A strange connection between yetis and spying begins to emerge. During and after the Second World War, Shipton served as the British Consul-General in Kashgar, fighting a rearguard action against the foreign players in the last rounds of the Great Game. Every month he would write letters headed ‘Secret’ in which he detailed the latest activities of the main Russian and Chinese players of the game. In Persia during the war, he acted as a ‘double hatter’, ostensibly acting as an agricultural advisor but also reporting on political matters on the border between Persia and Iraq. Then in 1951, on a reconnaissance expedition to Mount Everest in just-opened Nepal, he and Ed Hillary spotted the eventual route to the top on the southern slopes of the mountain. It was on this trip that he discovered his evidence for the yeti.
Then disaster struck: not a climbing accident, which might have been expected, but something far more treacherous. He had been asked to lead the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition, and, having accepted, was then dumped by the Mount Everest committee, some of whom felt that he lacked the killer instinct and Establishment ties to fulfil the role. The less experienced Colonel John Hunt was appointed and the rest is history. Success and fame all round: except for Eric Shipton. ‘I leave London absolutely shattered,’ he wrote. Anyone who has been shafted by bureaucrats will sympathise. But there might have been another reason why the committee didn’t trust Shipton.
After this shameful episode, Eric Shipton’s marriage broke up, he lost his job as warden of an Outward Bound school and he then worked for a while as a forestry labourer. He became a sort of international tramp, but he did have a final decade of enjoyable and fruitful exploration in Patagonia. He ended his days leading easy treks in the Himalayas and lecturing on cruises. However, he will always be remembered as a kindly, wise and amused man who imbued confidence in his fellow climbers. Frank Smythe described a particularly trying day on Kamet: ‘We sank in knee deep, and I reflected grimly that we should have to retrace our steps up that slope towards the end of the day. But no one who climbs with Shipton can remain pessimistic, for he imparts an imperturbability into a day’s work which are themselves a guarantee of success.’2
There we have it, our thumbnail sketch of the man. But what did he discover about the yeti? When Nepal’s borders had finally opened after the Second World War, it was at last possible to explore the southern approaches of Mount Everest. In 1950, Bill Tilman had penetrated to the foot of the icefall in the Khumbu valley that was to prove the key to the summit. He thought the route would work but he felt that the risks were unacceptable. The route has since proved to be the main highway in the many successful climbs of the mountain, but the icefall has also seen the deaths of dozens of Sherpas and somewhat fewer Westerners. (I myself narrowly escaped disaster in the icefall on two occasions: once by avalanche and once by a collapse of ice seracs.) In the following year Eric Shipton, the second half of the Tilman–Shipton exploring partnership, lead the impressively titled Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition of 1951 to the same valley. Included in the party was Edmund Hillary, who was going to get to the summit two years later. They managed to climb the 2,000-foot icefall despite deep snow and saw a clear route to the top. Shipton saw that the mountain was climbable, given enough resources.
Some might have staged a shot at the summit from there (and changed history), but Shipton always seemed more interested in exploration than peak-bagging. He turned away from Everest, and in so doing probably gave ammunition to those who so humiliatingly sacked him from the leadership of the successful British expedition of 1953. This was unfair, as his expedition was far too late in the season to go high; it was 28 October and the winter cold had set in. (I was on the summit on 6 October and was lucky to get away with just frost-bitten fingers.) The reconnaissance expedition split into three parties, with Edmund Hillary exploring other possibilities behind the Shipton party. Then Shipton, Michael Ward and Shipton’s long-term Sherpa companion Sen Tensing found something else entirely:
It was on one of the glaciers of the Menlung basin, at a height of about 19,000 feet, that, late one afternoon, we came across those curious footprints in the snow, the report of which has caused a certain amount of public interest in Britain. We did not follow them further than was convenient, a mile or so, for we were carrying heavy loads at the time, and besides we had reached a particularly interesting stage in the exploration of the basin. I have in the past found many sets of these curious footprints and have tried to follow them, but have always lost them on the moraine or rocks at the side of the glacier. These particular ones seemed to be very fresh, probably not more than 24 hours old. When Murray and Bourdillon followed us a few days later the tracks had been almost obliterated by melting. Sen Tensing, who had no doubt whatever that the creatures (for there had been at least two) that had made the tracks were ‘Yetis’, or wild men, told me that two years before, he and a number of other Sherpas had seen one of them at a distance of about 25 yards at Thyangboche. He described it as half man and half beast, standing about five feet six inches, with a tall pointed head, its body covered with reddish brown hair, but with a hairless face … He left no doubt as to his sincerity.3
And then, writing in The Times:
The tracks were mostly distorted by melting into oval impressions, slightly longer and a good deal broader than those made by our mountain boots. But here and there, where the snow covering the ice was thin, we came upon a well-preserved impression of the creature’s foot. It showed three ‘toes’ and a broad ‘thumb’ to the side. What was particularly interesting was that where the tracks crossed a crevasse one could see quite clearly where the creature had jumped and used its toes to secure purchase on the snow on the other side. We followed the tracks for more than a mile down the glacier before we got on to moraine-covered ice.4
This little detail of the dug-in toes reminded me of the way I felt when I saw the way my yeti’s toes had dug into the snow.
Shipton’s ice axe and the footprint: true and false?
The photographs caused a sensation. Shipton’s extraordinary footprint led all who saw it to conclude that the creature that made it was an enormous snow-dwelling ape. On his return flight, Shipton was told by an air hostess at Karachi that journalists were waiting for him when they landed at London. He was mobbed at the airport on arrival and photographs of the footprint with an ice axe for scale, the footprint with a boot and another one featuring a trail of footprints made up the whole front page of The Times.
Scientists took the photographs seriously. John Napier was a British primatologist and paleoanthropologist who was widely considered as the leading authority on primate taxonomy. He was also the author of the first authoritative study of our subject: Bigfoot: The Yeti and Sasquatch in Myth and Reality.5 He explains in his book that it was Shipton’s photograph which really kicked off his own interest in the yeti. He thought that the previous eyewitness stories were merely travellers’ tales. ‘But with the publication of Shipton’s picture – sharp, undistorted and precisely exposed – the legend of the yeti took a giant step forward and entered the public domain.’
Scientific publications took it seriously, too. In the New Scientist, an editorial gasped: ‘The discovery would have profound scientific importance, as well as being a certain winner at the Zoo.’6 The Zoo?! Well, yes. Not to mention TV chat shows and a royal presentation. And, just by the way, overturning most theories of human evolution.
Shipton’s story was later corroborated by his companion Dr Michael Ward, who wrote: ‘This was no