Throughout the winter and early spring of 1921, an expedition of British climbers spent trying to climb the treacherous northern slope of Mount Everest, and now, at an altitude of 17,000 feet, they were surprised to see three large figures, moving on their hind legs, walked through the snow right above them.
Although the creatures did not look human, more thorough identification was impossible, because, having reached the required height, the researchers found only footprints in that place - huge, monkey-like prints in the snow. Moreover, both wider and longer than the traces of climbing boots; each paw has three thick toes plus one even wider, on the side. One of them was measured: the trail was thirteen inches wide and eighteen inches long, although the melting snow did not give any hope of being particularly accurate.
Slightly dumbfounded, the climbers continued on their way, and then the head of the entire expedition, Lieutenant General Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury, was amazed to learn that mysterious creatures are well known to guides-Sherpas and all local residents and they are called Yeti, or beastmen. The Sherpas stated that these creatures are very similar in muzzles to people, they have large, pointed heads at the top, long arms, hanging below the knees and covered with brownish-red hair. They keep in groups, live in the forest zone and only occasionally dare to climb up into the kingdom of eternal snows.
Mostly shy, the Yeti were considered harmless by the Nepalese, although it was rumored that sometimes they drag food from the villages, attack herds of yaks, and even, admittedly, quite infrequently, rush to people. It didn't take long for a British officer to grasp the full significance of this discovery. After all, the creatures, according to the stories of the Sherpas, are not only completely unknown to science, but in general they do not resemble any species studied by zoologists.
When Charles Howard-Bury, returning from the Himalayas, described all the details of the meeting to journalists, the interest caused by the story surpassed his expectations. Over the course of several months, the news of the "eerie Bigfoot" spread throughout the world, and newspaper readers had legends of the Nepalese Beast Man everywhere on their lips.
Zoologists were hastily divided in their opinions on the question of whether there could be a race of unknown humanoid monsters in one of the most remote regions of the planet from civilization. However, the majority was immediately against such a possibility.
Although Charles Darwin, in his evolutionary theory, claimed that the "missing link" could still be preserved somewhere in the God-forsaken mountains of Central Asia, very few took it seriously. Moreover, the widespread opinion was that all the major inhabitants of the world have long been found, introduced into the systematics, and therefore it is absolutely incredible that such a wonderful creature remained undetected for such a long time.
As the years passed, however, evidence for the yeti continued to accumulate. In 1925, the Greek photographer N. A. Tombasi reported that he saw a certain huge hairy humanoid, which was walking in the Sikkim mountains, from time to time stopping and uprooting a bush. Finding that he was being watched, the creature quickly left, but, as Tombashi stated, he found footprints in the snow, completely unlike any human or known animal.
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Although there were no reports of Yeti for the next two decades, in 1951 an expedition sent to Everest to scout a route to reach the summit the following year discovered a chain of footprints at 18,000 feet leading to the edge of the Menlung Ridge. According to expedition leader Eric Shipton, the tracks, which did not stop for nearly a mile, were clearly not human. It was, in his opinion, a two-legged creature, of great weight and with an unusually wide stride. Such an experienced climber was clearly credible, and his story, plus photographs of fresh footprints that clearly belonged to a large mammal, rekindled the old controversy over yoga.
In the researcher's personal opinion, the tracks were made the night before they were discovered or during the day, since they did not have time to blur around the edges and each finger was clearly visible. Shipton claimed that they were left by a large biped, and since it was not a bear, then it means - some unknown creature. But many disagreed. Skeptics were quick to point out that melting often enlarges initially small but clear tracks, and then the prints photographed by Shipton may have belonged to the monkey langur, a species that often lives at quite high altitudes.
In order to check this idea, Professor V. Chernetski from Queen Mary College carried out a difficult analysis of the tracks, using a reconstructed model, which he compared with the tracks of bears, different breeds of monkeys and prehistoric people. However, no particular resemblance was found to anything.
For a short while, it seemed that the positions of the skeptics were becoming more and more precarious, and the existence of the Yeti was becoming more plausible; however, already in the early 60s, everything returned to its original place. Several expeditions, equipped with funds from London newspapers and led by renowned climbers, found nothing - neither the Yeti themselves, nor their traces.
And one famous Bigfoot scalp turned out to be pieces of morocco, sewn onto a rough skin. Sir Edmund Hidlary, knighted for his personal conquest of Everest in 1953, conducted his own research in 1960 and returned from the mountains, completely convinced that all the stories about the mysterious creature are nothing but a fairy tale generated by local superstitions and fostered by the western media. However, just when there was almost no reason to believe in Bigfoot, people met with him more often.
In 1970, a Welshman named Don Villane, a member of the Annapurna climber group, saw a yeti: a Sherpa pointed out to him. Before his eyes, the creature crossed the ridge, and then he found in that place a chain of fresh footprints on the soft snow.
On the same day, a little later, Villane again saw that creature, or already the second one, which moved by leaps in the manner of a monkey; he watched it for some time from a distance of half a mile, until it disappeared into the shadow of a rock. Previously, full of doubts about these fables about the yeti, now Villane is convinced personally that the animal is not a bear or an ordinary monkey at all.
In 1975, a Polish tracker named Janos Tomaschuk had a closer and more impressive encounter with a Yeti while strolling at the foot of Everest. In complete contrast to the timid acquaintance, seen by Willans, this one, barely noticing Tomashchuk, menacingly moved on him and got away only when the frightened Pole screamed loudly. In addition to face-to-face encounters with the Yeti, over the past twenty years, we have received many distinctly imprinted footprints, very convincingly captured on film.
In 1978, Lord Hunt, the famous British climber and leader of the first successful Everest expedition, photographed huge footprints 14 inches long and 7 inches wide - they were found in a valley under the highest mountain in the world. Hunt himself firmly believed that the footprints - similar to which he had seen several times before - and the screeching screams from time to time piercing the quiet mountain air - he also heard them personally - there was no other explanation, except that they belong to a beast not recognized by science.
The following year, the British expedition again came across fresh tracks in the Hinken Valley, and scientists clearly heard mysterious screams for many nights. Team leader John Edward took a fair number of very high quality photographs, which, according to some experts, prove better than others that Bigfoot is not fiction, but reality.