What is more terrifying?

So, they're Russian, what else did you expect?

But it turns out that's not what happened. According to news reports, the situation looked shocking: tourists abandoned their friend in the mountains so they could catch their flight. The guy injured his leg and couldn't walk. The so-called "friends" didn't want to lose money and simply left their companion alone in the harsh Siberian wilderness... This story is like a textbook "Song of a Friend," but as they say, even Vysotsky wouldn't have imagined something like this... Thousands of reposts on social media and condemning comments. And rightly so! They valued a human life at the cost of an Abakan-Moscow plane ticket. And not just any human life! But the life of a friend, with whom they went hiking in the mountains – an unimaginable situation for experienced tourists. "Komsomolskaya Pravda" tracked down the heroes of this story. It turned out that the events actually unfolded quite differently. HE WENT TO THE MOUNTAINS ALONE It all happened in Ergaki (a natural park in the Krasnoyarsk Territory) on Saturday, August 27. Rescuers were called by the abandoned man's mother: everyone had returned to Moscow (the group of tourists was from the capital), but her son had not. This is how the incident became known. A day later, help arrived for the injured man... There is a serious "inaccuracy" in hundreds of news reports from the media. It is not known where the misinformation came from, but 37-year-old Denis Gavrilkin, who is the subject of the reports, went to the mountains alone. In Ergaki, he set up a base camp and made "radial" trips from there. The area is a mid-mountain range, 1600 meters above sea level... During one of these trips, an incident occurred. He slipped on a rock and dislocated his leg. Denis met four tourists from a completely different group. They helped him. Soon, he met four tourists from a completely different group. They helped him by giving him elastic bandages and a phone, which Denis used to contact his mother. His mobile operator had no signal, but she contacted the rescuers. The acquaintances helped Denis descend to the popular Lake Svetloe, where the injured man could rest, and perhaps his leg would heal – they hoped that the injury was not serious. But his leg began to swell. More and more. "It wasn't as harsh as it was presented. They took him to the base camp at Lake Svetloe. And they decided to leave him there and leave themselves," said one of the rescuers involved in the operation. "The camp, organized for tourists by a local entrepreneur, consists of wooden platforms, tents, and a park ranger is on duty there. It's warm, there's food, medicine, and many people. It's not true that the injured man was abandoned, alone, in a cave with a bear." Nothing threatened him. Denis's mother raised the alarm. The group that helped Denis actually left for Abakan to fly home. Well, why shouldn't they? Meanwhile, rescuers, who received a call from Denis's mother, set out to help. "It took about three hours to reach the injured man," Alexander Mokhirev, head of the search and rescue unit, told Komsomolskaya Pravda - Krasnoyarsk. "It's not a trail in the park; it's a mountain hiking trail with its own elevation and difficulty. There were three of us. We didn't evacuate him on a stretcher – that's an option for more serious cases; we took him by the arms and walked. The whole operation took 9 hours – from the moment we left to the moment we returned. He was completely calm." Denis was evacuated to the "Sleeping Sayan" tourist base, and he refused medical assistance. He decided to continue on his own by bus. The base is located 625 kilometers along the R-57 Abakan – Kyzyl highway.