic Medical Examination Bureau of the Republic of Buryatia, told about it: ‘When we received six corpses of tourists for examination, we set a task for the expertise - to identify the cause of death. Firstly, could they have died of hypothermia? Secondly, could they have been poisoned by something? Thirdly, were there any injuries on the bodies?

We first scrutinised the conditions under which this tragedy occurred. We had to determine what could have killed the hikers. It was high in the mountains with low temperatures and heavy rain. Plus a lot of physical exertion and oxygen deprivation. In such conditions, death can come quickly. There have been cases of people dying of hypothermia within two hours under similar circumstances. Autopsies have shown signs of general body cooling. There was a lack of nutrients in the muscles. And this gave reason to diagnose hypothermia. In addition, the experts revealed in the dead people pulmonary oedema and changes in the heart, liver and lungs, characteristic of protein dystrophy. This only indirectly allows us to say that they could have starved.

POSTSCRIPTUM.

I still don't have an answer to a few questions. Why did six tourists die in a matter of minutes?

Why did people of different physical endurance, who had been acclimatised in the high mountains for 4 days, drop dead?

Where did protein dystrophy come from, if, according to Valentina, the whole group had eaten well during the trek?

In the near future with the help of experts I will try to find answers.