Did early hominoids use walking sticks as they first began to hobble on two feet from four? (The first steps of Australopithecus must have been teetering, probably needing some help.) As a young boy I carried my special stick. If a wild animal attacks, having the staff can also serve as club or, when sharp-pointed, can serve as a lance. What tools do Yetis use? I’ve often wondered.
HOURS LATER, CLIMBING A STEEP SLOPE, we enter a clearing, the closest approximation to flat ground in three days, a hundred times bigger than the depression between the roots of the giant oak where we unfolded the tent on our second night. Here between splendid chestnuts, at 7,250 feet, is our mountain camp. Jennifer christens it ‘Makalu Jungli Hot’l’.
The sun shines through the canopy. Ticks are out too, moving very fast. As we plan camp, one homesteads in my crotch. On Nick they find soft tissue. Tents go up, where Jesse retreats inside. All of us pull a double layer of socks over pant cuffs. The insect repellent is sprayed up and down pant legs and the tent zipper. Jennifer and Jesse sit inside reading The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.
As the temperature drops with the arrival of night, the ticks nestle underground in the warmth of the decaying humus. Around the cook fire we sit on stools, a jungle luxury carried in thanks to the porters. Pasang breaks the routine of rice and lentils and serves spaghetti. Turnips and beans get stewed too.
The spectacular Petaurista Magnificus, Hodgson’s flying squirrel, calls from above, an animal of pristine forests, one-metre long, having a maroon coat with a yellow stripe. Its calls continue as it glides over the camp, seeking berries, insects, fungi, nuts, even dead animals for its dinner. Ever descending in repeated glides it explores the lower slopes. Each dawn it returns uphill by climbing a tree, gliding almost horizontally back to the hill, finding another tree, climbing that, gliding again; each time a tree-height higher than before on the slope, ascending this way while spending minimal time on the ground where predators might lurk. When the sun rises, the squirrel will be back in its hole in some tree above.
As we lie in our sleeping bags, out of the darkness comes the call of the tawny wood owl, the highest-altitude Himalayan forest owl. Appropriately mysterious, its hoo-hoo (the second hoo dropping in pitch) resonates through the dark. One-and-a-half thousand feet below, the Barun River vibrates the valley, dropping its approximately 1,000 feet of elevation every mile. The night air descends clear and cold from the glaciers of Makalu, Lhotse, and Everest as we lie in jungles circled by these three of the world’s five highest mountains.
We are where we had planned to come: just below the snowline, at a moderate altitude, in the uncharted Barun jungle, and on a north-facing slope where we can, we hope, observe animals across the valley as they come out on the south-facing sunny slopes. That is our hope—to see the hyper-shy ‘something’ across the valley.
Our walk in showed plenty of food in the trees for the ‘something’ to eat—if we only knew what it ate. But the ticks signal that we did not come to a no-human world. Ticks are thick because herders stop with their goats en route to alpine meadows on the ridge above. Except for these humans, wild animals have possessed this valley.
As I listen to the night talk, I ask myself again: might there endure another wild man too? Forty million years ago when these mountains began rising from the sea, what animals were here—that would have been thirty-seven million years before hominoids were anywhere on our earth? Could there have been pre-hominoid in this place? It was, of course, a dense jungle then, but nearly flat, for forty million years ago was when the Himalaya were starting to ascend. People, so far as is known, first walked the Arun Valley 2,500 years ago, coming up this river that predates the Himalaya, and the waterway would have been a corridor along which animals moved. Perhaps a pocket of pre-hominoids, while humans advanced in the outside world, became secluded in this valley protected by the wilds we now sleep within. Beings that lived then across Asia could have been pocketed here.
The world that presents to people emphasizes sight. But the jungle opens through smell and sound, both of which travel around corners, where sight cannot. While sight needs references, and informs by assigning place, smell functions by chemicals carried to receptors in the nose; smells ride on the medium of air. Sounds also need carriers (air or liquids) but carriage occurs through compressing the medium into waves. The carrying role of media allows smell and sound to travel around corners, wherever the medium might extend. In the jungle, especially when the option of sight is faint as in the dark or abrupt because of vegetation, multisensory understanding is very helpful—for night is the time and deep grasses are the place of carnivores.
Smells feed our knowing through breathing which we always do. Sounds enter consciousness when sleeping, for ears do not have eyelids. With both smells and sounds, animals are able to awake informed. Sight and sound have spoken about what is happening. And beings that live with the wild are aware even when asleep, using senses that citified people may put to sleep.
Here in the jungle we need to know where the animal we seek might be. Lendoop’s sketch in the now distant sand gave the picture; we must now etch our place for the hunt. To find a lookout, surveying from the tallest tree is abandoned. Climbing these mammoths is impossible—and even if we could, all trees in competition for light top out at basically the same height. If we can find lookouts, we can see particular features to explore on foot; we can view across the valley to the warm south-facing slopes as animals come into the sun on wintry days. The only lookout possible will be from the ridgetop above.
At the camp’s edge stands a maze of shrubs and bamboo. As the morning light starts filling the jungle, Myang, Nuru, Nick, and I begin the ascent to the ridge; it will be 3,000 feet of climbing. Myang swings his kukri through the shrubs and bamboo. Lendoop has left for Shyakshila, as the porters wouldn’t return without him. Myang, being barefoot, will turn back with Nuru when the snow gets too deep. A kukri master shouldn’t then be as necessary for Nick and me.
At 9,200 feet the bamboo ends and the jungle turns to oak and maple, nearly 100-foot high trees. Little light penetrates to nurture young plants, so walking is easier. Climbing higher, oaks thin out and birches come in. The jungle turns dense again, a mix of birches and bamboo. Does temperature cause these marked vegetation zones, or layers in the sedimentary soil underneath? The bamboo here is thick like jumbo kindergarten pencils and only 6 feet tall. Climbing higher, the bamboo is again high and an inch thick, but now a tight leaf sheath wraps the stalks, and stalks pack close to others. Do the tight-wrapped leaves protect against the cold?
A network of animal trails runs through this bamboo, tunnels in various directions. In one are red panda droppings, in another are serow’s. The tunnels are too large to have been made by pandas. Previously we were in the jungle with no obvious trails, why are there so many in this bamboo? All the stubby bamboo shoots may be the explanation—they give a food source and explain this trellis of trails. On a side trail I see different droppings, maybe a musk deer’s.
While colonial hunters made expeditions into the Himalaya to collect mounted heads to dress manor houses across England, little was gathered on the behaviours of the animals hunted. The musk deer is important to understand for it might soon be gone, a deer that looks as if it were the offspring of Winnie-the-Pooh’s Roo and Eeyore. Nepal’s Bijaya Kattel is studying this animal. Here in the Barun, the musk deer is mouse-brown (the colour varies over its range), standing 3-feet high and weighing 30 pounds. It has larger hind quarters than front with a dramatically arched back, giving it its Eeyore-like look. Unusual among deer, this animal has no antlers or horns. Instead, both males and females have tusks 2–5 inches long. With them, the deer scratches while looking for shoots, tender leaves, moss, and grass; and when the snow covers the ground it eats twigs and lichen for this deer can climb out on to the branches of trees.
The larger world would have ignored this deer (as it ignores other Himalayan ungulates that lack massive antlers, such as the barking deer, g
horal, serow, and thar) except for an abdominal pod at the rear of the male’s belly that secretes a waxy, aromatic musk. Perfumers prize this pod, as do Eastern medicine-makers, bringing USD 50 in local contraband markets and ten times that in Hong Kong or Paris.
The cute deer is reminiscent of Eeyore in personality, too, comfortably approaching people in locales where it is not hunted, holding to diminutive home ranges of less than 20 acres. When close to one another, males sneeze to warn their ladies of possible danger, protecting their territory through heroic fights during the winter mating season.
The killing method poachers use has thin vines slip-knotted and strung into a lasso. The loop end lies on the ground, the other end attached to a bent sapling. If snared, the light deer is yanked into the air by its feet, dangling until it dies or has its throat cut, poached so humans can smell more attractive—especially sad when one remembers that snares do not distinguish between males, females, young, or old as the kill brings profit only with males over two years of age who have the musk pod. Thus, three musk deer usually die for a poacher to claim one harvestable pod.
TREES RULE THE BARUN. Typical pristine habitats have a four-level life pyramid: (a) primary producers, life growing directly from photosynthesis; (b) primary consumers, life forms eating the primary producers; (c) secondary consumers, typically a large herbivore; and (d) tertiary consumers, typically carnivores eating the herbivores. The fact that trees in the Barun are the primary producers creates unusual features, for usually grasses are the base of the life pyramid.
In the Barun, trees are so dense that almost no grass grows as the tree canopy blocks almost all light. Absence of grasses is the reason why the Barun is not grazed by herders, for there is little for sheep and goats to eat, let alone cows. The herders who come are going through the jungle with their herds, headed to the high ridge which Nick and I now seek. Grass, what attracts people first to enter jungles, is not here. The trees have kept out the grasses, and the absence of grasses has kept out people.
When a tree falls in the Barun, perhaps because of age, into the opened space made by its falling rush other life forms—the primary consumers, fungi, moss, insects, and small plants—to rot the trees. Life grown by the tree’s photosynthesis becomes food for others. In the usual life pyramid, the size of the organism gets larger with each stage. But in the Barun large trees are the base and the first level of consumers are tiny fungi, moss, and insects. Decomposing together, this becomes the distinctive foot-deep biomass sponge, a reservoir of calories and water. Some primary consumers will be eaten by the secondary consumers: mice whose food is vegetation or voles whose food is earthworms that eat decomposed vegetation. The pyramid continues with larger secondary consumers: birds; red pandas; squirrels—terrestrial and flying—monkeys; ungulates such as ghorals, serows, and barking deer; and the final level, leopards and bears.
Consider the overlooked shrews that live here: they are not rodents and are different from mice and voles. Shrew brains are 10 per cent of their total body weight—no other animal (including humans) has such a high proportion of brain per body size. The shrew here is venomous; its bite can kill a mouse. Some shrews, but not the species here, use echolocation, like bats, to tell them where potential prey might be. And male and female shrews absolutely do not get along (except that moment when they have to). Let your imagination grow shrews so much in size that they become abominable!
With so little grass, the Barun, while having all the expected ungulate species, has few numbers of each. Thus, with a low herbivore population, there are few carnivores. Leopards there are, all three varieties (spotted, snow, and clouded), but very few. Tigers are no longer present as they need vast home ranges, and as people populated the adjoining valleys, the Barun could not support a tiger population. Wolves and foxes are not found because these canines are not forest species.
If there are few carnivores, it means a Yeti that was a true hominoid would have few predators; another reason to be in the Barun with its tree and bamboo concentration: the ideal habitat for a wild, shy hominoid. Here would be less danger from predators. Maybe the Yeti as a hominoid exists? The habitat is similar to that of the giant panda and the gorilla. Those habitats also have few giant predators like tigers and lions that live outside the dense jungle. Pandas and gorillas are both secondary consumers, adept climbers of trees, eating leaves, and some thriving on bamboo.
If the Yeti is like these, the Barun is perfect. Dense trees and steep slopes will cover their whereabouts when moving, allowing them to harvest up and down from whatever mountain vegetation is in season, picking their preference that day. The Barun, like the montane forests of western China with the giant panda and central Africa with the gorilla, offers habitat where in a few miles are found seasonal homes from the subtropics to alpine; and if Nature calls or humans invade, they can always slip over a ridge, cross a snowfield, and gain hiding on the other side.
WE CLIMB HIGHER. THE SNOW IS 1-FOOT DEEP. Thirty-foot tall rhododendrons mix with smaller bamboo and birches. The morning that began in the warm temperate zone has climbed into the snow. Myang and Nuru turn back towards the camp 2,000 feet below. For Nick and me, as we continue climbing, the snow gets past our knees, soaking us from the waists down, squishy puddles in our boots. Climb, breathe, sweat, breathe; step follows step, each feeling as though it’s lifting a concrete block. A wind blows off Makalu, that great summit still three vertical miles higher. We were acclimatized days ago to 3,000 feet, now nearing 10,000 feet our blood cells search the lungs for oxygen.
Breaths sucking on empty, we climb leaning into the snow, breaking down a trail, headed to the open ridge from where we hope to look out; it feels as though we’re getting close. With the slope angle maybe 40 degrees, bamboo and rhododendron coming out of the snow provide a grip, so hands help pull us up. It is almost one o’ clock. We left the camp at dawn at six o’ clock.
‘Hey, Nick, I need to eat something.’ We both carry five chapattis smothered that morning with peanut butter and jam. To get out of the snow Nick climbs into a rhododendron tree with comfortable-looking branches. I join in a nearby fork. It’s great to be free of the wet snow even if there’s added wind this little bit higher. Chapatti, jam, and peanut butter melt in my mouth.
Nick, finishing his chapattis, drops into the snow and starts climbing. I pull out another chapatti. Does this snow have any redeeming quality? Maybe the theory proposed by Nepali botanist Tirtha Shrestha can explain. He advances that this belt of bamboo and rhododendron, never losing its leaf cover, is a pre-monsoon water reservoir for crops to start in the spring. Across the Himalaya, this interlocking mat from November through March anchors billions of tons of winter snow. The evergreen canopy, as a giant shade umbrella, slows the melting of snow. As heat increases during April and May, climbing these ridges from the plains of India, the snow melts, seeping into the ground, stoking springs to keep the land below moist.
Shrestha’s trickle-down theory of Himalayan ecology holds that as expanding numbers of people go higher on the mountains, seeking firewood or land for corn and millet (the grains that best grow at this elevation), this rhododendron/bamboo belt will disappear, and not only will it result in deforestation, but also in the loss of this water-giving reservoir. The vegetation having been removed, when the monsoon comes in June, the rushing water will carry off the topsoil. In a few years also, with water not seeping into the mountain, the springs will disappear, and the slopes, too, may even start sliding themselves.
Today, though, I find it hard to value this snow. With snow this deep, animals won’t be moving. Should I tackle a fourth chapatti? My water bottle has little left in it. Is there enough to wash down that last chapatti and have water to make a plaster-of-Paris cast should we find a footprint?
Nick yells from above, ‘Dan’l, there’s something here you need to see.’
I drop into the snow. No longer aware of having to suck for air, exhilarated at once at a higher altitude, and climbing without oxygen, I cre
sted a ridge and a buddy dropped an oxygen mask over my face flowing at six litres per minute. Nick points to tracks beside my feet. I see the human-like thumb. Tracks march up the ridge from the top of a moss-covered cliff, regular left–right–left prints, like the monogram of a barefooted person walking on two feet. I pull out my tape measure. The stride is 28 inches, the length of the footprint 7 inches.
‘Can it be anything else?’ Nick whispers.
‘See that stride. What two-legged animal walks these jungles? Prints like these couldn’t be from a four-footed animal; overprinting of its hind tracks on front would sometimes miss and we would see the other feet. See how it stepped over that branch, yet the print is still perfect. That’s what I’ve always wondered reading other accounts—how does the line of tracks look—not just one print. Here is a trail, all prints are clean, sharp. It’s bipedal.’
2.3 The Mysterious Footprint Discovered on the Ridge
Source: Author
‘These are too perfect. The thumb-like mark on each,’ Nick says. ‘You don’t just stumble on to a discovery like this the first day out.’
‘What do you mean by “too perfect”? You want to find something that biologically doesn’t work? You want those turned-around backward feet always mentioned with forward walking? What’s wrong with discovery the first day if we’re looking in the right place and have been trying for twenty-seven years? Why did I forget the plaster of Paris today?’ Disgusted after rooting through my backpack, gear now across the snow, I turn to taking pictures.
The moss on the cliff is slightly disturbed. Bamboo grows by its rock face. On the base of some stalks are scratch marks. At the top of the cliff, broken stalks hang over the rock, appearing like these stalks were used to pull the animal up. The mossy wall shows where feet were placed during the ascent. A fastidious climber went up this face, an animal with balance and considerable strength.
Yeti- The Ecology of a Mystery Page 4
