It has eluded scientists and adventurers for decades


It has eluded scientists and adventurers for decades, but a team of Japanese climbers claimed to have discovered footprints of the abdominable snowman, or yeti.
They said they photographed the footprints on snow at an altitude of 15,748ft in the Dhaulagiri mountain range in western Nepal.

They failed to photograph the furry mythical half-man, half-ape creature, although the expedition leader Yoshiteru Takahashi is confident the prints belong to the yeti.

Mr Takahashi said: "We saw three footprints which looked like that of human beings...

"Myself and other team members have been coming to the Himalayas for years and we can recognise the footprints of bear, deer and mountain goat look like and it was none of that.

"We believe it is that of [the] yeti."

Mr Takahashi, 61, a member of the Yeti Project Japan, and his team, supported by Sherpas, spent six weeks on the lower reaches of the 25,134ft Dhaulagiri mountain range looking for evidence of the yeti's existence.

The climbers were equipped with long-lens cameras, video cameras and telescopes, and had set out nine motion-sensitive cameras in an area where Mr Takahashi saw what he thought was a yeti in a previous expedition in 2003.

"It was about 200 metres away in silhouette. It was walking on two legs like a human and looked about 150 centimetres tall," said Mr Takahashi.

The Yeti is said to live in the Himalayan regions of Nepal and is largely regarded by the scientific community as a mythical creature.

Sherpas narrate tales of a wild hairy creature roaming the Himalayas, capturing the imagination of foreign climbers of Mount Everest since the 1920s.

Those stories prompted many, including Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to reach the summit of Everest, to search for the yeti.

Some other climbers have also claimed to have found Yeti footprints, but no one has yet seen it or produced irrefutable proof of its existence.

Mr Yagihara, the manager of a mountain museum in Japan, said he believes the creature exists, "We remain convinced it is real. The footprints and the stories the local tell make us sure that it is not imaginary. If I don't believe on Yeti I would never come".

Despite their lack of success in seeing of hearing the yeti, the team plans to continue their quest.


source: Sky News