Yeti / Abominable Snowman

Reports from Himalayan mountaineering expeditions span more than a century. Footprints photographed at high altitude have been variously attributed to bears, language, and an unknown hominid.

The Yeti sits at the meeting point of Himalayan tradition and Western mountaineering. For Sherpa and other peoples of the high Himalaya the meh-teh and migoi are long-standing figures of belief and landscape, predating European interest. As climbing expeditions opened the range in the twentieth century, their members began reporting tracks and, less often, distant figures in the snow.

The best-known single piece of evidence is the footprint photographed by Eric Shipton near the Menlung Glacier in 1951, an image that fixed the creature in the popular imagination and has been argued over ever since. Sceptical analysis attributes such prints to known animals, especially bears, whose overlapping fore and hind tracks can enlarge and distort in melting snow, and later genetic studies of supposed Yeti remains have generally matched bears and other local fauna. No accepted specimen exists.

We hold the Sherpa tradition, the expedition testimony, the photographs, and the bear hypothesis together, each attributed and dated. We do not decide what made the tracks; we cite the record that preserves them.