The last visit (back in February) of Igor Burtsev, "the chief in search of Yeti" in the country and the world, director of the International Center of Hominology, candidate of historical sciences from Moscow, seemed to put a cross on the Azasskaya cave.
He came with a group from the Japanese TV channel TBS. The Japanese and Burtsev lived in tents near the cave for two days, hoping at least from a distance to photograph a Yeti walking "to his home" through the big snow. Although Burtsev has been convinced for many years: the cave is not a house, but a temporary roof for the Yeti during the days of his large taiga crossings.
And in February, the empty cave did not give any sensational shots to the Japanese. And Burtsev suggested - due to the absence of traces and signs, that the Yeti had not come here for a very long time, since 2011.
(In general, we recall that the first signals from hunters about traces of the "Kuzbass Yeti" have been sent since 2008. In the spring of 2009, Burtsev found three fresh tracks in the Azasskaya cave, similar to human, but huge, on frozen sand. Exactly the same track, fossilized, - was found in the corner of the cave.”According to the print, which was estimated to be five thousand years old, it turned out that the Yeti had known the cave for a long time …
Then an international expedition in 2011 found fresh tracks in the cave. By 2015, dozens of messages from different places of Kuzbass about tracks had already been collected, and there was even the first contact with the Yeti in the taiga, but later we did not find fresh tracks. The Yeti seemed to be gone. And in general, the topic of "Bigfoot" is still not recognized by the official science …).
But literally a month after the Azasskaya cave “forgot” the Japanese speech, as a blizzard swept over the tracks of snowmobiles and a deserted silence reigned in the taiga, the yeti came to the cave. Tashtagol residents Vlad Shitenok and Anton Milakov told about this to Kuzbass.
Inside the cave, where the yeti occasionally enters, there is still a fabulous beauty. Photo: Vlada Shitenko.
Promotional video:
It's overgrown here …
“We looked into the cave on the way, filming the beauty of the taiga,” says Vlad, a famous Kuzbass photographer and journalist. “I haven't been in a cave for six years. I entered - and stayed at the entrance, taking pictures, the views from there are very beautiful …
- And I got into the cave for the first time. First I went through stones at the entrance, a strip of sand, again stones. I reached the place where the cave (after turning - Ed.) Ends with a wall. As if someone closed the entrance with cobblestones. It doesn't look like a collapse. More - to work manually. As if something was closed, laid, - explains Anton. “Before that, I didn't really believe in stories about the yeti. And then I thought about it. When I left, I would close the secret passage in its place in the same way …
For a while, the friends lost sight of each other. Vlad at the entrance kept walking around a strange stalactite. And Anton found strange prints in the sand.
- At the entrance, a stone icicle from the ceiling was broken. Up to the ceiling - about three meters. The stone icicle did not fall by itself. It was broken off by someone, at the very top, at a right angle, at the bottom - the fragments are lying around. Powerful stalactite. Broken off by whom? Human? Very high and beyond the power, and why? A stone icicle could only interfere with an entry who is under three meters tall. And they said about the yeti that he was so tall …
- And I was struck by the footprints in the sand - heavy, pressed. Fresh, but not yesterday's, already blown up by the wind. My foot size is 42nd. My foot, in a snowboarder, is several sizes larger. And the footprints of the yeti are much larger. And they walked along the border of sand and stones on the right - to a stone area, deep into the cave. The step span is more than twenty meters. Even the tallest man cannot walk so wide.
Then, after arguing and thinking, the friends came to a common opinion. And broken off stalactite, and footprints in the sand, all from the owner - a yeti.
By the way, scientists-hominologists have been saying for many years that yeti make themselves felt only to those who are very close to nature, who love it. And there is. For many years Vlad has been shooting Gornaya Shoria for federal channels, making films about her, serving as a guide for guests and fellow countrymen. Anton is an engineer, guide, paraglider.
- I fly at an altitude of one hundred meters to a kilometer. Eagles often help me out, they show a stream of warm air. Orlov next to me is not one or two - it happens ten … I fly with them to the clouds, then the paths diverge … They are smart, sometimes they even fool around, push each other in the side in flight. They don't push me, but sometimes they strive to sit on my wing, but I whistle and steer them … And flying over our taiga and in the mountains in general is happiness. In the taiga and in the sky, Vlad and I have long been "ours".
So the yeti, having returned after many years of wandering, from afar, and left the sign "to their own." He is now at home again - in the spring-awakening Kuzbass taiga.
The main thing
Eyewitness # 1
A rare document testifying to the Yeti's long-standing relationship with Gornaya Shoria is kept in Armenia. Kemerovo professor, doctor of pedagogical sciences, head of the department of KemSU Nikolai Skalon keeps an extract from it.
“These are the notes of the captured German soldier Johann Schitberger,” the professor says. - Then, six hundred years ago, Europe went on a crusade against the Turks. The Turks won the Battle of Nikopol. A German soldier was captured. The Turks later presented it to the temnik Edigey, the military "minister" of the Golden Horde. The soldier was in captivity, in the horde, for more than 30 years - from 1394 (1396) to 1427. Returning home to Germany, he published notes about the captivity. He, a slave, was in the train-caravan, rode with the temnik Edigey to the east across the whole continent, and the caravan also passed through the south of Siberia. And here (Shitberger describes a large mountain system that had to be overcome for 32 days, and it was, I suppose, Altai) an unforgettable event happened …
At the beginning of the passage through the mountain system, and this, for sure, was Gornaya Shoria, the local khan presented gifts to the arriving temnik Edigei - hunting trophies. The captured soldier writes in his diary: among the trophies were unseen animals, which are not in Germany, for example, wild horses. In the same row, listing the gifts, he writes: wild people caught in the taiga were presented to the temnik. A man and a woman, both covered in hair, have only their faces and hands free of hair. They led a wandering lifestyle, were engaged in gathering.
- And these notes - the first mention of the Yeti in the history of the region?
- Maybe. Shitberger's notes made a splash in their time … A hundred years later they were reprinted, republished by the scientists of Armenia, and the notes have survived to this day …
However, even considering these notes as a historical document, the Kemerovo professor himself does not believe in the Yeti. Not in the past, not especially in the present. Explains that there is no chance that the descendants of the wild people, about whom the prisoner of the horde wrote, could survive to this day. Indeed, in order to have descendants now, the population of wild people in the past had to be large. And this was not …
Larisa Maksimenko