My Quest for Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas' Deepest Mystery

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.com Review Reinhold Messner, the famed Austrian alpinist, has spent much of three decades climbing in the Himalayas--and, as it turns out, looking along the way for evidence of the yeti, the legendary, supposedly humanoid inhabitant of the high mountains. Messner writes of having encountered "an apparition" at the Tibetan headwaters of the Mekong River. Remembering a photograph of a mysteriously shaped footprint that Eric Shipton had taken years earlier, Messner began to collect evidence--tracks, eerie cries and whistles, fleeting glimpses--of the fabled abominable snowman. With that mounting evidence, he writes, "the mountains that I knew so well now seemed smothered in mystery." Of the yeti's existence, the climber has no doubt; his pages are taken up by his quest for plausible answers as to the creature's real identity. He writes of possibilities that many scientists have discounted--for instance, that the yeti may be a kind of ape, or perhaps a long-diverged species of bear--dismissing knee-jerk unbelievers with an impatient wave, and turning in a lively natural history of an unknown being. With this memoir, Messner is in good literary company--Peter Matthiessen and Slavomir Rawicz, among others, have written of high-mountain encounters with yetis--and in fine form. Readers with an interest in cryptozoology and mountaineering alike will delight in his findings. --Gregory McNamee Read more From Publishers Weekly The first human to climb Everest without bottled oxygen, and the first to summit the world's 14 highest peaks, Messner is a legend in mountaineering circles. How appropriate, then, that he should take on another legend associated with mountains--the yeti, aka the Abominable Snowman. Messner's quest to uncover the truth behind the legend begins in July 1986, in Tibet, where, at night, deep in that country's eastern wilderness, he encounters something: "the creature towered menacingly, its face a gray shadow, its body a black outline. Covered with hair, it stood upright on two short legs and had powerful arms." On and off for the next 11 years, Messner undertakes expeditions through Tibet and Bhutan in search of that creature. In time, he learns to distinguish between the myth of the yeti ("a collective term for all the monsters of the Himalayas, real or imagined") and the animal on which the myth is based, which he realizes is known throughout the region as the chemo or dremo, and which he concludes is a type of brown bear (Ursus arctus), which he observes several times. That conclusion will disappoint readers looking for evidence of a missing link or humanoid bigfoot, but even so there's plenty of high adventure in the book, as Messner treks across snowy wastelands, gets lost, gets arrested, sleeps in smoky tents and under the stars--and describes both the history of yeti research and the ongoing eradication of Tibetan culture at the hands of Chinese invaders. An engaging blend of travelogue and cryptozoological inquiry, this book will make a great campfire read. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more From Library Journal Messner is an accomplished Austrian mountaineer and the author of several books about his experiences. In 1986, while in Tibet, he thought he may have encountered a yeti, also called the abominable snowman. Finding more substance in folklore and mythology than reality, Messner chronicles his further investigations while providing a good overview of the efforts of others over the years at documenting the existence of such a humanlike creature. His account will not satisfy those whose minds are already made up on either side of the issue, and this will not be the last book on the topic. It is, nevertheless, a reasonable account of a subject that generates continuing interest and polarity among public library users. A more thorough investigation of the topic is Daniel Taylor-Ides's Something Hidden Behind the Ranges: A Himalayan Quest (Mercury House, 1995), which provides more convincing background information that such creatures do not exist. Nevertheless, Messner's book is a solid second choice.-Harold M. Otness, Southern Oregon Univ. Lib., Ashland Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. Read more Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Making my way through some ash-colored junipers, I suddenly heard an eerie sound-a histling noise, similar to the warning call mountain goats make. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the outline of a upright figure dart between the trees to the edge of the clearing, where low-growing thickets covered the steep slope...The creature towered menacingly, its face a gray shadow, its body a blck outline. Covered with hair, it stoodupright on two short legs and had powerful arms that hung down almost to its knees. I guessed it to be over seven feel tall. Its body looked much heavier than that of a man of that size, bt it moved with such agility and power toward the edge of the encampment that I was both startled and relieved. -From My Quest for the Yeti Read more