In the Valleys of the Noble Bey - John Zada Page 0,29

as we know—end in violence or death). Nor would my opinion have changed had I known that in 1966, Beck, infected by the growing vogue of Eastern religious cults sweeping the Western world, had self-published a New Age manifesto entitled I Fought the Apemen of Mt. St. Helens, in which he claimed psychic powers, argued for the existence of UFOs, and alleged that his party made contact during their Ape Canyon trip with native spirit guides wearing buckskin.*

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, a science-minded organization of debunkers, has run articles in its flagship publication, Skeptical Inquirer, taking potshots at claims of the existence of Sasquatches. The idea the magazine espouses most frequently, to which Ian McAllister alluded, is that Bigfoots are often no more than misidentified bears.

“Mistaken identifications,” writes Joe Nickell, the author of one such piece, “could be due to poor viewing conditions, such as the creature being seen only briefly, or from a distance, in shadow or at nighttime, through foliage, or the like—especially while the observer is, naturally, excited.”7

The idea that Sasquatch is nothing more than a misidentified bear isn’t new. But this argument gained significant traction after the publication, in 2000, of My Quest for the Yeti, by Italian alpinist Reinhold Messner. The celebrated mountain virtuoso and explorer—known for the first solo ascent of Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, in 1980—has spent his life exploring the Himalayan region. His conquest of all fourteen Himalayan peaks that top eight thousand meters, the highest on earth, has made him a legend among alpinists. After scaling every major summit in the area, the mountain-obsessed Italian turned his sights to a formidable new challenge: the mystery of the Yeti.

In his book, Messner claims that he encountered a Yeti in eastern Tibet in 1986. The incident took place in the evening, while he was on a solo expedition, tracing an old Sherpa route through a series of valleys. As he was trekking up a forested ravine, trying to reach a clearing above the tree line, Messner was startled by a fleet-footed, upright silhouette, which was stealthily darting back and forth between the trees. At first he thought he’d come across a yak and its owners, but the nature of its movements soon convinced him otherwise.

“It moved upright,” he writes. “It was as if my own shadow had been projected onto the thicket. For one heartbeat it stood motionless, then turned away and disappeared into the dusk.”8

Messner then found large tracks going up the mountainside, before the same or a similar creature reappeared and now whistled angrily at him. This time Messner got a slightly better look at it: “Covered with hair, it stood upright on two short legs and had powerful arms that hung down almost to its knees. I guessed it to be over seven feet tall. Its body looked much heavier than that of a man that size, but it moved with such agility and power toward the edge of the escarpment that I was both startled and relieved. Mostly I was stunned. No human would have been able to run like that in the middle of the night.”9

After making inquiries with villagers, Messner discovered that he had encountered what locals referred to, fearfully, as a chemo—a creature comparable to the Nepalese Yeti. Messner was fascinated. He decided to embark on a new mission to find and make sense of the mysterious animal.

After twelve long years of research and excursions with local guides in both Pakistan and Tibet, the alpinist concluded that the animal he had encountered in 1986 was not the Yeti but none other than the rare and elusive Tibetan blue bear (thought to be a subspecies of brown bear). The bear’s mix of unusual qualities and behaviors matched those of the alleged man-beast:

1. The Tibetan bear often walks upright. When on all fours, it places its back foot into the print of its forepaw (as bears in North America occasionally do), causing the two tracks to merge into one humanoid-looking footprint.

2. It is nocturnally active.

3. Its vocalizations are high-pitched.

4. It is known to kill yaks with one blow of its paw (yak predation is another purported Yeti pastime).

5. The Tibetan bear is red when young, becoming black when it grows into adulthood. So too is the Yeti.*

To Messner, his discovery made absolute sense. The Tibetan blue bear was no regular bear. The animal was highly idiosyncratic, and when people were influenced by ignorance, fear, and superstition, it morphed into a beast of the imagination whose reputation