THE HUNT FOR THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN

From Alexander the Great to Sir Edmund Hillary, the Yeti has fascinated visitors to the Himalayas for millennia. Jonny Wilkes follows in the footsteps of the cryptid and the explorers who have spent their lives trying to find it

The 1921 British Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition set out from India to find a route to, and hopefully up, the world's highest mountain, but on their return the team had more to report than the successes of their recce. Interviewed by journalist Henry Newman, they spoke of coming across large footprints in the snow. Expedition leader Charles Howard-Bury concluded that they had been made by the loping of a wolf; local guides and porters, however, said they belonged to the legendary metoh-kangmi, roughly translating as 'man-bear snowman'.

FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW

An intrigued Newman spoke to some of the Tibetans who saw the humanesque footprints, and stories emerged of a mysterious, wild creature stomping across the Himalayas. Now fascinated, he needed an eye-catching name for the newspapers, since his mistranslation of metoh meant he thought it was called 'filthy snowman'. He came up with something far more evocative: the abominable snowman.

And so the legend of the Yeti - its Tibetan name - went global, capturing imaginations and inspiring a century, and counting, of cryptozoological studies, searches and sightings. The hairy, apelike biped has come in all different shapes and sizes, sometimes said to be much taller than a human and sometimes small yet frightfully strong, and while most famously depicted with white hair to blend into the snow-covered landscape it can also be reddish-brown and live in the Himalayan forests around the mountains.

In movies, meanwhile, the Yeti has been both the killer monster of the 1957 Hammer horror The Abominable Snowman and the cuddly cave-dweller of Monsters, Inc. (2001).