For his part, Ward denied that there was a hoax of any kind,58 but Gillman suggested that Ward need not have known. “Under my scenario, this is what could have happened,” Gillman speculates. “When Shipton and Ward came upon the line of prints, Shipton—unknown to Ward—added the crucial embellishments to the single footprint. He called Ward’s attention to it, and joined in speculation that they had found evidence of the yeti.”59 The largely circumstantial case for a hoax then rests on Shipton’s personality. Was he a prankster? Gillman cited examples uncovered by mountaineering writer Audrey Salkeld showing that Shipton sometimes indulged “in jokes of exactly this kind,” making up far-fetched stories about other mountaineers—stories flatly denied by others who were there.60 (Shipton apparently claimed that climber and geologist Noel Odell once tried to eat rocks in the mistaken belief that they were sandwiches and asserted that the body of climber Maurice Wilson had been found in possession of an incriminating “sex diary” and several items of women’s clothing.)61 Hillary found that his teammate Shipton was evasive when quizzed about the footprint and that he “tended to rather dodge giving too much of a reply.”62 Hillary told Gillman that Shipton “definitely liked to take the mickey out of people,” and agreed that “he might have tidied it [the footprint] up, made it look fresh and new and photographed it.” But would Shipton have let the hype get so out of hand for so long? Yes, thought Hillary, “he would think that was quite a good joke.”63
FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW
Ever since the photograph of the footprint taken by Eric Shipton (see figure 3.3) became famous, the strongest line of evidence for the existence of the Yeti has been footprints in snow and ice. The Shipton prints appear to resemble gigantic human footprints, which has convinced many cryptozoologists and Yeti believers that they were made by a Yeti. But is the track evidence as compelling as cryptozoologists believe? Collectively, there are problems of consistency from one alleged trackway to another. Assessing this evidence in 1973, John Napier concluded that “so-called Yeti footprints” are collectively “useless in proving the existence of a Himalayan Bigfoot,” but “do at least offer some hints of the origins of the tale. Unlike the Sasquatch, there is little uniformity of pattern, and what uniformity there is incriminates the bear.”*
Trackways can also be deceiving on a case-by-case basis. “Most of the prints have been seen by mountaineers, the majority of whom are laymen,” warned Ward, co-discoverer with Shipton of the most famous Yeti track find of all time.† Recall as well that footprints are not necessarily an accurate record of the shape of the sole of the foot, but more of a record of the way the foot strikes the substrate through the walking cycle.
If you look at your own footprints in the wet sand on a beach, you will see that—depending on how you were moving—the shape of the prints differs. If you run, the toes and the ball of the foot dig into the sand, the heel may never touch it, and the print may be shallow because you barely touch the ground as you run. If you walk normally, the heel impression is wider and deeper than the actual size of the heel because the foot touches heel-first and thus the weight of the body goes into the heel part of the footprint as you walk. In soft sand, you may leave a footprint that is wider than your foot because it sinks into the sand, which collapses easily into the impression. On muddy surfaces, similarly, the foot may slide forward and/or sideways, leaving a print that is larger than your foot. In firm sand, though, you may leave only a partial print or a footprint that is narrower than your foot, as do people with high arches, since the curve of the instep may never touch the sand.
Figure B.1 The transformation of bear tracks (a), such as these photographed near Havre de Grace, Maryland, into human-looking footprints (b). ([a] Photograph by Lewis B. Glick; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; [b] illustration by Daniel Loxton)
The same dynamics apply, but with slight differences, to footprints in the snow. If the snow is quite deep, you leave very large prints, since the ankle and leg as well as the foot plunge into the snow; the hole may get larger when you pull your leg out and forward on the next stride. Even in a thin coating of snow, the sides of the print often collapse inward after the foot is removed. Even the slightest bit of melting enlarges a footprint, and prints may melt unevenly if shaded parts of a trackway remain cool while the sun strikes another part directly. Ordinary tracks can become distorted, with some parts remaining sharp while others are erased.
Many of those who saw “Yeti” prints realized that hoofed animals and wolves can leave large paired trackways in the snow (especially deep snow). Most animals tend to walk single file and often step in the footprints of their leader, thus enlarging them. Many of the “Yeti” tracks discussed in this chapter have suspiciously narrow heels, which is typical of bears but not humans. All it takes for bear tracks to look more human is for the hind foot to step into the print made by the front foot (which bears do naturally), wiping out the hind-toe impressions and leaving only a much longer footprint with four or five oval front-toe impressions that resemble those of humans (figure B.1). Add a bit of melting to round out the heel region, and you have a very plausible-looking Yeti footprint.
Another thing to remember about human-like Yeti tracks: whatever made them, it was not a large ape-like creature similar to Gigantopithecus. All living and fossil apes have feet that are shaped very differently from those that made the tracks, with a much larger big toe farther back on the foot that allows for grasping. If the “Yeti” and “Bigfoot” tracks that have been photographed so far are from a real cryptid—not a hoax or a bear or another known animal—the creature would have to be very human-like, since completely modern bipedal posture is a feature found only in the more advanced hominids. The earliest known foot bones of the hominids, such as those of Ardipithecus from Ethiopia, dated to 4.4 million years ago, indicate that they did not have a modern human foot or walking gait.* But the famous footprints of Australopithecus from Laetoli, Tanzania, which are 3.5 million years old, show that a fully modern gait had evolved by that time.† Thus if the Yeti and Bigfoot footprints are real, the creature that made them should look much more human-like (comparable to Australopithecus or early Homo) than ape-like.
Plaster replicas of “Yeti” footprints are artistic reconstructions from photographs, not precise casts of the original prints. Just try to make a plaster cast of a footprint in the snow, and you will discover that you run into many problems. First, most of the people who have reported “Yeti” tracks rarely carry large quantities of plaster, a mixing bowl, and extra water to make a cast. Second, if the temperature is at or below freezing, only ice would be available to mix with the powdered plaster, so it would be impossible to make a liquid mixture. And third, plaster produces heat (an exothermic reaction) as it begins to set, which would melt the track and distort its original shape. Thus the “Yeti” tracks exhibited on television shows that are touted by cryptozoologists are pure guesswork. They are replicas that match the outline of the prints as seen in a photograph, but the depth and three-dimensional detail are inferred from the pattern of light and shadow in the hollows of the prints as they appear in the photograph.
* John Napier, Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality (New York: Dutton, 1973), 205.
† Michael Ward, “The Yeti Footprints: Myth and Reality,” Alpine Journal (1999): 85.
* Stone Age Institute, “New Pliocene Hominids from Gona, Afar, Ethiopia,” January 10, 2005, http://web.archive.org/web/20080624005441/http://www.stoneageinstitute.org/news/gona_nature_paper.shtml (accessed October 22, 2011).
† David A. Raichlen, Adam D. Gordon, William E. H. Harcourt-Smith, Adam D. Foster, and Wm. Randall Haas Jr., “Laetoli Footprints Preserve Earliest Direct Evidence of Human-Like Bipedal Biomechanics,” PLoS ONE 5, no. 3 (2010): e9769.
British explorers had been making repeated attempts to reach the peak of Mount Everest since the 1920s, when surveyors determined that it was the world’s highest mountain. Many expeditions had climbed partway up and made observations o
n the best route, but none had succeeded in reaching the summit at 29,028 feet. The biggest obstacle is that the air is so thin (less than one-third the pressure at sea level) that most climbers require bottled oxygen, which was not available to the early climbers. The extreme altitude causes fatal heart attacks, blindness, and hemorrhaging of blood into the brain or lungs. More than 175 people have died trying to reach the summit, including all the members of the 1924 British Mount Everest Expedition (one of the first full-scale attempts), who vanished completely. The frozen body of one of the climbers, George Mallory, was found and recovered seventy-five years later!
During an expedition mounted in 1952 to explore routes to Everest, Edouard Wyss-Dunant’s Swiss team discovered possible Yeti tracks at an elevation above 16,000 feet. Wyss-Dunant determined that the clawed tracks his team found had been made by a family of plantigrade quadrupeds—which is to say, bears.64 The real zoological question, he felt, was which species of bear? He wrote, “The moment has come to attack the real problem and no longer seek at any cost to justify a myth. But there will doubtless be fewer followers for a zoological expedition than for one that searches for a mythical creature to the full accompaniment of the Press.”65 The Swiss expedition is also notable for an alleged Yeti attack on a porter (who claimed later in the year that he had been seized by a Yeti while on the trail, and then released). The Swiss team members pointed out that there was absolutely no evidence to corroborate this yarn: “It might have been the Snowman, it might have been a bear. Or, it might have been some freak of imagination.”66
Finally, in 1953, Edmund Hillary, a New Zealander, and the experienced Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest—and the world was electrified with the news. Yet, in the midst of the celebration for this remarkable human achievement, people wanted to know: Had Hillary or the team found footprints on the mountain, as Wyss-Dunant’s team had the year before? Team leader Colonel John Hunt was a believer in the creature67 (he had found tracks on an earlier expedition,68 and called for an expedition in search of it)69 but said, “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we saw no trace of him at all. I think we were too large a party for any Abominable Snowmen. They like seclusion and solitude.”70 Tenzing Norgay reported in his first autobiography that he had never seen the Yeti, but believed that it existed because his father had seen it.71 Later in his life, however, Tenzing became much more skeptical about the existence the Yeti.72
In search of a sensational story to capitalize on the Everest craze and attract readers, in 1954 the Daily Mail funded a big expedition to search the Himalayas for evidence of the Yeti. It included a number of mountaineers, journalists, and scientists—plus as many as 370 men to carry all the gear.73 They tramped the Himalayas for fifteen weeks, but found nothing more than some possible Yeti hair, poor tracks, and questionable animal droppings. The lead climber of the expedition, John Angelo Jackson, photographed footprints in the snow of many known animals, as well as large tracks that could not be identified, although later he admitted that they could have been the result of the melting of a more conventional footprint. He also photographed symbolic paintings of the Yeti in Tengboche gompa, a fortified Tibetan monastery.
The team examined an alleged Yeti scalp found in the small Buddhist temple in the village of Pangboche in Nepal (figure 3.4). Team zoologist Charles Stonor at first assessed this object as “quite obviously the skin from the top of the head of the animal,” adding that he was “utterly unable to identify it with any animal known to science.”74 The hairs varied from dark brown to fox red. However, hair samples and photographs sent to Frederick Wood Jones, an anatomist familiar with hair samples, revealed a very different story. As Stonor explained, Wood Jones “was able eventually to pronounce beyond all doubt that the object was not a true scalp at all, but fashioned from a piece cut off the shoulder of some unknown beast—certainly not a bear or an ape—and worked into the shape of a cranium while the skin was still fresh and soft.”75 (The “unknown beast” that contributed its skin to the manufacture of this and another alleged Yeti scalp relic has since been firmly identified, as we will see.)
Despite the lack of success, two members of the expedition published lengthy books on their participation and their impressions of the evidence for the existence of the Yeti. Both books were published in 1955, and each cites long passages from the other. One book, by newspaperman Ralph Izzard, is a gripping account of the expedition from the journalist’s perspective.76 Most of the book focuses on the details of each day of the expedition and the travails of trekking through such rugged country. Izzard spent two days following an 8-mile trackway of what he believed to be a pair of Yetis.77 They made footprints about 8 to 9 inches long and 4 to 5 inches across, with a stride of about 2 feet, 3 inches between footfalls. Izzard detailed how the Yeti tracks made detours to avoid man-made paths and cottages, preventing contact with humans, and how the Yetis stumbled over a hidden hazard in the snow and left an imprint in the snowbank when they landed. Izzard and his partner Gerald Russell took only a limited number of photographs of this trackway after two days of following it, however. He also admitted that the footprints were about four days old and showed signs of melting, which enlarged them and made them less distinct.
Figure 3.4 An alleged Yeti scalp examined at the Pangboche monastery by Charles Stonor, a member of the expedition to the Himalayas funded by the Daily Mail in 1954. (Reproduced by permission of Fortean Picture Library, Ruthin, Wales)
Izzard also reprinted a letter originally published in the Statesman from Prince Peter of Greece, who lived in Kalimpong, Nepal, at the time.78 Although the prince’s letter asserts his belief in the existence of some sort of Abominable Snowman, he wrote:
The real species, the flesh-and-blood Snowman is, I think, all the same, both a bear (perhaps a brown Himalayan bear) and a monkey. Tracks of both have been seen and the Swiss Everest Expedition’s leader, Professor [Edouard] Wyss-Dunant, found what he considered to be the footmarks of a whole family of plantigrades [animals that walk on the soles of their feet, with their heels on the ground, as do humans, apes, and bears] on the slopes of the world’s highest mountain. The monkey, however, seems to be the more prevalent of the two, and it is usually an anthropoid, ape-like creature that witnesses have reported having seen.79
The other book that emerged from the Daily Mail expedition was written by Stonor, one of the scientific officers of the group. As befits his training, his book is filled with descriptions of much of the wildlife and other scientific dimensions of the trek (including descriptions of Tibetan natural history and culture), rather than with the more sensationalist reports of Izzard. Stonor recounts the stories of the Sherpas and other tribesmen about the nature of the ape-like Yeti:
It was the first that Pasang Nima had seen, and he described it as the size and build of a small man. Its head was covered with long hair, as was the middle part of the body and the thighs. The face and chest did not look to be so hairy, and the hair on its legs below its knees was short.
The colour he described was “both dark and light” and the chest looked to be reddish. The Yeti was walking on two legs, nearly as upright as a man, but kept bending down to grub in the ground, he thought for roots…. After a time it saw the watchers, and ran off into the undergrowth, still on two legs, but with a sidling gait (which he imitated) giving a loud high-pitched cry heard by all who had been watching it.80
In his book and his reports for the newspapers, Stonor discussed different kinds of beasts that the Tibetans refer to as Yeti, and he determined from eyewitness accounts that the Dzu-teh of Tibet “is undoubtedly identical with the Himalayan red bear.”81 Like the journalist Izzard, the scientist Stonor found enticing “Yeti” footprints—but, as a scientist, was forced to admit that the tracks were too blurred with melting to “do more than record a general impression that they were made by a two-legged animal.” Scientific honesty, he wrote, “required that we should claim no positive identification.”82 Newspaper stories claimed that th
ere was a live Yeti in a zoo in Shigatse, a town in Tibet,83 but Stonor concluded from a traveler’s description that the animal was a gibbon.84 Although some Yeti tales clearly described bears,85 and despite the expedition’s general failure to confirm the existence of the Yeti, Stonor concluded that “some unknown and highly intelligent form of ape does in fact maintain a precarious foothold in the alpine zone of the Himalayas.”86
OILMAN SLICK, CIA CONNECTIONS, AND HILLARY RETURNS
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, British, French, Swiss, and German colonials and adventurers were among the leaders in the exploration of the Himalayas. Because they worked closely with Sherpas and other local peoples, European mountaineers also recorded most of the early reports of the Yeti. After the failure of the Daily Mail expedition of 1954 to produce conclusive evidence to support the claims for the existence of the Yeti, the next attempt was made not by British explorers, scientists, or journalists, but by a rich Texas oilman with the interesting name of Tom Slick, who financed three expeditions following his personal scouting in the area in 1956. According to his biographer Loren Coleman, Slick had been fascinated by Central Asia since his childhood and had traveled to the region many times and heard the Yeti legends. Although Texas-bred, he was a member of the eastern Establishment, having graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy and Yale University. He used the vast wealth he inherited from his father not only to fund expeditions to find Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, and the Yeti, but to establish a number of institutions for scientific and technological research. Slick was “a member of an elite circle of internationalists” whose “informal discussions on world peace” included Jimmy Stewart, Albert Schweitzer, Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, and John Foster Dulles. A moderate Republican, Slick rebelled against the isolationism and exceptionalism of the Republican Party in the 1950s and yearned for a more internationalist approach; these ideas were expressed in his book Permanent Peace: A Check and Balance Plan (1958). He argued that the United States and the Communist bloc should form a world police force that would prevent wars (much stronger than the modern United Nations peacekeeper forces) and urged the United States and the Soviet Union to dismantle their nuclear arsenals and work toward global peace. In 1960 and 1961, he even sponsored several large international meetings to further those goals.87 Unfortunately, the weakness of the United Nations at that time and the hawkish attitudes of the Cold Warriors in both the United States and the Soviet Union prevented such goals from being realized.
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