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Bigfoot Sightings

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« on: February 11, 2007, 07:05:52 pm »

Snowman of the Himalayas

12jan06
IN mid-1959 Argosy magazine flew Edmund Hillary and his wife, Louise, to New York, where Ed was presented with the magazine's Explorer of the Year award.

While they were in New York an invitation came to fly on to Chicago and make a short educational film with Field Enterprises Educational Corporation, the publishers of World Book Encyclopaedia. The filming went well.

John Dienhart, the company's public relations director, was charmed by Ed's personality and his enthusiastic account of his "dream expedition" – combining science with mountaineering and with a search for the yeti thrown in.

Dienhart thought Field Enterprises might be able to help, so asked Ed to send a detailed report about his plans.

Plans were concocted at the typewriter and posted off and, a week later, a cable arrived. He was invited to fly to Chicago and talk to the board of directors of Field Enterprises – at their expense.

The company contributed $US125,000 to the expedition, to be used at Ed's discretion, and, a year later, Dienhart found himself trekking out of Kathmandu at the end of a long stream of porters carrying tons of supplies for an eight-week yeti hunt in the Rolwaling Valley, west of Mt Everest.

For Ed, it was a year of frantic planning for, and organising, his biggest and most complex undertaking.

The expedition members, who would be in the Himalayas for a total of nine months, comprised 21 scientists, climbers and other specialists from New Zealand, Australia, India, Britain, the US and Nepal.

They would need several hundred local porters and scores of Sherpas to carry loads and work alongside the climbers at altitude.

This was the plan. During September 1960, one party would carry tons of expedition stores, equipment and building supplies to the Mingbo Valley above Tengboche and find sites for the two high-altitude huts. Norman Hardie led this group. Ed, meanwhile, would lead another party into Rolwaling Valley, west of the Khumbu, to search for evidence of the yeti.

In late October, Ed and his group would cross the Tesi Lapcha Pass into the Khumbu, meet up with the others, and assist with assembling huts.

Scientific director Dr Griffith Pugh and his team would arrive from the UK and America in late October, and spend the winter studying human acclimatisation while Ed returned to New Zealand for more supplies.

He would be back in March, bringing Louise with him for the walk in from Kathmandu – her first visit to Nepal.

The final part of the expedition was the attempt on a peak – probably Makalu – with the high-altitude team joined by Ed and two other climbers.

Ed was delighted and relieved when Hardie agreed to take on the leadership of the building group. He did outstanding work managing the straggling lines of 310 heavily laden porters through torrential monsoon rains to Tengboche, and, by the time the yeti-hunting "playboys" (Hardie's description) arrived in Khumjung on October 30, the "workers" had plenty to show for themselves.

The yeti hunters might have been "Hillary's playboys" when they set out, but after eight weeks trekking in high valleys and glaciers and crossing a snowy mountain pass as winter set in, they arrived in Khumjung a hardened crew, although yeti-less.

Several of them wrote accounts and one of the most entertaining was by Desmond Doig, the expedition's reporter, linguist and enthusiastic Orientalist who earned the respect of all his companions.

Doig described the last manic days of preparation before the two parts of the expedition left Kathmandu.

While Ed sorted through the 14 tons of expedition equipment and stores, which had to be made into 60lb porter loads, the novices were left to sort out their own requirements.

"Whether to sacrifice foot sprays and bath salts for cans of beer, and custom-built boots for the expedition clodhoppers . . . or take the lot and die under the load. Does one ever know what a load is like until one is under it? And has walked with it a mile, five miles, eight, 15?"

Ed left Kathmandu hours after the rest of the group and, having ensured that everyone got the right footwear, had managed to leave only a pair of size 10 sandshoes for himself. His feet are size 12. Slit in strategic places, the shoes saw him through nonetheless.

The yeti hunters found sets of footprints on the Ripimu Glacier at the head of the Rolwaling Valley, but hidden microphones and cameras enmeshed in trip wires failed to capture a yeti's likeness – or record its famous high-pitched whistle. The rifle with the tranquiliser darts was not required.

They concluded eventually that the footprints they had found were the tracks of a smaller animal which had melted out in the sun.

Michael Ward and Eric Shipton had photographed similar tracks near here on the 1951 Everest Reconnaissance, but those two climbers were far less conspicuous than this large party.

The final straw on the abortive yeti hunt seems to have been Peter Mulgrew's fishcakes, made from tinned Canadian salmon – a recipe Ed and Peter had enjoyed on Christmas Day 1957 in Antarctica.

Doig wrote: "It was never ascertained whether they or the altitude, or both, were responsible for Ed, George, Tom Nevison and Peter himself having a miserable night following the feast. Whatever it was, Ed was prompted by his immediate misery to pull out."

They headed to Khumjung, making the hazardous crossing of the 5755m (18,881ft) Tesi Lapcha Pass on October 28 with the help of 60 Sherpas who came to meet them. This was Ed's first time back in Sherpa country since 1954.

Doig recalled: "Ed Hillary sat at the top of the pass, his shaggy mane riding a near gale and icicles forming in his beard. For the rugged, unemotional character we considered him to be, he was suddenly unexpectedly nostalgic."

Ed had been in regular radio contact with Hardie but, for a few days, their frequency was jammed by recordings of Chinese opera. This led to an outbreak of jokes about the "Hillary International Spying Expedition", but was an indicator of the nervousness of the Chinese about their border with Nepal.

Hardie walked to meet Ed's group at the village of Thami and they reached Khumjung on October 30. Griffith Pugh had arrived with most of the scientific equipment two days before.

Doig, meanwhile, had been on the track of yeti relics. He had managed to purchase a yeti skin, and Urkien had told him that some monasteries and gompas, (Sherpa temples) had yeti scalps and skeletal hands. Doig alerted Ed, and after several false starts they began negotiations to borrow a yeti scalp from Khumjung Gompa and take it to America and Europe to be looked at by scientists.

Village elders were extremely reluctant to part with the precious relic which brought prestige to their village and good luck with weather and crops.

Ed brought to the negotiating table an offer to build a school at Khumjung and pay the salary of its first teacher.

A deal was reached, signed and sealed with appropriate ceremony. Ed would contribute 8000 Nepal rupees for gompa repairs and, in return, Ed and Doig were permitted to take the yeti scalp away for exactly six weeks.

Khunjo Chumbi, a village elder, would go with them and be with the scalp at all times.

Pugh and his team were less than enthusiastic about Ed's departure for six weeks, but keeping their sponsors happy is a leader's job and, without a live animal to show for the trip, this was the next best thing. (And the publicity Ed, Khunjo and the yeti relics engendered ensured Field Enterprise's continuing support for Sherpa aid projects for more than a decade).

Khunjo was a handsome, laughing man and a brilliant dancer, who wore his Tibetan clothes with great swagger and charm. All this, along with the fame of Sir Edmund Hillary and the mysterious yeti relics, contributed to a triumphant progress through New York, Chicago, Paris and London.

In the end, scientists pronounced the skin to be from a blue bear. The yeti "scalp" had been made from the hide of the serow antelope – probably intended as a ceremonial hat but gradually acquiring the status of an actual scalp.

The scalp might not have been the real thing, but as Mike Gill noted: "Khunjo Chumbi was declared genuine and as an exponent of Tibetan dancing was asked to perform wherever he went, from the Merchandise Mart in Chicago to the nightclubs of Paris."

Khunjo also gave a winning response to Professor J. Millot of the Musee d l'Homme in Paris when he suggested that yetis did not exist: "In Nepal we have neither giraffes nor kangaroos so we know nothing about them. In France, there are no yetis, so I sympathise with your ignorance."

Khunjo was anxious to spare Ed the embarrassment of having to concede that he could not produce scientific evidence of a yeti. He offered to find a real one for him on their return to the Khumbu but, in the end, Ed concluded the yeti's existence was cultural rather than physical.

Mike Gill summed up the view of the sahibs: "What is the yeti? In Sherpa mythology, it seems, the yeti is an evil spirit. To the Sherpas, spirits are as real as atoms, or angels, are to us – though to prove they are there is not easy.

The few of us who believe in angels must trust in hearsay or faith and, though we accept atoms without question, there are not many of us who can prove our belief.

"So, if a Sherpa finds unknown tracks in the snow, or catches a glimpse of a vague shape at dusk, or when, by himself on a lonely but stormy night, hears strange noises – why, then it is a yeti."

An edited extract from Sir Edmund Hillary: An Extraordinary Life by Alexa Johnston (Penguin/Viking, $59.95)

http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,17792390%255E954,00.html
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