The year: 1959....the place: frozen Siberian mountains

when 22 year old university student Zinaida Kolmogoriva, (who went by Zina), sat scribbling away in her diary while snow flurries zipped against the window of her train car. Eight of her very best friends in the world (and a friendly newcomer named Sasha) sat bundled up around her, and everyone was buzzing with excitement. They were all part of the most accomplished hiking club at Sverdlovsk’s Ural Polytechnic Institute in Russia, and they had spent months carefully preparing to take on their biggest adventure yet. A hike…..covering one. hundred. and. eighty . six. miles. of rugged, sparsely habited terrain deep in the heart of the Ural Mountains…. in the dead of winter. As in—they were expected to encounter negative 25 degrees Fahrenheit dead. You campers can already guess how ...