Back in 1921, a British soldier named Lieutenant Colonel Charles Kenneth Howard-Bury was leading a team up the treacherous slopes of Mount Everest. As they battled their way up the north face, something strange caught their eye—dark figures darting through the snow high above. By the time they reached the spot, whatever it was had vanished, leaving behind only a trail of oversized, human-like footprints. Howard-Bury turned to his Sherpa guides for an explanation, and they told him these tracks belonged to the “Metoh-Kangmi”—a name that would soon be anglicized into the “Abominable Snowman.”
The Sherpas, it turned out, weren’t talking about just one creature. They referred to three legendary mountain dwellers as “Metoh-Kangmi”. There was the “Dzu Teh,” a massive, shaggy brute that some reckon might be a rare Himalayan bear. Then there was the “Thelma,” likely a type of gibbon swinging through the peaks. But the real mystery was the “Meh-Teh” or “Yeh-Teh”—the so-called “man-beast” or “rock dweller.” Picture this: a creature five to six feet tall, draped in reddish fur, with long, dangling arms, a pointed head, and an eerily human face. That’s the Yeh-Teh, the one we’d come to call the Yeti.
Fast forward to 1925, and a Greek photographer named N. A. Tombazi was trudging through the Himalayas with his own crew. One of his Sherpas suddenly pointed into the distance, and there it was—a figure standing upright, yanking at some rhododendron bushes. Tombazi squinted, trying to make sense of it, but before he could grab his camera, the thing slipped away. When they hiked over to investigate, they found footprints—uncannily human, yet not quite right. Over the next few years, tales of weird tracks in the snow kept popping up, each one adding fuel to the growing legend.
By 1951, two seasoned climbers, Eric Shipton and Michael Ward, were mapping out a path up Everest when they stumbled across something odd: a fresh set of prints, 13 by 18 inches, etched into the snow. They snapped photos and followed the trail until it faded into nothing. Just two years later, in 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay—the duo who’d go down in history for conquering Everest—spotted massive footprints of their own on the way to the top. For Norgay, the sight was particularly poignant as his father had reportedly encountered a Yeti shortly before his demise. Hillary, intrigued, would later spearhead a mission to track down proof of the creature’s existence.
However, that 1960 expedition was a failure. A bust. Hillary came back empty-handed and declared the Yeti a mere bedtime story. Plenty of folks thought he’d been too quick to judge, though. Even his teammate Desmond Doig admitted the trip was a mess—too big, too loud, too clumsy. Sure, they didn’t see a Yeti, but they didn’t spot a snow leopard either, and no one doubts those exist.
After that flop, the Yeti craze cooled off. Still, the odd footprint kept turning up here and there. In 1974, a Sherpa girl claimed one of the beasts attacked her and her yaks, even killing a few of the animals. Then, in March 1986, a British physicist named Tony Woodbridge, out on a solo Himalayan trek, had a wild encounter. Earlier that day, he had noticed some tracks but dismissed them, until a thunderous crash completely stopped him. Up ahead, a wall of snow had collapsed, and it looked like something had slid down it. Following the prints, he rounded a bend and froze. There, 150 meters away, stood a hulking, hairy figure, motionless as a statue. Camera in hand, he snapped a shot. At first, he was dead certain he’d seen the real deal, but later, after scrutiny and a second visit, he chalked it up to a trick of the light—a tree stump, not a monster.
Skeptics might scoff, but plenty of experts argue an undiscovered ape isn’t so crazy. After all, new species like wild cattle and jungle deer have turned up in just the last decade. Could a Yeti, maybe some offshoot of a prehistoric primate, still be out there, lurking in the wild corners of the world? Science hasn’t settled it yet, but for the Sherpas, it’s not even a question. Up in those mountains, they’re convinced they’ve got company.