A Climber Detained

A new advocate for the Yeti arose in the mid-‘80s, none other than prodigious high-altitude climber Reinhold Messner. While once a naysayer of the Yeti, Messner would at once become obsessed, embarking on a decade-long search for the Yeti. In Tibet, he would stumble upon a Yeti in the middle of the night; his encounter would compel him to write a memoir detailing the event and his avid investigation that followed.

In My Quest For The Yeti, Messner bounces between vivid details of his Yeti encounter and subsequent investigation of the creature with Himalayan people:

“Out of the corner of my eye I saw the outline of an upright figure dart between the trees…It stopped for a moment and turned to look at me. Again I heard the whistle, more of an angry hiss, and for a hearbeat I saw eyes and teeth…Covered with hair, it stood upright on two short legs and had powerful arms that hung down almost to its knees. I guessed it to be over seven feet tall…Mostly I was stunned. No human would have been able to run like that in the middle of the night.”

[And talking to two men in a village following the encounter] “…‘The creature came out of the underbrush. His head was almost as big as a yak’s, but without horns, and with dark fur. He rose on his hind legs, turned and disappeared. His back was red.’… ‘Chemo? Both men asked with one voice, uttering this world with such feat in their voices that my encounter now suddenly seemed even more terrifying.’ ‘Chemo, I repeated. Is that a Bear?’”

Ten years from his encounter, Messner would eventually conclude the “Yeti” sought out by previous expeditions was just a fantasy figure; the Yeti itself was simply a rare and elusive bear common to the higher-altitude mountain regions of the Himalaya and known to locals as the “chemo.” Though, this is not to say Messner thought the Yeti was simply conflated with a bear existence, instead its existence relies on semantics rather than science:

“The key to solving the yeti mystery lies not in separating the legend from the specific species or animal but in trying to connect two completely different modes of perception… Yeti is a collective term for all monsters of the Himalayas, real or imagined. It is the abominable snowman, that Western fantasy, as well as the chemo… My perspective was no longer Western. I did not believe yetis were relics of a prehistoric anthropoid species that had managed to survive undetected. The yeti was a living creature, not a figment of the imagination, that corresponded to the brown bear. After all, in an ancient Tibetan dialect, yeti translates to ‘snow bear.’”

In January, the American Alpine Club will host Reinhold Messner for the 2015 Annual Benefit Dinner in New York City for a special night featuring a keynote speech by Messner, fine dining, and socializing. The event is open to the public but seating is limited. Join us for this rare event.