Japanese team hunts for abominable snowman

KATHMANDU // It seems the search for mythical creatures goes on. Less than one week after two men in the United States claimed they had found the remains of a half-man, half-ape Bigfoot, which actually turned out to be a rubber gorilla suit, a team of Japanese climbers began trekking yesterday to a mountain in Nepal hoping to find the Yeti, or abominable snowman. Seven climbers, supported by Sherpas and carrying cameras and telescopes, will spend 50 days on the lower reaches of the 7,661-metre Dhaulagiri IV to try to collect evidence of the beast's existence, said the team leader, Yoshiteru Takahashi.

Mr Takahashi, who carried out similar missions in the same area in 1994 and 2003, said one of his team members and three Sherpas had seen "something like the Yeti" from a distance five years ago. "We believe that was the Yeti," said Mr Takahashi, a 65-year-old employee of a Tokyo furniture company. "So we are going to search for a third time. We need photographs and videotapes to prove it." Sherpas and climbers often narrate stories about a wild hairy creature roaming the Himalayas.

Those tales have captured the imagination of foreign climbers of Mount Everest since the 1920s, prompting many, including Sir Edmund Hillary, to carry out hunts for the Yeti. Some climbers even claim to have found Yeti footprints, but no one has yet actually seen it or produced irrefutable proof. The Japanese will pitch three camps between 3,400m and 4,300m above base camp. They will use binoculars during the day and also have long-lens cameras to take pictures at night.

"I want to shake hands if I meet him," said T Onishi, another member of the team. "But it is very difficult. They are shy, so we want to just take pictures." * Reuters