Creepy case of missing skiers - Russian

[hollister]

Make sure you have the lights on and curtains closed before reading this story!

The Deadly Case of 9 Fleeing Skiers
By Svetlana Osadchuk
Staff Writer

Nine experienced cross-country skiers hurriedly left their tent on a Urals slope in the middle of the night, casting aside skis, food and their warm coats.

Clad in their sleepwear, the young people dashed headlong down a snowy slope toward a thick forest, where they stood no chance of surviving bitter temperatures of around minus 30 degrees Celsius.

Baffled investigators said the group died as a result of "a compelling unknown force" -- and then abruptly closed the case and filed it as top secret.

The deaths, which occurred 49 years ago on Saturday, remain one of the deepest mysteries in the Urals. Records related to the incident were unsealed in the early 1990s, but friends of those who died are still searching for answers.

More at:/www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2008/02/04/004.html

[rdywenur]

Abominable snowman.............Big Foot........ Or a giant bear.

[nathanael]

I do not find this mysterious at all. What happened there was a gross miscalculation, probably under the influence of vodka. I have been involved in something similar in Alaska. The temperature was not minus 30 C, but only minus 20 (68 Farenheit). My car lost battery and I tried to start it for about one hour, while sitting in the frozen cabin. Being lightly dressed, my body temperature dropped to the level of hypothermia. I knew that there was an open post office a kilometer away (the lights were on). I figured that I have to run, or die. It was a less than three minute run. Soon I started, the breeze began to freeze my skin. By the first minute, I felt excruciating pain all over my body. Miraculously I made it to the post office, by hitting myself frantically all over with my hands. That was sheer survival instinct. I knew there was no other way (I wasn't impaired by vodka). Now suppose that the temperature was 30 C, and I was sweating under the warm coat. Then, I discarded the coat, and started running uphill. In the three minutes, I would be sweating even more profusely ... and freezing simultaneously because of the external breeze, and the temperatures now high above 30 minus C (the windshield effect). I was too drunk to remember that I must hit my body. By the time I would get to the forest, I would be a block of ice ... with no chance of return! This, I think, is what happened to those cross-country skiers.