Unsworth mentions the yeti one more time with a reference to the famous Swiss-American mountaineer Norman Dyhrenfurth’s participation in the 1958 search for the yeti, on an expedition led by Tom Slick. Unsworth is a scholar on all things Everest, and for him, the abominable snowman is something to seriously consider.
The Rum-Doodle Bar in Kathmandu is the traditional place where mountaineers go after their climbs to have a drink with their friends. The walls are covered with cardboard cutouts of yeti feet signed by the members of various expeditions, and these cardboard yeti feet are the coasters; newspaper stories of the yeti are in glass frames on the walls. While there is plenty of joking about the yeti, it seems to be a subject that is taken seriously by some. Others maintain that the yeti is a creation of western myth-makers and vague legends of a Himalayan boogey man.
Tibetan and Sherpa lamas often speak of the yetis, especially in the Khumbu area of Nepal (in the vicinity of Mount Everest) and the upper Arun Valley. Although Unsworth does not mention it in his account, it is said that during the visit in 1922, the head lama of the Rongbuk Monastery in Tibet offered to show British General C. G. Bruce the valley nearby where the tetis might be seen to frolic. Oddly, Bruce, who was more interested in climbing Mount Everest (at which he failed miserably), declined to take the Lama up on his offer. Later, in 1958, monks at the Rongbuk Monastery claimed that yetis had destroyed a sacred rock monument overlooking the monastery.11,39
An early illustration of an orangutan.
The first known photograph of the mysterious footprints that were to make yetis famous were taken by the British mountaineer F.S. Smythe in 1936. Smythe and his team were crossing a 5,029 meter pass in the central Himalayas when he came across “the imprints of a huge foot, apparently a biped.” He took a photograph of the footprints and the Sherpas with him declared them to be from a mirke, or wildman.
According to Kesar Lall, a well-known Nepalese chronicler of yeti stories,the Sherpas with Smythe made this formal written statement: “We, Wangdi Norbu, Norbu Bhotia and Pasang Urgen, accompanying Mr. Smythe over a pass when we saw tracks which we know to be those of a Mirke or Wildman. We have often seen bear, snow leopard, and other animal tracks, but we swear that these tracks were none of these. We have never seen a Mirke because anyone who sees one dies or is killed, but these are pictures of the tracks which are the same as we have seen in Tibetan monasteries.”1
The photograph made the British papers and there was much scientific speculation as to the origin of the tracks. According to experts, the curious tracks might have been made by snow leopards, bears, pandas, langurs, wolves, Tibetan outlaws or Hindu ascetics seeking a remote cave to meditate in.
Finally, a panel of zoologists at the Royal Society, headed by Sir Julien Huxley, decided that the footprints shown in the photograph were those of a bear (Ursus arctes pruinesus). Further attention was drawn to the footprints in 1937 when RAF wingcommander M. Bauman was noted for writing, “While not wishing to draw a red herring across this fresh line of inquiry, may I recount an experience of my own in Garhwal last year? With two Sherpas I was crossing the Bireh Ganga glacier when we came upon tracks made in crisp snow which resembled nothing as much as those of an elephant.”1
The 1951 Shinton footprints.
One only wonders why Sherpas and Himalayan explorers would be I unable to recognize bear tracks, being quite common, or why elephants would be marching over high passes in the Himalayas? Perhaps coming up with any alternative ■ answer to the one given by the people who actually live among these mysterious creatures is necessary, no matter how ridiculous these “scientific” answers may seem.
Throughout the 30s the subject of yetis and abominable snowmen appeared in newspapers around the world. In 1935 it was reported that a yeti was killing sheep at a Himalayan village called Kathagsu. Later, the villagers were said to driven the mysterious creature away.
In 1936 it was reported that footprints had been discovered in the Upper Salween (Nepal) at an altitude of about 4,876 meters by Ronald Kaulback. Said Kaulback, “Five sets of tracks, which looked as though made by a bare-footed man,” were discovered in the snow. A more curious (and dubious) 1938 tale was of a British official who was captured and kept confined to a cave by a wildman somewhere in Sikkim.1
The Famous Eric Shipton Encounter
After the war years, attention returned to mountaineering in the Himalayas. Yetis were to hit the headlines in a big way in 1951. In that year the famous photograph taken by British explorer Eric Shipton was published in the London newspapers and magazines. Shipton had discovered and photographed yeti footprints on several occasions. Then, in 1951, near the sacred mountain of Gauri Shankar (a mountain that is forbidden to be climbed by the government of Nepal), his team found a trail of enormous human-looking footprints in fresh powdery snow. They followed the trail until it disappeared in a rocky moraine.
The oft-seen 1951 photograph of a yeti footprint taken by Eric Shipton.
Eric Shipton standing beside the famous 1951 footprints.
As W. H. Murray tells the tale in his 1953 book The Story of Everest,11 Eric Shipton and his companion, Dr. Michael Ward, were descending a snow covered glacier on the south side of Nuptse, a sub-peak of Mount Everest, when they came across a set of yeti tracks. They were at 5,600 meters on the Menlung glacier that had just received a light covering of snow. They discovered odd fecal matter and across the fresh snow were very distinct footprints of not one, but several, huge bipedal animals.
Says Murray, “Sen Tensing recognized them at once. At least two had left spoor. It did not resemble the spoor of any known bear or monkey... Shipton and Ward followed the tracks for nearly two miles down the glacier, finally loosing them on the lateral moraine. Some of the prints were particularly clear and must have been left within the last 24 hours. Pad marks and toe marks could distinctly seen within the footprints, which were 12 inches long, and where the creature had jumped the smaller crevasses, the scribble marks of its nails could be seen on the far side.”11
The expedition party consisted of leader Eric Shipton, Mike Ward, Bill Murray, Tom Bourdillon, Edmund Hillary, Earle Riddiford, Angtharkay, Pasang Bhotia, Nima, Sen Tensing and six others. Towards the end of the expedition the climbers were making an exploratory travel in the Gauri Sankar groups to the southwest of Everest, when they discovered the prints. Shipton wrote of this incident in his 1985 book
The Six Mountain-Travel Books90 (Pg. 621):
It was on one of the glaciers of the Menlung basin, at a height of about 19,000 feet, that, late one afternoon, we came across those curious footprints in the snow, the report of which has caused a certain amount of public interest in Britain. We did not follow them further than was convenient, a mile or so, for we were carrying heavy loads at the time, and besides we had reached a particularly interesting stage in the exploration of the basin. I have in the past found many sets of these curious footprints and have tried to follow them, but have always lost them on the moraine or rocks at the side of thc glacier. These particular ones seemed to be very fresh, probably not more than 24 hours old. When Murray and Bourdillon followed us a few days later the tracks had been almost obliterated by melting. Sen Tensing, who had no doubt whatever that the creatures (for there had been at least two) that had made the tracks were “Yetis” or wild men, told me that two years before, he and a number of other Sherpas had seen one of them at a distance of about 25 yards at Thyangboche. He described it as half man and half beast, standing about five feet six inches, with a tall pointed head, its body covered with reddish brown hair, but with a hairless face. When we reached Katmandu at the end of November, I had him cross-examined in Nepali (I conversed with him in Hindustani). He left no doubt as to his sincerity. Whatever it was that he had seen, he was convinced that it was neither a bear nor a monkey, with both of which animals he was, of course, very familiar.90
One of the 1951 Shipton footprints
The publication of the photo in the London Times caused a
sensation, and the world was launched into a yeti craze that lasted into the early 1960’s. Hollywood made feature films about the Yeti such as The Abominable Snowman (1957, with Forrest Tucker and Peter Cushing), and such cartoon heroes as Johnny Quest and Tin Tin had their episodes in search of yeti. Scores of books, fiction as well as non-fiction, appeared on the yeti, culminating with Ivan T. Sanderson’s Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, published in 1961.
Other footprints were discovered during this important “yeti decade” by various parties such as the Wyss-Dunant expedition (1953) and Abbe P. Bordet (1954). In 1958 the Nepalese government made the yeti a protected species because of the immense interest taken by the international community in finding a live specimen. The government of Nepal, following its system of charging a “rental fee” for mountains, fixed the fee for a Yeti expedition at 5,000 rupees.
Today Shipton’s photo is probably the most well known yeti or sasquatch footprints, freshly preserved in newly fallen snow. They were measured to be 12 inches long and 8 inches wide. What could they be, other than the footprints of an enormous hairy apeman—the abominable snowman? Are they the tracks of a Himalayan bear that had melted and enlarged in afternoon sun as skeptics have suggested? Well, probably not.
We should give Shipton the credit he is due—he was not a hoaxer, or a gullible fool. What he saw was unusual and incredible. He wisely took several photos of it while his guides assured him that these were the tracks of a yeti. Why should we doubt them?
The Pangboche hand in 1958. It is now missing.
Shipton’s photographs stirred the British public, and in 1954 the London Daily Mail newspaper launched what was probably the largest yeti expedition to ever assault the Himalayas. Called the Daily Mail Snowman Expedition, it was lead by the British climber John Angelo Jackson. This expedition made the first trek from the Mount Everest region in Nepal to Kanchenjunga on the border of Sikkim, at that time an independent country (now it is a state of India).
Jackson’s team photographed paintings of yetis at the Thyangboche Monastery and acquired some hair specimens from the yeti scalp kept at the nearby monastery at Pangboche. Later the team tracked and photographed a large number of footprints in the snow that were largely unidentifiable. The flattened nature of the footprints was attributed to erosion and widening from melting and wind.
The Pangboche scalp and hand in 1958.
The hair from the Pangboche scalp was analyzed in Britain for the Daily Mail by Frederic Wood-Jones, an expert in human and comparative anatomy, comparing them with hairs from known animals such as bears, mountain sheep and orangutans. The hairs appeared black to dark brown in dim light, and red in sunlight. He concluded that the hairs were quite old and had not been dyed.
Wood-Jones said he was unable to pinpoint what animal the hairs had come from. He was, however, convinced that the hairs were not of a bear or anthropoid ape. He also concluded that the hairs were not from a scalp. He suggested that they might be from the shoulder of an animal, possibly a hoofed one. He contended that some animals do have a ridge of hair extending from the pate to the back, but no animals have a ridge (as in the Pangboche relic) running from the base of the forehead across the pate and ending at the nape of the neck. However, since the yeti is an unknown animal, it may well have such a ridge. In fact, popular depictions of yetis and sasquatch do tend to include such a ridge. Wood-Jones essentially added to the mystery of the yeti by his inconclusive findings and not being able to actually identify the hair samples to any certain degree. Therefore, the existence of the yeti was still very much a possibility.
Tom Slick, circa 1958.
Tom Slick, the Yeti & the CIA
The expedition by the Daily Mail caught the attention of a flamboyant Texas oil millionaire named Tom Slick, Jr. who was also influenced by the publication of Belgian cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans’ (1916-2001) groundbreaking 1955 book, On The Track of Unknown Animals?32 Slick was born in 1916 and graduated from Philips Exeter Academy in 1934 and Yale University in 1938. Slick’s father, Tom Slick, Sr., made millions as the “King of the Wildcatters,” and Tom Slick, Jr. had a privileged upbringing that included trips to Europe. On a trip to Scotland with his Yale classmates, Slick and his friends decided to search for the Loch Ness Monster which had gained fame at the time. Though they discovered nothing significant, for Slick it was the beginning of a life-long interest in cryptids.
In 1956, while traveling in and around Nepal, he interviewed a number of different yeti witnesses, and decided to back a yeti expedition of his own. Slick began his personally financed expeditions to Nepal in 1957. He had met an Irish/Australian big game hunter named Peter Byrne who had also been in the Himalayas in 1956 searching for the yeti. Bryne happened to meet up with Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa who had first climbed Everest with Edmund Hillary, and over a cup of tea Norgay told Byrne about Slick’s interest in the yeti. Byrne contacted Slick, and the two spent several months assembling a compact, commando-like team to find the elusive apeman.
When Slick and Byrne’s plans for the 1957 expedition gained international attention, the Nepalese government refused to allow the expedition to continue unless the team found a respectable organization to back them. Eventually, the highly respected San Antonio Zoo from Slick’s hometown decided to sponsor the expedition. He may have had another sponsor as well: the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
During the 1959 trek called the Slick-Johnson Snowman Expedition, the team collected what they believed to be “yeti feces.” Upon analysis the feces were found to have a parasite which could not be classified. Since parasites are often unique to their host, this was an indication of a previously unknown animal, most probably a yeti.5
Also during the 1959 Slick-Johnson Snowman Expedition, Peter Byrne and his brother Bryan discovered tracks at 10,000 feet in the upper Arun Valley region. The Arun Valley is one of the deepest valleys in the world, and is like a deep knife slash cutting through the Himalayas all the way to the Tibetan plateau. The river valley goes for thousands of feet down to an almost tropical climate at the valley floor.
Documents published by Loren Coleman in his book Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti5 reveal that Slick had actually gone into Tibet, a country generally said to be off-limits to foreigners. This was during the time of the Chinese takeover of Tibet, and a great deal of international intrigue was occurring. There are rumors that Tom Slick was secretly working with the CIA to help get the Dalai Lama out of Tibet and was using his search for the yeti as a cover.
Slick died in a mysterious airplane crash in Montana in 1962. The cause of the crash of his Beechcraft airplane has never been found and Coleman claims that several of Slick’s acquaintances claimed that there had been an “internal explosion” in the airplane. The two Johnsons, Slick’s partners, also died shortly after Slick of unnatural causes.5
Slick had asked Peter Byrne to head the Pacific Northwest Bigfoot Expedition, as it was called, after he read about the discovery of footprints in California. Byrne eventually moved to Oregon, raised millions of dollars for Bigfoot research and was later to go on to write the 1975 book Bigfoot: Man, Monster or Myth.77
It is interesting to note that Slick was also a friend of the enigmatic Howard Hughes. Around the same time as Slick’s odd airplane accident, Howard Hughes also “disappeared,” supposedly becoming a recluse on the top floor of a Las Vegas hotel, and later in a wing of a hotel in the Bahamas. Few people saw Howard Hughes during those years, and his friend Tom Slick, Jr. would certainly be unable to look him up, having died in the airplane crash. Did the “murder” of Slick have to do with his connections to Howard Hughes, or did it have something to do with his yeti expeditions and work for the CIA?
Bryan Byrne looks at yeti tracks in the Arun Valley, March 1959.
Slick, it is said, smuggled a finger of the famous Pangboche yeti hand out of Nepal and into India. In order to get the ancient relic out of India without passing the difficult Indian and British customs in Lon
don, he enlisted the help of his friend Jimmy Stewart to smuggle the finger from New Delhi to London. Amusingly, the story goes that Jimmy Stewart (the famous actor) had his wife hide the finger of the yeti in her case of underpants, so that the customs officials would be embarrassed to look too closely.
The Hillary-World Book Encyclopedia Expedition
This era of yeti hunting ended with the World Book Encyclopedia expedition of 1960 led by Sir Edmund Hillary. Hillary was joined by the famous zoologist Marlin Perkins, who was to become the well known host of the American television program Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom which ran from 1963 to 1985. Perkins died the year after the show ended on June 14, 1986.
Hillary and Perkins filmed their journey over the Trashi Lapsa Pass in the Rowaling Himal and this footage was later used in a Wild Kingdom episode. They also brought the famous Khumjung Yeti scalp for testing in Europe and North America. This yeti scalp is still at the monastery in Khumjung and is available for viewing on most days for a small donation to the monastery.
The Khumjung scalp was taken to London, Paris and Chicago for testing. Dr. Austin L. Rand, Chief Curator, Department of Zoology, and Prof. Philip Hershkovitz, Curator of Mammals at the Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago) suspected that the yeti scalp might belong to a Himalayan bear.
Marlin Perkins, Edmund Hillary, friends, plus a “Yeti Gun.”
Other tests at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris concluded that the scalp was probably the hide of a serow, a rare Himalayan hoofed goat-like animal with reddish-brown hair. The Belgian zoologist Dr. Bernard Heuvelmans was, however, a dissenting vote on the serow decision, concluding the scalp to be from some unknown animal. Hair-testing techniques are much better now and it would be interesting to test these samples again. Hair found at certain wildman sites in China and Nepal have recently been “proven” to have come from some unknown animal species.
Yeti, Sasquatch & Hairy Giants Page 7