Climbers all over the world still remember with shudder what happened 27 years ago on one of the seven-thousanders of the Pamirs. Then a giant avalanche in a matter of seconds swept away the parking lot of an international mountaineering group, burying 43 people under a layer of snow and ice.
In scale, this tragedy is comparable only to the death of 56 climbers after the eruption of the Japanese volcano Ontake in September 2014. Then the element claimed the lives of 56 climbers.
What caused the avalanche
The main version of the cause of the tragedy is the consequences of a seven-point earthquake in northern Afghanistan, possibly provoked by the test explosion of a Chinese atomic bomb. As a result of vibrations of the earth's crust, which first reached the Kyrgyz Osh, and then to the mountains located in the Altai Valley, an avalanche descended from the highest peak of the Trans-Altai ridge.
International ascent
The group of climbers who climbed on Black Friday, July 13, 1990, included Czechs, Swedes, Israelis, and Spaniards. The main backbone was a team of 23 Leningraders under the leadership of Honored Master of Sports Leonid Troshchinenko. The exact number of members of the group varies: one sources say that 43 people died, others that the group itself consisted of 43, and 40 remained under the debris of snow and ice. Such a statistical discrepancy appeared, apparently, due to the fact that not all climbers registered before climbing to the top.
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The death of the camp in the "frying pan"
On the eve of the ascent to the summit (7134 m), there was a heavy snowfall. The surviving climbers believe that if it were not for these precipitations, perhaps the consequences of the avalanche would have been less tragic. A group of climbers set up a camp at an altitude of 5200 m, on a site called climbers because of its "frying pan" shape. In the morning she was going to conquer the summit of the seven-thousander.
The avalanche descended from a height of over 6000 m - it was millions of tons of snow and ice, the front of the elements reached one and a half kilometers in width. Most of the climbers sleeping in the tent camp died.
The details of what happened in most media are known from the words of the surviving climber Alexei Koren. The man was thrown out of the sleeping bag by an avalanche, carried out of the tent, torn apart by the shock wave, and several hundred meters wire in a snow-ice whirlwind.
Three Englishmen also survived, who did not reach the camp and pitched tents below the "frying pan".
The root was dug out of the avalanche drift of the living Slovak Miro Grozman. Together they began to descend. Grozman was exhausted, and Root went alone until he came across the rescuers. After some time, a Slovak came out to the rescuers. Grozman, who reported that the camp was destroyed by an avalanche, was mistaken for an abnormal. But the British approached, whose parking was higher than the "frying pan", confirmed this - they themselves observed the moment of the disaster.
Rescue expedition
Several climbers miraculously managed to escape - Vasily Balyberdin and Boris Sitnik rose above the "frying pan". And Sitnik's bride, Elena Eremina, who returned to the camp, died along with the others. Some of those who were supposed to take part in the ascent were not allowed to do so by circumstances, sometimes mystical. Sergei Golubtsov, for example, rubbed his feet with new climbing boots and simply did not get to the "frying pan".
Under the debris of the avalanche, the bodies of only a few of those who died were found. Search and rescue work was paid for by the USSR State Committee for Sports, which allocated 50,000 rubles for this purpose. They searched with the help of a Mi-8 helicopter, magnetometers, ultrasonic devices, locators, search dogs and even a rooster that could find a living person under a snow block. But the multi-meter thickness of snow and ice hid the bodies of dozens of climbers for many years.
For 27 years, the glacier moved down and melted. In 2009, expeditions to Lenin Peak began to collect the remains of the dead. Some people manage to be identified, but most do not - the bodies are mummified beyond recognition.
At the foot of Lenin Peak, there is a memorial plate with the names of those killed in 1990.