The fatal "thirty"
Route No. 30, "Through the Mountains to the Sea," was one of the most popular and widely traveled routes in the USSR. It began in the village of Guzeripl in Adygea, passed through the Lagonakia Plateau, and ended on the coast in Dagomys. The route was considered easy (category 1 difficulty) and was accessible even to tourists without special training. Thousands of people completed it every summer.
The death of more than twenty people on the route on September 11, 1975, became the largest tragedy in the history of Soviet hiking tourism—and also prompted a revision of safety regulations for tourist groups.
Read our cards to find out how this happened.
On September 9, 1975, a planned group of 53 people set out on the route. The weather was warm and sunny. The participants wore light summer clothing—shorts, T-shirts, and sneakers. Many lacked warm clothing or waterproof jackets. The group was led by young guides and instructors who lacked experience in extreme situations.
2. On the night of September 10-11, the weather took a sharp turn for the worse. A powerful Arctic cyclone struck the Caucasus Mountains. Drizzle turned to downpour, and as they ascended the Guzeripl Pass, the temperature dropped below freezing and a violent snowstorm began. Within hours, the mountain trails were covered in deep snow. The lightly dressed hikers were soaked to the skin, and the onset of frost turned their clothes into an icy crust.
3: Panic broke out among the tourists, and the guides lost control of the group. The group broke up into several small groups. Some, led by experienced members, tried to descend back into the forest to the fire, while others rushed forward over the pass, hoping to reach the "Armyansky" shelter faster. People abandoned heavy backpacks with tents and sleeping bags, tripped, and fell into snowdrifts.
4. Some hikers, thanks to mutual assistance, managed to reach a forested area where they could find shelter from the wind and build a fire. They shared their last dry clothes and supported the weak. However, those left on the exposed ridge or disoriented in the snowstorm quickly succumbed to hypothermia. People simply fell asleep in the snow from exhaustion and never woke up.
5. When the storm began to subside on the morning of September 11, a horrific scene unfolded before the survivors. The frozen bodies of the expedition members lay strewn across the mountain slopes and in the gullies. Of the 53 men, 21 had died. Most died from hypothermia and exhaustion.
The rescue operation began as soon as the surviving hikers reached the nearest shelter and reported the incident. Rescue services, mountain climbers, forest rangers, and civilian helicopters were deployed to search for the missing.
6. Rescuers managed to locate and evacuate the survivors, many of whom suffered frostbite and severe shock. All the bodies of the deceased were recovered and brought down for identification and delivery to relatives.
News of the tragedy was kept under wraps in the Soviet press for a long time, but the scale of the search and rescue efforts and the number of casualties made it impossible to completely conceal the incident.
7. The main causes of the tragedy were named:
🔸Negligence of service - people were allowed on the route without basic equipment;
🔸low qualification of instructors;
🔸the carelessness of the tourist center management, who ignored the storm warning.
8. The tourist center's managers were held criminally liable. Serious disciplinary actions and dismissals affected the management of tourist and excursion organizations in Adygea and the Krasnodar Territory.
Equipment requirements for teams were tightened. Instructors were required to undergo psychological and rescue training. New intermediate shelters and rescue stations were installed along Route 30.
