Yeti

Furthermore, Sanderson completely misrepresented Major Waddell’s report, making up details about bare feet making the footprints and completely omitting Waddell’s conclusion that they were made by a bear. Abominable Snowmen became the starting point for many subsequent yeti writers. But Sanderson listed both Howard-Bury’s and Waddell’s books in his bibliography and thus knew that neither of the expedition leaders believed their porters’ interpretation. But why spoil a good story?

If the first Western sightings of yeti prints were exaggerated and distorted, did this necessarily mean that all subsequent sightings were unreliable? As a BBC producer, I sometimes felt the temptation to embroider stories, but I can honestly say that in thirty years with the Corporation I saw little fakery. The temptation was always there, though.

Let me give an example. A good friend of mine was shooting a documentary series for an un-named TV company about a certain tribe in a certain country. It was horribly hot, and the director was loud, sweltering and increasingly angry that the local men he was filming on a hunting trip couldn’t even find and kill a rabbit. The budget was fast running out and he had a mortgage to pay. Aware, no doubt, that his next gig depended on a kill, he phoned a game park in a neighbouring country and ordered a small antelope to be shot and airlifted in. The resulting film shows a clip of grainy footage of a similar animal running away, and then cuts to a spear sticking out of the bullet hole in the corpse. The audience were shown this as a representation of truth and were deceived. The director got another job and his executive producer was satisfied. The problem is this: it was a lie.

As a rule, though, newspapers seem to be worse than TV, and the Internet is worse still. The rise of US President Donald Trump was accompanied by the rise of the so-called false news sites, where there are no editorial controls over content, and the only driver is the number of dollars racked up by click-bait.

I decided to check a few more of the famous yeti sightings and try to get to the bottom of them. Was the beast going to disappear before my eyes?

Our next account of the yeti, from 1937, is to be found in The Valley of the Flowers,10 by the English mountaineer, Frank Smythe. He was the first climber to make a living by writing books about his expeditions, unlike the Alpine Club set who were often independently wealthy. Smythe’s particular genius was the way in which he brought the wonder and pleasure of mountaineering to a wider public. However, in person he was famously grumpy, a condition which a companion wryly noted ‘decreased with altitude’. He initiated a furious volley of letters in The Times after his encounter with the yeti.

In The Valley of the Flowers, he wrote a chapter dedicated to the Abominable Snowman. This is worth quoting at length as it gives a flavour of Smythe’s writing style with his love of flowers, his gentle humour and his scientific approach to the subject of the yeti. It also contains all the classic ingredients of a yeti hunt: the exotic location, the find, the puzzlement and fear, the tracking and the deductions. His conclusions led to a public rebuttal, which would have consequences later.

Smythe was with a small party of Sherpas in an unexplored valley parallel to the Bhyundar valley, now in the state of Uttarakhand, northern India:

On July 16th I left the base camp, taking with me Wangdi, Pasang and Nurbu with light equipment and provisions for five days. The past week had seen many more flowers come into bloom, prominent among which was the pedicularis. This plant goes by the unpleasant popular name of lousewort, from the Latin pediculus, a louse, as one of the species, Pedicularis palustris, was said to infect sheep with a lousy disease; but it would be difficult to associate the beautiful pedicularis of the Bhyundar Valley with any disease, particularly the Pedicularis siphonantjia with its light purple blooms …

Next morning we were away in excellent weather. Being lightly laden, I was well ahead of the men. On approaching the pass, I was surprised to notice some tracks in the snow, which I first took to be those of a man, though we had seen no traces of shepherds. But when I came up to the tracks I saw the imprint of a huge naked foot, apparently of a biped, and in stride closely resembling my own tracks.

What was it? I was very interested, and at once proceeded to take some photographs. I was engaged in this work when the porters joined me. It was at once evident when they saw the tracks that they were frightened. Wangdi was the first to speak.

‘Bad Manshi!’ he said, and then ‘Mirka!’ And in case I still did not understand, ‘Kang Admi’ (Snowman).

I had already anticipated such a reply and to reassure him and the other two, for I had no wish for my expedition to end prematurely, I said it must be a bear or snow leopard. But Wangdi would have none of this and explained at length how the tracks could not possibly be those of a bear, snow leopard, wolf or any other animal. Had he not seen many such tracks in the past? It was the Snowman, and he looked uneasily about him …

Presently the men plucked up courage and assisted me. They were unanimous that the Snowman walked with his toes behind him and that the impressions at the heel were in reality the front toes. I was soon able to disprove this to my own satisfaction by discovering a place where the beast had jumped down from some rocks, making deep impressions where he had landed, and slithering a little in the snow …

Superstition, however, knows no logic, and my explanation produced no effect whatsoever on Wangdi.

At length, having taken all the photographs I wanted on the pass, I asked the men to accompany me and follow up the tracks. They were very averse to this at first, but eventually agreed, as they said, following their own ‘logic’, that the Snowman had come from, not gone, in that direction. From the pass the tracks followed a broad, slightly ascending snow-ridge and, except for one divergence, took an almost straight line. After some 300 yards they turned off the ridge and descended a steep rock-face fully 1,000 feet high seamed with snow gullies. Through my monocular glass I was able to follow them down to a small but considerably crevassed glacier, descending towards the Bhyundar valley and down this to the lowermost limit of the new snow. I was much impressed by the difficulties overcome and the intelligence displayed in overcoming them. In order to descend the face, the beast had made a series of intricate traverses and had zigzagged down a series of ridges and gullies. His track down the glacier was masterly, and from our perch I could see every detail and how cunningly he had avoided concealed snow-covered crevasses. An expert mountaineer could not have made a better route and to have accomplished it without an ice-axe would have been both difficult and dangerous, whilst the unroped descent of a crevassed snow-covered glacier must be accounted as unjustifiable. Obviously the ‘Snowman’ was well qualified for membership of the Himalayan Club.

My examination in this direction completed, we returned to the pass, and I decided to follow the track in the reverse direction. The man, however, said that this was the direction in which the Snowman was going, and if we overtook him, and even so much as set eyes upon him, we should all drop dead in our tracks, or come to an otherwise bad end. They were so scared at the prospect that I felt it was unfair to force them to accompany me, though I believe that Wangdi, at least, would have done so had I asked him.

The tracks, to begin with, traversed along the side of a rough rock-ridge below the minor point we had ascended when we first visited the pass. I followed them for a short distance along the snow to one side of the rocks, then they turned upwards into the mouth of a small cave under some slabs. I was puzzled to account for the fact that, whereas tracks appeared to come out of the cave, there were none going into it. I had already proved to my own satisfaction the absurdity of the porters’ contention that the Snowman walked with his toes behind him; still, I was now alone and cut off from sight of the porters by a mist that had suddenly formed, and I could not altogether repress a ridiculous feeling that perhaps they were right after all; such is the power of superstition high up in the lonely Himalayas. I am ashamed to admit that I stood at a distance from the cave and threw a lump of rock into it before venturing further. Nothing happened, so I went up to the mouth of the cave and looked inside; naturally there was nothing there. I then saw that the single track was explained by the beast having climbed down a steep rock and jumped into the snow at the mouth of the cave. I lost the track among the rocks, so climbed up to the little summit we had previously visited. The mist was now dense and I waited fully a quarter of an hour for it to clear. It was a curious experience seated there with no other human being within sight, and some queer thoughts passed through my mind. Was there really a Snowman? If so, would I encounter him? If I did, an ice-axe would be a poor substitute for a rifle, but Wangdi had said that even to see a Snowman was to die. Evidently he killed you by some miraculous hypnotism; then presumably gobbled you up. It was a fairy-tale come to life … Meditating on this strange affair, I returned to the porters, who were unfeignedly glad to see me, for they had assumed that I was walking to my death.

This, the classic sighting of bear tracks masquerading as yeti prints, is worth deconstructing. All the usual features are present: the shock of the initial sighting, the puzzlement, the backwards-facing feet, the fear of the Sherpas and the curiosity of the Sahib. As John Napier explains in his seminal study Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality,11 bears are a good candidate for the makers of yeti footprints for several reasons. First, like humans, bears are plantigrade; that is, the anatomy of their walking leg is such that the sole of the foot takes the weight. Their toes and metatarsals are flat on the ground. So they make footprints that look like those of a huge human (or yeti). The other options are digitigrade, walking on the toes with the heel and wrist permanently raised, like dogs and cats, and unguligrade, walking on the nail or nails of the toes (what we call the hoof) with the heel/wrist and the digits permanently raised. So horses are running on their toenails.

Secondly, when bears are walking slowly their hindfeet land just behind the impression made by their forefeet, and when they are walking fast their hindfeet land just beyond the impression of the forefeet. And – here’s the important bit – at an intermediate speed the two footprints join together, sometimes with the toes of the forefeet appearing to be … reversed toes. To make this clear, the oft-repeated story of toes at the rear of the yeti footprint could be explained by medium-speed bears.

At an amble, the bear footprints follow one another more in a line, rather like those of a fashion model on a catwalk (well, a bit like that). This just might explain the footprints in a line seen by some witnesses. But there is another possible explanation for those linear sightings. Bears can also walk on their hindlegs for short distances and will stand on their hindlegs to fight with the claws on their front paws, to reach fruit from high branches, or to climb trees. These behaviours will result in human-looking bipedal footprints.

As for the ‘elephant’ footprints noted later by Shipton et al., when overnight temperatures are low an icy crust forms on the snow. This icy crust is 2 to 3 inches deep and can support the weight of a man. Mountaineers know this, so they get up just after midnight for an ‘Alpine start’ and move fast across the surface of the snow. Your crampons barely scratch the snow and it is a delight to climb at this time of the morning and watch the sun rise on the peaks around you. Later in the day, the crust melts and gives way when walked on, to the despair of the knackered climber, whose every step now plunges deep into the snow. At either side of the footprint, a roughly triangular area of snow caves in and the resulting shape is rhomboidal. If melting is now added, gigantic elephant-like tracks are the result.

Let’s get back to Frank Smythe:

On returning to the base camp some days later, the porters made a statement. It was witnessed by Oliver and runs as follows:

‘We, Wangdi Nurbu, Nurbu Bhotia and Pasang Urgen, porters employed by Mr F. S. Smythe, were accompanying Mr Smythe on July 17th over a glacier pass north of the Bhyundar Valley when we saw on the pass tracks which we knew to be those of a Mirka or jungli Admi (wild man). We have often seen bear, snow leopard and other animal tracks, but we swear that these tracks were none of these, but were the tracks of a Mirka.

‘We told Mr Smythe that these were the tracks of a Mirka and we saw him take photographs and make measurements. We have never seen a Mirka because anyone who sees one dies or is killed, but there are pictures of the tracks, which are the same as we have seen, in Tibetan monasteries.’

My photographs were developed by Kodak Ltd of Bombay under conditions that precluded any subsequent accusation of faking and, together with my measurements and observations, were sent to my literary agent, Mr Leonard P. Moore, who was instrumental in having them examined by Professor Julian Huxley, Secretary of the Zoological Society, Mr Martin A. G. Hinton, Keeper of Zoology at the Natural History Museum, and Mr R. I. Pocock. The conclusion reached by these experts was that the tracks were made by a bear. At first, due to a misunderstanding as to the exact locality in which the tracks had been seen, the bear was said to be Ursus arctos pruinosus, but subsequently it was decided that it was Ursus arctos isabellinus, which is distributed throughout the western and central Himalayas. The tracks agreed in size and character with that animal and there is no reason to suppose that they could have been made by anything else. This bear sometimes grows as large as, or larger than, a grizzly, and there is a well-grown specimen in the Natural History Museum. It also varies in colour from brown to silver-grey.

The fact that the tracks appeared to have been made by a biped is explained by the fact that the bear, like all bears, puts its rear foot at the rear end of the impression left by its front foot. Only the side toes would show, and this explains the Tibetans’ belief that the curious indentations, in reality superimposed by the rear foot, are the front toes of a Snowman who walks with his toes behind him. This also explains the size of the spoor, which when melted out by the sun would appear enormous. Mr Eric Shipton describes some tracks he saw near the peak of Nanda Ghunti in Garhwal as resembling those of a young elephant. So also would the tracks I saw when the sun had melted them away at the edges …

The Snowman is reputed to be large, fierce, and carnivorous; the large ones eat yaks and the small ones men. He is sometimes white, and sometimes black or brown. About the female, the most definite account I have heard is that she is only slightly less fierce than the male, but is hampered in her movements by exceptionally large pendulous breasts, which she must per force sling over her shoulders when walking or running.

Of recent years considerable force has been lent to the legend by Europeans having seen strange tracks in the snow, sometimes far above the permanent snow-line, apparently of a biped. Such tracks had in all cases been spoiled or partially spoiled by the sun, but if such tracks were made by bears, then it is obvious that bears very seldom wander on to the upper snows, otherwise fresh tracks unmelted by the sun would have been observed by travellers. The movements of animals are incalculable, and there seems no logical explanation as to why a bear should venture far from its haunts of woodland and pasture. There is one point in connection with this which may have an important bearing on the tracks we saw, which I have omitted previously in order to bring it in at this juncture. On the way up the Bhyundar Valley from the base camp, I saw a bear about 200 yards distant on the northern slopes of the valley. It bolted immediately, and so quickly that I did not catch more than a glimpse of it, and disappeared into a small cave under an overhanging crag. When the men, who were behind, came up with me, I suggested that we should try to coax it into the open, in order that I could photograph it, so the men threw stones into the cave while I stood by with my camera. But the bear was not to be scared out so easily, and as I had no rifle it was not advisable to approach near to the cave. It is possible that we so scared this bear that the same evening it made up the hillside some 4,000 feet to the pass. There are two objections to this theory: firstly, that it appeared to be the ordinary small black bear, and too small to make tracks of the size we saw, and, secondly, that the tracks ascended the glacier fully a mile to the east of the point where we saw the bear. We may, however, have unwittingly disturbed another and larger bear during our ascent to our camp. At all events, it is logical to assume that an animal would not venture so far from its native haunts without some strong motive to impel it. One last and very interesting point – The Sikh surveyor who I had met in the Bhyundar Valley was reported by the Postmaster of Joshimath as having seen a huge white bear in the neighbourhood of the Bhyundar Valley.

It seems possible that the Snowman legend originated through certain traders who saw bears when crossing the passes over the Himalayas and carried their stories into Tibet, where they became magnified and distorted by the people of that superstitious country which, though Buddhist in theory, has never emancipated itself from ancient nature and devil worship. Whether or not bears exist on the Tibetan side of the Himalayas I cannot say. It is probable that they do in comparatively low and densely forested valleys such as the Kharta and Kharma Valleys east of Mount Everest, and it may be that they are distributed more widely than is at present known.

After my return to England I wrote an article, which was published by The Times, in which I narrated my experiences and put forward my conclusions, which were based, of course, on the identifications of the zoological experts. I must confess that this article was provocative, not to say dogmatic, but until it was published I had no idea that the Abominable Snowman, as he is popularly known, is as much beloved by the great British public as the sea-serpent and the Loch Ness monster. Indeed, in debunking what had become an institution, I roused a hornet’s nest about my ears … 12

There is a great deal to draw from Frank Smythe’s account.13 His observations are comprehensive and his conclusions are clear: he decided that the tracks he saw were made by a bear. But did that mean that all footprints in snow were made by bears? He admits to his Times article being provocative and dogmatic, and in time this would have repercussions. The British public, however, were having none of it. Their appetite was for more mystery. And soon enough, along came some more clues.

CHAPTER THREE

Nazi SS Operation Tibet … shooting your wife is wrong … Abominable Snowmen of Everest … Shipton and Tilman … the last explorers … a Blank on the Map … Appendix B … a one-legged, carnivorous bird … the Ascent of Rum Doodle.

In his book My Quest for the Yeti, the mountaineer Reinhold Messner reproduces a letter sent to him by the German explorer Ernst Schäfer which refers to footprints seen by Smythe and Shipton:

In 1933–35, the British mountaineers Frank Smythe and Eric Shipton discovered the first ‘yeti footprints’, and published the pictures they took in The London Illustrated News and in Paris Match [Schäfer seemed unaware of the earlier Howard-Bury report]. This created a sensation. The ‘Abominable Snowman’ aroused the interest of journalists and opened up financial resources for numerous Everest expeditions. In 1938, after I had uncovered the whole sham in my publications with Senckenberg in Frankfurt and established the yeti’s real identity with the pictures and pelts of Tibetan bears, Smythe and Shipton came to me on their knees, begging me not to publish my findings in the English-speaking press. The secret had to be kept at all costs – ‘Or else the press won’t give us the money we need for our next Everest expedition.’1

Can this be true? Could Smythe and Shipton really have been so cynical? If so, this would cast doubt on the yeti’s most iconic footprint, discovered later by Shipton in 1951. This case will take some unravelling, but it is an interesting journey to Mount Everest and beyond.

At the time of his alleged meeting with Smythe and Shipton, the 28-year-old Ernst Schäfer was a swashbuckling German explorer and ornithologist who had already been on two expeditions to China and Tibet under the leadership of Brooke Dolan, the son of a wealthy American industrialist. Schäfer had worked on these trips as a scientist and wrote a successful book about the second expedition which had made his name in Germany.2 He could have emigrated to America and had a gilded career, but he sold out to the Nazis, as did hundreds of other young academics, seeing opportunities ahead. And then the Nazis demonstrated exactly what happens when criminals get hold of a modern industrial state, using fake science to justify their actions.

Schäfer’s colleague in 1938 was the anthropologist Bruno Beger, who was fascinated by the idea that the Aryans, ancestors of the Nordics, could still be found in a lost civilisation somewhere in Tibet. His proposal to the expedition was ‘to study the current racial-anthropological situation through measurements, trait research, photography and moulds … and to collect material about the proportion, origins, significance and development of the Nordic race in this region’.

Nordic culture was all the rage in the 1930s, as was the pseudo-science of eugenics. Tolkien used the Völsunga saga translated by William Morris of the Arts and Crafts movement in his The Lord of the Rings, as did Wagner in his Ring of the Nibelung cycle of operas. The eponymous ring would grant magical domination over the whole world. Wagner’s ideas were much lauded by Hitler and the Nazi hierarchy, and these Nordic myths fed the strange beliefs held by Hitler and his Reich Minister of the Interior, Heinrich Himmler, who was the founder of the German SS.

Schäfer’s third expedition was under Himmler’s personal patronage and he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer, a Nazi party rank approximating to major. Rather like the alpinist Heinrich Harrer, Schäfer claimed after the war that he had joined the SS to advance his career, but in fact he colluded in the hunt for evidence to support these Nazi folk myths. The expedition would search for proof of Aryan supremacy and also serve as a cover for offensive operations against British India during the coming war. Schäfer eventually would regret his alliance with the top Nazis: ‘He was to later call his alliance with Himmler his biggest mistake. But he was an opportunist who had a tremendous craving for recognition.’3

Himmler was obsessed by the belief in Aryan and Nordic racial superiority over lesser races (some of these ideas may have originated with Major Waddell, whom we met earlier, in Chapter Two). He believed in the Welteislehre, or Glacial Cosmogony, which held that the planets and moon were made of ice and that the solar system had evolved out of a cosmic collision of an icy star with our sun. This theory contradicted Albert Einstein’s ‘Jewish’ theory of relativity. Somehow, the Aryan race was bred out of an ice storm, evolved in the Arctic or Tibet, and founded a civilisation on the lost continent of Atlantis. Himmler, a failed chicken farmer, was fascinated by eugenics and wanted to breed back to ‘racially pure and healthy’ Aryans. For this he needed to know where the original stock originated.