 |
 |
The Legend:
In 1951, British explorer Eric Shipton took a picture of "yeti" tracks in the Gauri Sankar range in the Himilayas. The prints were 13 inches long and 8 inches wide. Shipton said that the prints were too large to be a bear's and too fresh too have been enlarged or distorted by melting.
Shipton was quoted as saying: "What really made my flesh creep... was that where we had to jump crevasses you could see clearly where the creature had dug its toes in." [Quote from Strange Stories, Amazing Facts.]
In Their Own Words
From August to October 1951, Eric Shipton made his fifth visit to Mount Everest; and it was on this trip that he took his famous photograph. The expedition party consisted of leader Eric Shipton, Mike Ward, Bill Murray, Tom Bourdillon, Ed Hillary, Earle Riddiford, Angtharkay, Pasang Bhotia, Nima, Sen Tensing and six other Sherpas (Ed Hillary was later to be knighted Sir Edmund in 1953 after reaching the top of Mount Everest with Tenzing Norgay, a native guide). Towards the end of the expedition the climbers were making an exploratory travel in the Gauri Sankar groups to the south-west of Everest, when they discovered the prints. I now quote Eric Shipton's account of the matter, from The Six Mountains-Travel Books [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."
Variations
According to Jenny Randles in her book Strange & Unexplained Mysteries of the 20th Century, the pictures were taken at "the glacier at Menlung." I am trying to locate said glacier, which could concievebly be in the Gauri Sankar range. Randles also states that the prints were three-toed, though obviously there are four.
Theories
According to The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries, Dr. T.C.S. Morrison-Scott of the Natural History Department of the British Museum, committed himself to the view that the print was merely that of a Himilayan langur. He reached this conclusion based on a Sherpa Tenzing's description of the Yeti -- that it was about five feet tall, walked upright, had a conical skull and reddish-brown fur -- which, Dr. Morrison-Scott pointed out, bore a strong resemblance to a langur. The theory was almost immediatly rejected; langurs, like most apes, walk on all fours most of the time, and have five toes... the print in the photograph only has four toes, and rather large and rounded at that. Shipton's own opinion of the theory is in his book [pg. 621]: "Of the various theories that have been advanced to account for these tracks, the only one which is in any way plausible is that they were made by a langur monkey, and even this is very far from convincing, as I believe those who have suggested it would be the first to admit."
