YETI TRACKS?

Indian Army team find footprints of “mythical beast”; brown bear tracks, say the sceptics

On 9 April, mountaineers from the Indian army on an expedition in Nepal found mysterious large footprints in the snow, measuring a gigantic 32x15in (81x38cm), at an altitude of 17,000ft (5,000m), close to a camp near Mount Makalu. “For the first time, an #IndianArmy Mountaineering Expedition Team has sited [sic] Mysterious Footprints of mythical beast ‘Yeti’“it said in a tweet on 29 April, not explaining how a “mythical beast” could leave footprints. A peculiar feature of the tracks is that they are in a completely straight line (reminiscent of the celebrated ‘Devil’s footprints’ in Devon in 1855; see FT59:64, 173:75, 186:76, 200:29).

“This is probably a footprint of a brown bear,” said Sathyakumar Sambandam, professor at the Wildlife Institute of India. “The footmarks get enlarged due to strong sun and winds in the heights, and the overlapping of hind and front legs gives an impression of single giant mark.”

Located on the border between Nepal and China, Makalu is among the highest mountains in the world and stands near the Makalu-Barun valley, a remote wilderness where Eric Shipton found his famous yeti footprints in 1951 (possibly faked: see FT54:18-20. Photos of these prints were sold in 2007, FT230:11).

Tales of a wild hairy beast roaming the Himalayas have captured the imagination of climbers in Nepal since the 1920s, prompting many, including Sir Edmund Hillary, to go looking for the creature. Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis popularised the yeti with his novel The Case of the Abominable Snowman, published pseudonymously in 1941. In 2008, Japanese climbers returning from a mountain in western Nepal announced they had seen footprints, which they thought belonged to the yeti. For possible yeti prints in Bhutan, see FT339:12.

In 2013, Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes conducted tests on hair samples left behind in footprints. He concluded the most likely explanation was that the yeti was a rare hybrid of the polar bear and brown bear, which would explain its unusual height and paw size. However, the existence of mountain manimals remains an open question. [R] BBC News, 30 April; D.Mail, 1 May 2019. For more on the yeti/bear controversy, see FT179:12, 240:28, 320:21, 322:17, 324:21, 326|:21, 362:23.

Makalu stands near the valley where Eric Shipton found his yeti footprints in 1915

ABOVE: One of the photos tweeted by the Indian Army Mountaineering Expedition Team. BELOW: The Army’s claims were met with scepticism on social media.