Page 87 - Encyclopedia of the Unusual and Unexplained Vol. 3

Mysterious Creatures 67

World War II (1939–45) stopped moun- An alleged Yeti, or
taineering and scientific exploration of the abominable snowman,
formidable Himalayas, but in 1942, Slavomir on the 1952 issue of
Rawicz and four other men escaped from a Radar magazine. (MARY
Communist prison camp in Siberia and struck EVANS PICTURE LIBRARY)
out on a “long walk” toward India. They
reported meeting two Yeti during their incred-
ible journey.
Sightings of Yeti mushroomed in the 1950s
as several scientists seriously investigated the
snowmen. In 1950, natives reported Yeti in
three different locations, including a sighting
by a large group of monks near Thyangboche.
A Yeti also ventured out of the forest and
hung around the Thyangboche Monastery
until it was finally chased away by monks who
blew bugles, struck gongs, and shrieked at it.
The following year, Eric Shipton discovered
tracks and photographed them while on his
way to Everest with an expedition.
In 1952, Sir Edmund Hillary and George
Lowe found “snowman” hair in a high moun-
tain pass, and tracks were reported by a Swiss
expedition. In 1954, an expedition financed
by the London Daily Mail set out to capture a In August 1981, Soviet mountain climber
Yeti. They found tracks in several different Igor Tatsl told the Moscow News Weekly that he
locations, but returned without their prize. and his fellow climbers had seen a Yeti and that
Three other scientific groups also reported they had attempted a friendly, spontaneous
finding tracks. contact with the creature. Tatsl went on to
state that his team had made a plaster cast of an
In 1957, the first expedition sponsored by imprint of a Yeti’s footprint that they had found
the American millionaire Tom Slick found on a tributary of the Varzog River. This particu-
hair and footprints at several locations. Two lar river rushes through the Gissar Mountains
porters said Yeti had been sighted in those in the Pamiro-Alai range of Tadzhik in Central
regions earlier that year. Peter and Bryan Asia. In Tatsl’s considered opinion the Yeti may
Bryne said they had seen a snowman when the quite likely be humankind’s closest evolution-
Slick Expedition was in the Arun Valley. In ary relative. He further believed that their sens-
1958, Gerald Russell and two porters with the es were more highly developed than those of
Second Slick Expedition encountered a small the human species.
snowman near a river, and in the following
year, tracks were reported by the Third Slick
Expedition, as well as by members of a Japan-
ese expedition.
THE Yetis have been linked to the “time of the
Sir Edmund Hillary, the man who con-
quered Mt. Everest, created a sensation when dragon,” the presumed genesis of Asian civilization.
he returned with the alleged scalp of a Yeti.
Hillary later proved that the so-called scalp
was actually goat skin, and he declared that Russian scientists have sponsored serious
snowman tracks were made by foxes, bears, efforts to track down the Yeti for more than a
and other animals that became enlarged when quarter of a century. Although each Russian
the snow is melted by the sun. province may have its own name for the mys-

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