Eric Shipton Discovers Possible yeti Footprints on Mount Everest
In the fall of 1951, English mountain climbers Eric Shipton and Dr. Michael Ward were exploring routes to climb Mount Everest from Nepal. While on this mission Shipton discovered some huge footprints in the snow, possibly belonging to the fabled Yeti.
The strange footprints discovered on Mount Everest by Eric Shipton, Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Eric Shipton’s Everest Expedition
Eric Shipton's expedition team including Edmund Hillary who later became the first man to reach the summit of Everest. Photo: Curious Archive
In 1951, when Mount Everest wasn't a busy tourist spot, two English mountain climbers, Eric Shipton and Dr. Michael Ward, joined a trip to figure out how to reach Everest's summit from Nepal. Shipton led the expedition, and their discoveries helped plan the successful climb by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. This expedition not only mapped the way up the tallest mountain but also marked a return to climbing after a pause during World War II.
The Yeti Footprints
At an altitude of around 15-16,000 feet, Shipton and Ward came across an unusual sight – a set of strange footprints in the snow in the Menlung Basin. Because they didn't have proper tools to measure the footprints, they improvised using an ice pick, a backpack, and Michael Ward's left boot. Shipton took photos as they closely examined what they found.
In one photo, comparing the boot to a footprint(below), it was evident that the print was much wider than a normal human foot, almost twice as wide, as Ward estimated. The footprint's toes looked strange, with the big toe being lower and larger than expected for a human. It raised questions about how someone could walk in the snow without foot protection in freezing temperatures, even if it was a human print.
The photo of the Yeti footprint with Shipton's Boot on Everest
Perplexed, Shipton and Ward tracked the mysterious footprints down the glacier for about a mile until they set up camp for the night. A few days later, their teammates W. H. Murray and Tom Bourdillon joined them and examined the peculiar footprints. Bourdillon noted in his diary that the prints had become somewhat distorted by the sun by the time he reached them, but he still found them surprising and unexplained.
After the photos were published, several expeditions took place in the Himalayas and Central Asia to determine if the creature in Shipton's photographs actually existed. However, no evidence was found to prove the existence of the Yeti. Some accused Shipton of staging a hoax, but others who had seen the footprints vouched for the authenticity of Shipton's photographs.
Possible Explanations for the Footprints
Deformed Humans
While the footprints could be evidence of Yeti living in the Himalayas there are a number of other theories about where these footprints could have come from.
Dr. Michael Ward, a medical doctor who was a part of Shipton’s expedition had an interesting theory about the footprints. He believed that the footprints could have been made by a local Tibetan with differently-shaped feet. In communities without easy access to medical help, foot abnormalities from birth might remain.
Dr Ward had seen Tibetans with deformed feet and some who walked with bare feet in the snow.
One case occurred during the Silver Hut Expedition in 1960-1961, which stayed at 19,000ft in the Everest region during the winter. A 35-year-old Nepalese pilgrim named Man Bahadur, who usually lived at 6000ft, visited. He spent 14 days at 15,300ft and above, not wearing shoes or gloves throughout. He walked in the snow and on rocks with bare feet without getting frostbite. He had minimal clothing and no sleeping bag or protective gear except a woolen coat.
He was monitored for four days without shelter between 16,500ft and 17,500ft, with temperatures as low as -13°C to -15°C at night and below freezing during the day. Eventually, he developed cracks in his toe skin, which became infected, and he went to lower levels for treatment. If any European members of the group had followed the same routine, they would likely have suffered severe frostbite and hypothermia.
Bears
Yeti researcher Daniel C. Taylor believes he has convincingly proven that Yeti prints are made by Asiatic Black bears standing on their hind legs. He has recreated the footprints in the snow using casts from a black bear and believes them to be very similar.
Taylor believes that the long footprints in the snow from 1951 were made by the Asiatic black bear, known as Ursus thibetanus. When the bear put its front paw down, it didn't press too hard into the snow, so the claws on the front paw didn't leave clear marks. After that, the hind paw landed on the back part of the print, stretching it to about twelve inches in length.
The Nepalese Legend of the Yeti
Certain local Sherpas think that the Himalayas are home to unusual beings, and they view the Yeti (also commonly called the "abominable snowman") as a guardian. On the other hand, some believe it to be a threat.
"There is a kind of mysterious creature that lives in the Himalayas," explained Ang Tshering Sherpa, leader of the Nepal Mountaineering Association in Katmandu, who is from the Khumbu region.
Do you think there are Yeti in the Himalayas? Tell us your theories in the comments!
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