50th Anniversary: Slick Begins Snowman Search
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 13th, 2008
This week marks the 50th anniversary of Tom Slick’s most organized, first San Antonio Zoo-sponsored expedition in search of the Yeti. It was formally called the Slick-Johnson Snowman Expedition.
Via a feature giving a flashback of 50 years ago, the Los Angeles Times reprinted an old Matt Weinstock column, from the reporter who was sort of the “Herb Caen of Los Angeles.”
In this passage, Weinstock talked of the Abominable Snowman and Tom Slick, thus giving a good period view of one newspaper columnist’s way of dealing with the event.
Matt Weinstock (You gotta love Weinstock’s 1950s’ haircut.)
The following is what Weinstock wrote for February 12, 1958, about the Yeti search.
A while back the big thing was to scale Mt. Everest first.
Recently it was a race between two teams to reach a rendezvous in the Antarctic. Sputniks and outer space need not be mentioned.
Now the contest is on to find the Abominable Snowman.
A dispatch from Katmandu, Nepal, states an expedition sponsored by Texas oilman Tom Slick will start the trek into the Himalayas today in an effort to beat a Russian search party.
This is only a voice in a blizzard but I keep wondering why they don’t leave the Abominable Snowman alone. Why invade his privacy? If he wants to remain aloof and abominable, I say let him. ~ Matt Weinstock, February 12, 1958.
Tom Slick (above) was most famous for his expeditions in search of the Abominable Snowmen or Yeti, mostly in Nepal.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Tom Slick looks like the happy twin brother of Philip K. Dick 🙂
Is that Tom Slick Book still available?