Yeti Footprints Found on Dhaulagiri IV

Last week a team of Japanese climbers claim they found footprints of the fabled Yeti at 14,500 feet on 25,135-foot Dhaulagiri IV, a, a peak near Dhaulagiri, the world’s seventh highest mountain. Over 42 days the seven-member expedition, called Yeti Project Japan, searched for signs and, using nine remote cameras, tried to film the legendary ape-like creature that reputedly lives in the Himalayas in Tibet and Nepal.

Yoshiteru Takahashi, the expedition leader, told the Japanese newspaper Kyodo News in Katmandu, “They looked like footprints of humans, but the prints were of naked feet and it is impossible that a human being walked barefoot on the freezing snow there.” The 8-inch-long prints were deeply impressed in snow and appear to have been made by a bipedal animal. Takahashi ruled out that the prints were from a bear, deer, or goat, saying, “We can recognize footprints of snow animals. The footprints we found were definitely of the Yeti.” He claims to have seen the silhouette of a five-foot-tall Yeti in the same region in 2003 from 800 yards.

The legend of the Yeti, long known by the local Sherpas, was first reported in 1832 by British explorer B.H. Hodgeson, who said his guides had previously spotted the hairy bipedal ape in the high mountains. Since then either Yetis or signs of them have been seen by many explorers and mountaineers including Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first men to summit Mount Everest; British climber Don Whillans on Annapurna; and the great alpinist Reinhold Messner, who said it was a species of bear.

Whatever the Yeti is, no definitive proof exists to either prove or disprove its existence. Looking at the new photos, however, the footprint appears to be the melted-out print of any medium-sized human male and no photos showing a continuous trackway were released. Hmmmmm, it makes me pretty skeptical. Still it's a good thought to consider that the world is still full of mystery, that undiscovered animals, plants, and life exist out there in the wide world that are still beyond the realm of science and rationalism. That, of course, is still magical thinking, the same kind of thinking that allows us to consider the reality of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and extraterrestrial aliens visiting Planet Earth in UFOs.

What do you think about this latest claim that the Yeti exists? Go to the Climbing forum and write down your thoughts.

Photo above: A supposed Yeti footprint photographed in 1951 looks suspiciously fake.
Photo © Topical Press Agency/Getty Images