The Traveling Snowman

Holiday skiers at the French Alpine-resort of Val-d'Isere were buzzing last week about the reported arrival of an uninvited winter guest: the Abominable Snowman, bristly bogeyman of the Himalayas. On the desolate Col de 1'Iseran, members of the British Olympic ski team spotted a line of well-marked footprints the size of small dinner plates, with clearly distinguishable pads and claws. To Veteran Skier and Team Manager Peter Waddell, they resembled nothing so much as photographs of the prints of the dread Himalayan Metohkangmi (literally, "Filthy Man of the Snow"). Like many Abominable Snowman tracks, these disappeared mysteriously over the edge of a sheer precipice.

Although no one has ever captured or photographed the Snowman, he is securely fixed in the legends of Nepal. According to the native Sherpas, he is a weird half man, half beast covered with reddish-brown hair, who lives in high Himalayan caves and feeds indiscriminately on tailless rats, yaks, and the hapless men who wander his way. He is given to howling horribly at night and loping through the snow with his hair over his eyes, and his feet pointing backwards to confuse his enemies. His most startling physical feature is the huge thumb at his heel, which helps him to scale impossible heights.

Although Sherpa guides and porters say they have seen him from time to time, legend has it that anyone who looks on him will die an instant, violent death. In 1954 a 200-man British expedition spent several months searching for him on the slopes of Everest, returned emptyhanded. Last spring Everest Conqueror Tenzing Norgay got a chance to examine a "certified" Snowman skin in the possession of two lamas, reported that it looked suspiciously like the skin of a small bear.

Up to now, the Snowman has never been reported outside his Himalayan hunting grounds, and even his staunchest defenders are reluctant to believe that he is roaming the Alpine winter sports resorts. The Snow and Avalanche Research Institute's Andre Roch, who is positive that he has seen Snowman tracks in the Himalayas, believes that the Val-dTsere tracks were probably made by a bear which roamed into the area from the Italian Dolomites, some 200 miles away. But hardheaded Skier Waddell, aware that no bears have been seen in the vicinity for years, is not so sure. "This business is as strange to me as it is to you," said he last week. "If you can find a better explanation, I'd like to hear it."

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