U.S. Climbers Flock To Join Hillary

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29112, 26 January 1960, Page 14

U.S. Climbers Flock To Join Hillary

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

SAN FRANCISCO, January 25. Scores of Californians yesterday tried to communicate with Sir Edmund Hillary, who had said on arrival in San Francisco from New Zealand on Saturday night that he was looking for volunteers for his next Himalayan expedition.

Sir Edmund Hillary had appealed for skilled mountaineers who would join his team "just for the hell of it,” and without pay. Inquirers were told that the New Zealand mountaineer would interview them in San Francisco on February 20. “I never anticipated any difficulty in getting enthusiastic people,” Sir Edmund Hillary said. “There is never any shortage of people interested in a bit of adventure.” The adventure will be to help in research On how man can adapt himself to a low oxygen supply at high altitudes and in pursuit of the fabled “Abominable Snowman,” if its tracks can be found to follow. Sir Edmund Hillary spent Sun-

day at the home of an uncle, Mr Walter Bolles, in Berkeley, California. He planned to fiy to Chicago today and later to Europe to buy equipment for the expedition.

Sir Edmund Hillary listed in the “New York Times” yesterday the reasons why he thought his forthcoming quest for the “Abominable Snowman” was worthwhile. In an article for the “New York Times,” he wrote that members of his expedition beginning next September were approaching the search with unbiased minds, seeking only to find some tracks and then to try to discover what had made them. He said he believed there was sufficient evidence of the creature’s existence to warrant a close search, although he admitted he had never seen tracks himself.

Sir Edmund Hillary said he had first accepted the existence of the “Snowman,” or Yeti, during a Himalayan expedition led by Eric Shipton. This and other incidents described in his article told of: Mr Shipton and another climber discovering and photographing clear and fresh footprints of some large animal 19,000 ft

up on one of the subsidiary glaciers of the Menlong basin. A trusted Sherpa guide describing how he had once seen a Yeti from a distance of 25 yards—it was half-man, halfbeast, stood sft 6in with a pointed head and was covered with reddish-brown hair, he said.

Sir Edmund Hillary told of a shepherd finding a tuft of long black hair on a rock at an altitude of 19,000 ft and crying to Sir Edmund Hillary “Yeti, sahib. Yeti.”

When Sir Edmund Hillary indicated he would like to take the hair with him for later examination, the shepherd snatched it from him and threw it over a precipice with a shout of “bohut hkarab (very bad), sahib.” On one occasion two Sherpas mistook bearded, bedraggled members of another Hillary expedition for “Snowmen” as they approached their village, and fled in terror.

Two colleagues on a 1954 expedition discovered more tracks in the snow, Sir Edmund Hillary said. They were those of a large animal followed by one smaller. There were marks of toes and claws.