Edmund Hillary with a poster of a yeti.
Hillary for a short time was strongly associated with yeti hunts, and had seen large footprints, he claimed, while scaling Everest with Tenzing Norgay in 1953. But he was to say that he was officially a skeptic of the abominable snowman in his later days. One wonders what a yeti would be doing that high up in the Himalayas, anyway. The general belief of zoologists who genuinely consider the yeti a possibility is that they do occasionally cross high, icy passes in the Himalayas, but generally live in the thick brush and forests in the steep ravines that occur up to about 18,000 feet in some areas, like the Arun Valley. Still, some of larger yeti may live—and hibernate—in remote caves above the timberline. Certainly this is how the yeti are popularly portrayed in movies, comic books and portraits.
Yetis in Central Nepal
While most yeti sightings in Nepal are in the eastern section, yetis have been frequently sighted in central Nepal, particularly in the Mustang, Dolpo and Annapurna regions. In February of 1958 it was reported in the Kathmandu weekly Kalpana that the Rajah of Mustang was the possessor of a yeti skin. Mustang is a remote, semi-autonomous region on the Nepali-Tibetan border, and largely forbidden to foreigners. The Rajah’s men were said to have shot a yeti. King Features columnist George Dixon joked in his column in 1958 that, “The Rajah can’t decide if the hide he sits on is the Abominable Snowman or a brown bear. I hope the same kind of indecision is not motivating President Eisenhower.. .’1
In 1970 it was widely reported in the media that British mountaineer Don Whillans claimed to have witnessed a strange man-like creature while scaling
Takahashi’s 2008 yeti footprint.
Annapurna I, the tenth highest mountain in the world. Whillans said that while scouting for a campsite, he heard some odd cries which his Sherpa guide attributed to a yeti’s call. Later that night, Whillans saw a dark shape moving near his camp. The next day, he observed a few human like footprints in the snow, and that evening, through his binoculars, viewed an apelike creature walking on two legs for 20 minutes as it apparently searched for food not far from his camp.
Whillans, one of the most famous of British climbers, was a believer in the yeti, I guess we could say. He died from a heart attack in 1985 at the age of 52.
The famous writer Peter Matthiessen wrote in his 1979 best-selling book The Snow Leopard that he and naturalist George Schaller witnessed a creature across a valley in the remote Dolpo region that both thought was yeti.
The Japanese, who are avid mountain climbers, have also taken an interest in the yeti, and the most famous of their yeti hunters is a 60-year-old painter from Tokyo named Yoshiteru Takahashi. Takahashi, as part of a Japanese mountaineering team, has scaled the 8,167-meter Dhaulagiri in central Nepal several times since the 1970s. Said Takahashi in a 2003 interview (http://www.camp4.com/moreoffroute.php [article no longer available]):
I have climbed the Dhaulagiri (White Mountain) massif four times, and every time, I saw footprints of the yeti. In 1971, one of my expedition members saw one of these creatures. It looked like a gorilla and stood only 15 meters away from him, watching him, for about 40 seconds. It was about 150 cm tall and stood on its hind legs, like a man. Its head was covered with long, thick hair and he was certain it was not a bear or a monkey.
Takahashi returned to the area numerous times, and on another expedition to the same region in 1994, he discovered what he describes as a “bolt-hole,” a natural cave that stretched back 5 meters into a rock face at 5,000 meters above sea level. The Japanese climber said, “Animals had definitely visited the cave and there were more of the footprints in the snow around the mouth of the cavern.” Unfortunately, according to him, his camera failed and he couldn’t record his find.
According to the 2003 interview, the expedition to find the yeti in 1994 was prompted by the earlier discoveries of footprints that he describes as being similar to those of a human child and measuring up to 20 cm long. He also said he could smell the creatures’ musty, animal odor. Says Takahashi:
The footprints that I saw were similar to the one photographed by British explorers Eric Shipton and Michael Ward in 1951... The ones I found were smaller and thinner, more like a human foot, with an arch between the heel and the toes. There are no animals that leave that sort of track.
Takahashi, with support from a Japanese newspaper, staked out the flanks of Dhaulagiri, for 2 months in 2003, one more of his many adventures in the area. The online Russian newspaper Pravda reported on one of Takahashi’s expeditions in central Nepal in 2005, saying that, “The researchers saw a Yeti walking at a large distance. They found 13 footprints of the animal, each of them measured 35 centimeters long and 20 centimeters wide. Takahashi said afterwards that he was certain of Yeti’s existence.”
Takahashi was back in the news again on October 20, 2008 where he gave a news conference and reported that his team had found further footprints of a yeti in the Annapurna region. Photos of the footprints were released to the media, and even made it into the well known political blog called The Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com).
Gigantopithecus: The Missing Link
Despite a great deal of skepticism, there is no reason why some giant missing link type creature should not exist as the many reports indicate. After all, giant ape creatures that are very similar to humans are proven to exist. We have the well known examples of the mountain gorillas of central Africa and the very human-like orangutans of Southeast Asia. The giant ape Giganthopithicus is known to anthropologists to have existed within the last 10,000 years. Why could some not have survived to this day? Reports from around the world seem to indicate that they have.
In 1934 a Dutch paleontologist and geologist named Ralph von Koenigswald was on a study trip to Hong Kong when he came across a number of large teeth lying about in the jars of a Chinese chemist’s shop. One tooth in particular caught his attention, the third lower molar that was twice as large as the corresponding tooth in the mouth of an adult male gorilla. The volume of the tooth, compared to the volume of a man’s tooth, was five or six times as great.6
Myra Shackley’s drawing of Giganthopithicus.
The fearsome bite of a gorilla.
Dr. von Koenigswald was fascinated by this huge primate molar, bought it and used it to reconstruct a hypothetical primate which would have stood somewhere between eleven and thirteen feet tall. Over the next five years two more of the giant molars were discovered in Chinese chemist shops that called the oddities “dragons’ teeth.”
From these first teeth Dr. von Koenigswald reconstructed a creature that he called Gigantopithecus , a creature which today has over one thousand additional teeth to its credit, discovered through the efforts of the Chinese Academia Sinica around the province of Kwangsi in south China. Dr. von Koenigswald, unfortunately, was imprisoned by the Japanese as an “enemy alien” during their occupation of Indonesia during World War II, thereby cutting his research short.
In 1956 a jawbone belonging to Gigantopithecus was discovered in a phosphate cave in Kwangsi province. The Chinese paleontologist Dr. Pei Wen-chung concluded that the jawbone was between 400,000 and 600,000 years old and that the giant creature had fed on a mixed diet of vegetables, grains and meat.6 The evidence for a giant ape-creature was firmly established—was this the creature known in the Himalayas as the yeti?
The pointed head of a gorilla is similar to that attributed to the yeti.
The British anthropologist Myra Shackley argued that the almas and other “wildmen” of Central Asia were the last remains of the ancient Neanderthal that once roamed the prehistoric earth. Shackley was a noted Neanderthal expert in the 1960s and 70s, a lecturer at the University of Leicester in England and the author of the controversial 1983 book Still Living?13
Shackley maintained that the various reports of Almas in Mongolia and other “wildmen” in Chinese and Central Asian folklore, were probably Neanderthals who had survived their so-called extinction about 30,000 years ago. Shackley f
elt, however, that the yeti was a descendant of the giant ape Giganthopithicus and different from the Neanderthal almas, also called chuchunaa by the Mongols and Tibetans.
Shackley felt that Giganthopithicus was the explanation for yetis as well as sasquatch and bigfoot. The almas were more akin to Neanderthals and Shackley theorized that there were three or four species of animals that were the cause of the various reports of giant, hairy apemen. Hairy Neanderthal men, still living a primitive existence without fire, language or clothing accounted for certain “wildman” tales around the world, while various man-apes similar to orangutans or Giganthopithicus were the cause of the other sightings. No one single answer could therefore be expected for the yeti enigma.
The mystery of the yeti continues to hold its fascination. Sometimes I remember how I lay awake for hours in my sleeping bag on that icy night near Mount Everest years ago. My ears strained to hear past the wind—to hear the sound of footsteps in the snow around my tent. In the distance ice fell from the glacier and crashed into the rocks below. Does the yeti still roam the chilly mountain valleys of the Himalayas? On remote mountain passes in the dead of night there is sometimes heard a sharp, shrill cry— is it the call of the yeti?
The skeleton of a gorilla.
The land of the yeti, almasty, wildman and orangutan.
CHAPTER 5
KANCHENJUNGA DEMONS
As a firm believer in the Snowman,
the least I can do is defend his abominable
existence.
—Himalayan Explorer Desmond Doig
Kanchenjunga Demons and the Arun Valley
Yetis have very often been sighted in the Kanchenjunga region which spans areas of Sikkim, Nepal and Tibet. Kanchenjunga is the third highest mountain in the world and the Arun River runs just to the west of it. This is an area of high yeti incidence where they are sometimes called “Kanchenjunga Demons.”39, 14
The Arun River flows from Tibet into a gorge next to Mount Kanchenjunga and then south through the Arun Valley of eastern Nepal. As noted in the last chapter, during the 1959 Slick-Johnson Snowman Expedition, Bryan and Peter Byrne discovered what they believed to be yeti tracks at 10,000 feet in the upper Arun Valley region. As stated, the Arun Valley is one of the deepest valleys in the world, and is like a deep knife slash into the Tibetan plateau. The river valley goes for thousands of feet down to an almost tropical climate at the valley floor. Overall, it comprises the perfect environment for the sustenance of the yeti.
The Kanchenjunga-Arun Valley area includes all of eastern Nepal, including the Everest and Makalu areas. Also the areas around the heavily trekked tourist towns around Namche Bazaar and Lukla Airport which services many of the trekkers and guides who are going to the Everest Region. Directly to the east of this area is the Rowaling Himal and the forbidden mountain of Gauri Shankar.
Gauri Shankar is an icy mountain peak that is reputed to be the abode of Shankar, the guise of Shiva one of the gods of the all-important Hindu Trinity. For this reason, the Nepali government forbids climbing on Gauri Shankar, it is thought to be a sacred mountain of mystery and magic. Yetis and Hindu holymen called Sadhus are known to be found in the remote mountain forests.
Even today, the Arun Valley region is a remote area rarely visited by foreign explorers. Though heavily populated in the lower areas, and one of the most poor areas of Nepal, its upper reaches contain ideal habitat for yetis: steep forested ravines and valleys with isolated mountain passes and glaciated peaks that are among the highest in the world. Indeed, if one area of the world could be said to contain a large breeding population of yetis, it is the Arun Valley and the Kanchenjunga region. Even in the winter, the lower reaches of the Arun Valley do not freeze, and have a relatively mild climate.
In 1925, Greek photographer, N. A. Tombazi, a member of the British geological expedition in the Kanchenjunga region, described a creature he saw moving across a Himalayan slope at an altitude of around 15,000 feet near the Zemu Glacier. He estimated it was about a thousand feet away and viewed the creature for about a minute.
Later that year, Tombazi wrote a book entitled Account of a Photographic Expedition to the Southern Glaciers of Kangchenjunga in the Sikkim Himalayas (London, 1925) and said: “Unquestionably, the figure in outline was exactly like a human being, walking upright and stopping occasionally to uproot or pull at some dwarf rhododendron bushes. It showed up dark against the snow and, as far as I could make out wore no clothes.”4 , 9
But before he could take a photograph, the hairy apeman disappeared. Tombazi left the team to check out the terrain,and discovered in the snow 15 footprints from one and a half to two feet apart, “...similar in shape to those of a man, but only six to seven inches long by four inches wide at the broadest part of the foot. The marks of five distinct toes and the instep were perfectly clear, but the trace of the heel was indistinct... the prints were undoubtedly those of a biped.” Later, the local people told Tlombazi the creature he described was a “Kanchenjunga demon.”4, 9
Today, much of the area now lies within the Kanchenjunga National Park. This park is one of the most important in the Indian Himalayas and also embraces the gigantic Zemu glacier which comes off of the east side of the mountain. Sprawled across an area of 850 sq km, is the largest wildlife reserve in Sikkim, a state of India.
An illustration of a yeti attack from a 1950s French magazine.
Most of this steep, jungle-forest and mountain park has not been explored yet, and it could harbor numerous unknown animals. In order to explore this vast park, it is necessary to obtain a permit and fulfill other formalities, which are required by the government of Sikkim. The park and surrounding area is teaming with wildlife such as the Snow Leopard, Himalayan Black Bear, Tibetan Antelope, Wild Ass, Barking Deer, Musk Deer, Flying Squirrel, Clouded Leopard, Blue Sheep, Himalayan Thar, Tibetan Wolf, Serow, Great Tibetan Sheep, Red Panda and many other animals—including various versions of the yeti, say the locals.
The name Kanchenjunga (the old spelling of the mountain was Kangchenjunga, and sometimes Kanchendzonga) literally means ‘the Abode of Gods consisting of Five Treasure Houses.’ These five treasure houses signify the five lofty peaks that comprises Mt. Kanchenjunga: Mt. Narshing, Mt. Pandim, Mt. Siniolchu, Mt. Simvo and Mt. Kabru. An aura of mystery hangs over the Kanchenjunga massif, and the lore that surrounds it including the legends of yetis as well as tales of hidden caves that are said to be entrances to the underground world of Shambala or Agartha.57, 58
As early as 1832, the British became aware of some sort of apeman-monster when B.H. Hodson, the British representative in Nepal, reported that somewhere in eastern Nepal his servants had been attacked by a monkey-demon known as the rakshas, a Nepali-Sanskrit word for “demon.”
Then, in 1914 a British forestry officer stationed in Sikkim named J.R.P. Gent wrote of discovering huge footprints made by some large creature that clearly frightened his local work crew and guides. Though he did not state it, he was probably told that the prints had been made by Kanchenjunga Demons.
One of these “demons” actually saved the life of a British Raj official according to the man’s own report. In 1938 Captain d’Auvergue, curator of Calcutta’s Victoria Memorial, was traveling alone in the Himalayas when he became injured. He was struggling over a high pass along the Sikkim-Tibetan border when a blizzard struck the pass. He was partially snow-blind from traveling over brightly lit snowfields earlier, and with the blizzard surrounding him, he lost his way and collapsed in the snow. He would have died of exposure during the blizzard, he related, except that a 9-foot (3 meter) yeti saved his life by covering Captain d’Auvergue with his giant body during the worst of the storm. Later d’Auvergue recovered sufficiently and as the storm subsided, he got a sense of his surroundings and was able to make it down from the high pass.
In one version of this story, the giant apeman actually took d’Auvergue some distance to a cave where he was fed scraps of food and nursed back to health over a period of several day
s. Like many of the older tales of the yeti, this one has gotten a bit confused over time.
A Mummified Yeti?
The kind and nurturing version of the Kanchenjunga Demon was soon dispelled, however, when a Norwegian mineral expert named Jan Frostis claimed that he had been was attacked by two yetis while searching for uranium in 1948. Frostis claimed that while hiking alone in the Kanchenjunga area, looking for the valuable element, he accidentally stumbled onto two yetis near what is called Zemu Gap, along the Sikkim-Nepal border. The terrified Frostis fought the two apemen off and made it back to Gangtok where doctors saw that his shoulder was badly mangled and he required extensive stitches and medical treatment to recover from the lesions. This experience of Frostis’ was apparently the origin of the popular expression, “yetis ripped my flesh.”
Chinese drawing of a yeti.
In 1955, the bestselling book The Long Walk was published, which chronicled the 1942 experiences of Slavomir Rawicz and six companions in escaping from a Russian Siberian WWII concentration camp. The seven men were attempting to get to freedom in India, and over many months walked south through Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and Tibet. Rawicz describes a curious incident where, near the end of their extraordinary trek, they were attempting to cross a pass somewhere near the border of Sikkim and Bhutan (he reckoned) when he and his companions were blocked from approaching the top of the pass by two giant apemen that he estimated as being about eight feet tall. Rawicz claimed that they watched the two yetis from a distance of about 100 yards for nearly two hours. Eventually the abominable snowmen left the area and Rawicz and his group were able to proceed south. They were eventually captured by a troop of Gurkas working for the British Raj and taken to Calcutta. Rawicz says he eventually went to Iraq and rejoined the Polish army.
Yeti, Sasquatch & Hairy Giants Page 8