Mountain adventurers stumble upon Yeti footprints

by Stevie Smith - Oct 21 2008, 11:56

Following the media furore caused when a pair of hoaxing hunters in Georgia recently claimed to have bagged themselves a Bigfoot, who knows how the world is going to react following news that a team of Japanese adventurers say they’ve uncovered Yeti footprints.

According to the fortuitous team, which was attempting to locate the mythical beast believed to roam the Tibetan and Nepalese regions of the Himalayas, their endeavours saw them emerge as lucky enough to stumble upon a set of genuinely humanlike tracks in the snow.

Speaking with AFP in Kathmandu, team leader of the Yeti Project Japan Yoshiteru Takahashi described that the footprints were “about 20 centimetres (eight inches) long and looked like a human’s.”

Takahashi also outlined that the seven-man team made its discovery during a third tracking attempt, after it had initially failed to locate and film the legendary beast while on a mammoth 42-day expedition on Dhaulagiri IV, a 7,661-metre mountain where yeti sightings have been previously reported.

 

While a definite shortfall from the irrefutable video footage the team was hoping to secure, a triumphant Takahashi remains adamant that the footprints are sufficient when it comes to proof of the yeti’s existence.

“Myself and other team members have been coming to the Himalayas for years and we can recognize bear, deer, wolf and snow leopard prints and it was none of those,” he said. “We remain convinced it is real. The footprints and the stories the locals tell make us sure that it is not imaginary.”

The included composite photograph has been posted to the Yeti Project Japan’s official Web site, reports Discovery, and the team is intent on maintaining its search after placing nine motion-sensitive cameras throughout a region that Takahashi claims he saw a yeti during a prior 2003 tracking exhibition.

Takahashi describes that close encounter as seeing a silhouette of a bipedal humanlike figure of around 150 centimetres in height walking at a distance of approximately 200 metres.

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