Hillary’s Yeti Debunking Lives On
Posted by: Loren Coleman on April 3rd, 2008
Sir Edmund Hillary recently died, and yet his legacy of Yeti debunking continues onward, even now through his associates. The Telegraph of Calcutta, India has published a subtle little article recalling in glowing terms Hillary’s damaging Yeti investigations, which were set up skeptically, versus open-mindedly, from the very start.
In the article, “Climber recalls days with Edmund, hunting for Yeti,” the Telegraph’s correspondent writes of one man who was on the trek:
Nearly half-a-century ago, Bhanu Banerjee accompanied legendary climber Edmund Hillary to a Himalayan expedition in pursuit of the Abominable Snowman and came back with some incredible memories.
“Every single moment of the expedition is still fresh in my mind. The fact that I was with Sir Edmund Hillary, listening to first-hand tales of the Everest Conquest, was extremely fulfilling,” said Banerjee.
The aim of the 1961-62 expedition, however, was not the highest mountain on earth, but the mythical creature, Yeti. World Book Encyclopedia had sponsored the Himalayan Scientific and Mountaineering Expedition.
“We wanted to find out if the yeti existed or not,” Banerjee said. “We went from one remote village to another up to 19,000ft and returned assured that the Yeti is just a myth,” Banerjee said.
“It was just hearsay,” the 72-year-old climber added. “We went to all the places covered by previous expeditions. We interviewed elderly people, cowherds, shepherds and the Sherpas; yet, there was not a single soul who could say he had seen the yeti. Always it was not he, but his father living in a different village who had actually seen the creature. We would then go and find the father, who would ascribe it to his father.”
A student of St Paul’s School in Darjeeling, Banerjee first met Hillary in Calcutta in 1960. “I used to freelance with a newspaper there. I was studying shorthand and accountancy in college when Desmond Doig, the then assistant editor of the daily, asked me if I was interested in meeting Hillary. I immediately agreed,” he added.
In Calcutta, Banerjee also helped Hillary shop for an expedition. “The shopkeepers would not charge money at the very mention of his name,” Banerjee said, recalling Hillary’s popularity.
Their friendship grew gradually. The last time they communicated with each other was at Christmas in 2007. “It was a brief communiqué and his handwriting had changed a lot. He said: ‘We are okay.’ At other times, he would have elaborated,” Banerjee recalled.
Hillary died this year on January 11.
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.
Shame to see this still being perpetuated, especially as at least one prominent member of the same expedition later reflected that the expedition was seriously flawed in going to the wrong areas and making such a noise and a cumbersome show of itself while carrying out this research.
Bhanu Bannerjee’s opinions (like Hillary’s himself) certainly does not tally up with the opinions of others. I recall Hillary even claiming they did a ‘pretty thorough search’ of the areas. Bit of an exaggeration, that.
While it’s more problematic than the sasquatch (plus, I’m not as well informed as to all the sighting data), I wouldn’t think Hillary’s expedition should make much of a dent in the case for the yeti.
As Lyndon points out, a “take me to your leader” yeti – or a deaf and blind one – is the only one that expedition is likely to have seen. Wonder how many other animals they saw.
Some of the sightings – like that of climber Don Whillans – seem quite compelling to me.
There a yeti sighting database anywhere, hmmmm?
If I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. Very Scientific. Err…egotistical. When your name starts with “Sir” you certainly can’t be skunked! You must save face you see…
As for the claim that no-one ever takes personal responsibilty for seeing one…How about that girl who’s been on t.v. that says SHE was attacked by one next to a river and it ripped up her cow or donkey (whatever animal-I forgot)?
THAT was a first hand account.
Sasquatch wrote: “Very Scientific. Err…egotistical.”
Actually, if you knew anything about Hillary, you’d know he was far from egostistical, he was incredibly humble. He even refused to acknowledge that he was the first to step on the summit until after his partner Norgay died, because he didn’t want to detract from Norgay’s accomplishments.
Well I wonder if in later years Hillary thought by saying that it the yeti is not real, was his way of protecting it. If he thought in any way that the Yeti might be real it needed protection from the would be hunters as well as protecting the mountain and the people from the deluge of hikers and researchers as well. I guess China has done that for now.
seeing “Hillary” and “debunking” in the same sentence I thought perhaps our presidential candidate had claimed a Yeti sighting while under sniper fire in Bosnia 🙂
If a California Bigfoot ‘colony’, surrounded by several million people in Northern California can remain elusive for 60 years, the chances of a find in the sparsely populated Himalayas is downright nil. Have there been any ‘good’ sightings of a Yeti in the past 5 or 10 years? At least with Bigfoot you get some continuous indication that they exist, via sightings.
jamesrav:
“If a California Bigfoot ‘colony’, surrounded by several million people in Northern California can remain elusive for 60 years, the chances of a find in the sparsely populated Himalayas is downright nil.”
It might be good to get a clarification on this one. Although if you mean that the Himalayas are so sparsely populated that two or three species of undiscovered primate could thrive there unbothered, I could maybe agree with you there.
As to northern CA, lots of people don’t know how sparsely populated that area is. The forest set-asides are huge. I did a six-night backpack there once, a beautiful week in June, and saw not one person. And saw more bears on one day than I did clouds in the sky for the whole week. It’s REAL quiet up there. Most of the locals don’t even know the wild places that well.
In terms of running under the radar, the yeti could do very well in the Himalayas without science ever noting the fact.
Mr. Radford:
Hillary was indeed humble, but he certainly was NOT objective.
Like Loren said, Hillary’s expedition was one-sided from the start.
They had already decided that it did not exist. And I find (like others here) mighty strange that Mr. Banerjee and Mr. Hillary did not meet one person who saw the Yeti.
Actually I remember seeing Hillary interviewed about this and I thought he came off as fairly arrogant…But it does not suprise me that Ben Radford defends a doubter. I think when you throw a stone down a dark alley and you hear a whelp you probably hit something…in this case…(I quote myself); “If I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist” probably hits squarely home. Why wasn’t Hillary more humbly inclined like one of our more famous bigfoot hunters Peter Byrne, and admit to hunting leopards etc. and being amazed at how hard it was to ever even get a glimpse… And be more open about the possibility that yeti’s might exist even tho’ HE couldn’t find one? I think the “scientific community” is rife with the type of egotism I’ve described and maybe fairly or unfairly (If Ben is to be believed) included Hillary in with this ilk.
This isn’t really a discussion about humility vs. arrogance. It’s a discussion about people’s thinking about one topic as versus another, that’s all.
The point is simply this: Hillary is not the person I am looking to to satisfy me one way or the other about the yeti. He lacks the qualifications; didn’t do the research (no, a survey of Sherpas – noted, as Hillary surely must have known, among the world’s greatest practical jokers – doesn’t qualify as research, at least not complete research) and started out with the end result already in mind.
Although a certain mainstream tendency to swallow whole, without criticism, anything that confirms well-entrenched beliefs is, as always, well worth noting. 😉
I could add, in stark contrast to the apparent results of the Hillary expedition, another take I have heard on this, which says that when Sherpas are asked to inventory the local wildlife, a typical answer goes something like this:
“Let’s see…brown bear….tahr….serow….goral….bharal….mouse hare….um, leopard, yeti, er, black bear, snow leopard, red panda….”
…But like any good skeptic, I hasten to remind all again that when dealing with Westerners, Sherpas are not unknown to insert tongue firmly in cheek upon occasion.
“Have there been any ‘good’ sightings of a Yeti in the past 5 or 10 years? At least with Bigfoot you get some continuous indication that they exist, via sightings.”
A British t.v crew (scientific) went to Bhutan in search of the local variation of Yeti. A hunter had a sighting and took them to the place. A hair was recovered which was analyzed at Oxford by Dr Brian Sykes, one of the world’s top geneticists. It was the first time he was unable to identify DNA and was stumped. As far as I am aware it’s still a mystery and unidentified to this day.