Yeti- The Ecology of a Mystery

by Daniel C Taylor

  Should I pull out of my pocket the language of food?

  People are afraid of the Yeti. But why? There is no evidence that it is dangerous—and so no reason to fear. Like other primates, might the Yeti even have a sense of humour and reply to my question, ‘We beasts are the apparition humans see when you link an unsuccessful mountaineer with a giant ego’.

  Human brains have been evolving, that aspect that allowed us to become sapiens and wise, kept coming up with ideas. Evolution was underway, but until language arrived, nothing showed collective wisdom of those ideas. Geniuses will have existed. But then something happened to us as a species. Being able to communicate to a Yeti might shed some understanding. For in our evolution suddenly a lot of evidence appears of human minds at work: tools, houses, agriculture. Language must have been what changed a solitary genius. Language is about connection, like dancing fingers of ideas, the expression of people controlling the processes of living. From my sleeping bag I look at the distant light above.

  If the Yeti has eluded for so long, it must have communication—at least among its kind, if not also understanding us. It has to have had a language beyond yowls across the valleys. It therefore cannot be a prehistoric hominoid, certainly not Gigantopithecus, which separated from Homo sapiens a million years ago and had weak language; probably it is not even Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon. A Yeti successful in its hiding must be one of us, or much like us. In the fire beyond proof may be glowing that I am among my own kind, whatever our group might be.

  The morning shows night was not a dream. The tripod stick points to a diminutive cave that to my binoculars appears empty. It takes two hours to reach the ledge on which it sits, maybe 300 feet above the valley floor. A screen of bushes partially hides the opening on a shelf of up-sloping ground. On it are three old fire scars. In each are loose ashes. But from one smoke thinly spirals. As with bipedal walking, fire signatures what only our kind makes.

  The smoke’s rising filigree loosens as the spiral expands; hair-like wisps float apart, disappearing at the roof of the ledge. Is this fire’s maker near? I look to the ash, for ashes carry traces of our ancestors’ fires across the ages. Ash can lay inert for millennia, holding its story of once providing warmth and maybe food. (It was carbon dating of ashes found in Barun soil that proved people have been in the Barun for more than two centuries.) But the story told here with the rising filigree is more than ashes.

  I remember other smoke curling in the Barun—when John Craighead and I were at Saldima, and it was rising beyond the waterfall. We wondered whether those wisps were mist from the hidden lake. Then my eyes see a different residue: a footprint in this cave. My hand touches it; it is human and huge.

  The Yeti is a wild animal. I have proven it a bear. Might this print that is clearly human be made by a people who have cut themselves off from society? Such recluses could, as they needed, rejoin with people, bringing harvests, going to Khandbari to sell and buy. Living in the wilds their feet would become splayed like the print before me, capable of crossing high passes and walking snowfields. The message before me speaks in duality: In this shelter, last night both fire and footprint were signed.

  Outside are no other signs. I could remain here and hope the being returns. But the traces, only three sometimes-used fire scars, two with three stones, show those who were here come occasionally. Going from where, to where? The solitary footprint speaks of one being. For what I seek, there must be a colony. The being that was here may have been headed to its colony. Or, it may have been simply one human passing, as have travellers across time.

  Today I am on foot, but I have also flown over the Barun by helicopter. This drainage is all jungle, alpine meadows, or summits. No sanctuaries show from the air—except maybe behind Saldima. Possibly the traveller heads there. That was where I was headed, sedge and grass studying on the way. Could the long slope behind the lake shown on satellite images allow entry into Tibet with the uninhabited lush Gama Valley as a food source?

  To reach there from here, two high ridges must be crossed. One option is to descend to where Barun waters meet the Mangrwa, and then go up the Mangrwa to Saldima. Lendoop says that river has no trail. However, Pasang’s son, Tashi, learned of the smuggler’s route that goes over the two ridges. Modest profit can be had sneaking supplies across the border—from India pots and pans, spices and foodstuffs, even water buffalo skins. Once in Tibet, the trip back brings manufacturing from China, sneakers, cloth, porcelain, tape recorders, and detergent, and from Tibet brick tea, dried meat, cheese, and stud bull yaks. Such are the acknowledged trade goods.

  Profit comes from savings in bribes not paid at formal borders. Second-guessing demand is complex when the commodities range from yaks to detergent. Success comes from starting with reliable, low-price suppliers and ending with quick-moving, closed-mouth buyers. Routes must handle the traffic with little breakage. The Himalaya stops high-soaring rain; its low points are easily patrolled. But one unwatched route passes through the Barun; beginning in Nepal on trails far from police checkposts in western Sankhuwasabha district. After the snow melts, the route crosses Shipton’s Pass into the upper Barun, then somewhere through the jungle around me leads to the Saldima meadows, and over a 15,000-foot pass into China’s uninhabited Gama Valley. From an entrepôt named Sakyathang, word goes of the smugglers’ arrival. The middlemen of Kharta come by one of three passes to take the merchandise to Shegar, Tingri, Lhasa, even the heartland of China.

  With today now half gone, I must find that trail. If I do not, I’ll have to make my own trail across perhaps a 4,000-foot climb, probably requiring a bivouac before the top, and there’s always the further unknown: the weather of Everest. I climb the first 2,000 feet in three hours bushwhacking through rhododendron. A trickle from under a rock may be the last water. Reclining to let the water absorb, accompanied by a handful of peanuts and raisins with dry grape-nuts, I watch clouds race above. Might a storm be coming? If so, it would be wise to descend to a lower altitude. Where? Everest storms close Shipton’s Pass. As I think, memories are pulled off the shelf of life, breaks from prior climbs, where a partner smiled as we’d completed a hard pitch, where one bite from a snack opened flavours of distant worlds, views remembered answer the reason for climbing.

  Starting climbing again, there is still no sign of a trail. Cliffs on both sides, though, speak of the wisdom of this route that appears to be a cut through the otherwise sheer wall breaking the upthrust Himalaya. Above, a treeline of scruff rhododendron looks to be easier walking. Then in from the left I come upon a line of worn rocks and slightly packed soil, a gentle contour cut by men and slipping hooves.

  A trail mysterious discovered is the gathering of footfalls familiar to those who made them … but oft an enigma to us who follow, who wonder about those who walked before. Unlike roads in the ‘civilized world’ constructed by others, Himalayan trails grow from the work of all. Porters move stones to build a stair for the next weary leg. Herders place poles on trail sides for their animals. Even smugglers, I now find, work on their trails. Walking on this layering of feet that went before, the distance remaining to the pass is covered quickly, and the total ascent turns out to be only 3,000 feet.

  At the top, nowhere are prayer flags or ropes that once held them telling that the people who use this route must be Hindus not Buddhists. But two cairns attest to the recognition all Himalayan peoples feel who cross from one valley to another, recognizing each valley holds its spirits, for cairns sign a blessing for safe crossing. An old woman once told me as we rested side-by-side at a pass: going through a pass is like being reborn from one life world into a next. Energies rush through like the wind, then opening to the world you’re entering. To celebrate this birthing, she said, is the reason for the cairns; they are grateful prayers lifted one stone upon another.

  Since our son, Luke Cairn, was born, I pause at each pass, not just to add stone to existing cairn as before, but also to start a new one. No one walks alone. If we all did not have fa
mily, we would not be here. Life comes from life travellers before, and it will be carried by those who follow. Cairns in our lives show others how to follow. I look back down the trail just ascended, at smoothed stones over which I will probably never travel again.

  15.3 Cairns at the Top of Popti La Pass

  Source: Author

  The valley’s soil I enter is lighter, grittier, the vegetation growing from it is sparser. But it appears with the skies ahead that I do not need to worry about a storm. I am approaching the Himalaya’s rain shadow. Pulling my pack’s shoulder and belt straps tighter, knowing night comes in an hour, I start running down from the pass. The key in mountain running is lightness and constant flow; each stride without jolt into the next.

  Downhill running Western style, however, goes foothold-to-foothold, thump-to-thump, and destroys the knees. For with each hit, the body absorbs half a ton of foot-pound pressure. Torque hammers the hard surfaces of the knee as it rebounds to take the next slam. Films of bone-end cartilage collide, and then bounce out again to absorb the next shock. The egg-white-like synovial fluid rushes in with each hit to lubricate and nourish; the knee absorber regrowing even as it is used. Forces absorbed are the most extreme any body joint takes. American boys destroy their knees playing sports. But Himalayan boys learn to cascade down rocks in lightness of running like water running. Each flying step is constant movement, each foot planted as still moving judgment for how to pivot to the next, calibrating to ricochet and never jolt the knees.

  I must run almost 3,000 feet down, knowing it is wise to stop every fifteen minutes to rub my knees and refill my lungs for running at altitude burns calories faster than arteries can replenish. With fatigue is accentuated the chance to flip—and if a foot catches, the reflex must tuck, roll-in-the-air, and hit the ground on backpack. When the techniques are learned, it is addicting. All parts moving, feet only touching, coordination of the feet is accurate; pack close on my back, this time higher on the shoulders than I’d like, but it is there ready as my tortoise shell in case I flip. I run on. Suddenly I seem to feel a campfire. Feeling a smell? I cascade on, valley nearing. The camp feels like it is calling—I turn a corner and, mouths agape, stand five men, their campfire burning, with three ponies and two stud buffalo yaks.

  I try to stop and, but off-balance, my legs slide out. The ponies bolt, but they have been well tied. A Nepali down the slope might be expected, but not a lone Westerner. Snarls squint towards me on the ground from these men’s eyes now all around. Exhausted to the limits of my veins, I absorb that I have no exit. My pack with its cameras and instruments will exceed the value of their loads. It would take police ten days to reach this place, and they would not come unless one of these men brought them in. My remains here on the smugglers’ trail—after omnivorous bears and sharp-eyed griffons—would be signature-less.

  Had I thought faster, I could have—should have—bounded through this camp, letting out a piercing scream, and gone into the night leaving the apparition of a pale-skin with huge hunched back exploding through their site … vanishing. Perhaps that shock would have caused them to huddle around the campfire all night stricken with the possibility of returning ghosts, maybe even a Yeti. As I sit on my hurt tail, I know that for a forty-three-year-old fool I’ve made a mistake.

  Nobody likes to be burst upon while settling in at night—especially people errant from the law. As shock ebbs, it seems their anger appears to rise. One of the five, who’d been splitting campfire wood, stands by holding his kukri, unsheathed.

  ‘I’m thirsty, some tea?’ I plead in a tired voice. ‘Some tea?’

  The oldest turns to the fire. The others stand around. The two youngest seem to seep anger. Then I realize all are just curious. I gaze through the legs standing around towards the old man taking the lid off the pot and ladling tea into a much-chipped white enamel mug, returning and offering me the mug graciously in two hands. It was I who was afraid.

  ‘Here, I brought you raisins and American barley’, I reply, unleashing pack straps and passing raisins and grape-nuts, then on tired legs wobbling to their fire. Pulling in my pack, I let my actions speak. The meal that cooks will be rice and lentils. Hoping they’ll invite me, I offer peanuts and the half-full bag of M&Ms.

  In the growing night, we question each other. Time comes when we must head to our blankets. Ramrod straight in my sleeping bag, my plan is to lie awake, waiting, half-expecting trouble, especially from a young man who seems to covet that which I carry. I note each of them has gone to his bed with kukri close at hand. I relax some, looking at the stars, knowing that never in my life before have I fallen asleep while lying on my back.

  Waking the next morning, I am on my side having slept deeply. I’ve woken to the noise of trail companions preparing their loads—my fears of an exhausted earlier day now recognized as I lie in a warm sleeping bag. Smugglers is the name I gave them; they view themselves as businesspeople. Together, we travel the trails of our vocations. By the morning fire we share my last box of grape-nuts. Their direction is into the Barun to the cave in the ledge—they know of it, we talked about it last night.

  My rations now total 2 pounds of peanuts, a pound of raisins, and milk powder to make three quarts. In one night my pack diminished by one box of grape-nuts, one box of raisins, half a pound of peanuts, and a half bag of M&Ms. But in return they gave knowledge of trails ahead. I know now the path to Saldima, and, if I find the trail they described, in two more nights I will make the villages north of Shyakshila where I can purchase rice and lentils. Peanuts, raisins, milk powder, and water—while walking, I work through their combinations as my next possible meals.

  Seven hours later, I arrive at the hut where we had our Saldima meetings. The waterfall still explodes from above. I fill my water bottle and wait for the iodine to purify. Peanut-by-peanut, I eat. Two ravens circle. If they see food, they could burst down. In 1971, ravens attacked people eating food on Everest 2,000 feet short of the summit. My eyes stay on the waterfall. No smoke rises from behind. Was that mist three years ago? Wild climbers who have gone to the top of Everest are more than four thousand—they are of my species that claims to be rational, that claims to have seen Yetis while making that climb.

  15.4 The Great Waterfall that Thunders into the Saldima Meadows

  Source: Author

  LAY OF TRAILS IS KNOWLEDGE IN THE MIND AS MAPS published through exchanges at resting places. Trails learned through others’ tales might seem like folklore to a cartographer as they lack measurement and scale. But maps designed for the mind are to be remembered. Key crossings, these become waypoints. Dramatic experiences, these are route challenges. Methods for such map making were grown long before taking to paper and presentation to scale. The smugglers had described the idea of the route out of the Barun, and with that I was given a from-here-to-where-I-could-purchase rice and lentils.

  I knew what the idea of the trail was trying to do, and while I did not know bends and choices, those I could figure out knowing trail intent. Shared was: ‘You are trying this … and you encounter that.’ A trail is understood as a live connection, not a line on the ground. How to describe a trail is also an ancient practice, different from ‘go to the big maple and take a left’. In the world before writing, memory was how geography was learned, shaped by combining ideas and physical features, an extension of the purpose of travel. Trails lasted in the mind through stories.

  But before going towards rice and lentils, I must climb in the opposite direction. To answer the unknown behind the waterfall I start pulling on and thrashing through the brush beside the waterfall. Saldima Meadow descends as I climb. My ascent appears to be through scrub rhododendron and thigh-high juniper. My purpose is to look down onto the lake at sunrise tomorrow, for that is when the smoke sometimes seems to rise.

  When I awake, stars sparkle across the sky. Crisp juniper branches are at hand. It’s tempting to lighten this still night world with a fire. But, rolling up my sleeping bag and leaving all under the o
verhanging boulder I slept under, I select a few emergency items and at predawn prepare to head towards the rim-crest for my view.

  Stars light years above are closer than my family on the other side of the world. And the nearest settlement on this side of the world that I am sure of is three days walk through the most difficult jungle in the Himalaya. In the cold rationality of morning, I know there are no wild men in these valleys. I am alone here, in the dark of the night at 12,000 feet. Another message is also clear: for thirty years, I’ve been searching for a wildness that is inside me.

  The rock I leave has been my one-night home. Making homes under overhanging rocks has been a human habit for millennia, epochs longer than our staying within houses. Caves are our most familiar abodes, a fact we seldom remember; branches adorning trees are what our DNA is accustomed to see as living space decorations. Then in homes built from hewn stone and carved timbers in ever increasing steps, we distance ourselves from homes of origin.

  To return to a place I must again find, with its cached sleeping bag and food, I build a cairn on the rock itself. For if my return is in whiteout from that cloud that each morning rises in this valley, I need a trail to unfailingly take me to the artefacts of home I’ve carried here. So I use the map-building technique of seat-of-the-pants air navigation: using the land not a map held in the hand. The objective is to hit a line on the ground, like intersecting a river. Hit that wide line knowing to which side on it you need to turn, and then let that lead to the spot called home. Do not aim for the destination. And so I start writing a line out from the rock, and every 20 feet create a rock cairn. Twenty stacks later, I have a signed walkway home 100 yards long. Going back to the line’s middle, I head straight up.

  From the black of night a shaped world starts forming around me. As grey lightens out of the obscure, distance becomes a dimension, depth enters a world earlier seeming an endless unknown. The night’s world knows no length—but as light joins it, space opens. It’s about an hour still before the sun. Ice crystals chatter across my feet as frost breaks from standing grass. But the sun is coming to the rising day. And then, as I near the rim, the sun bursts over the earth’s curve behind—sunsight. My shadow leaps out in front. Rainbowed prisms spring from crystals on grass tentacles that my feet tramp through.