Before Shipton, C.R. Cooke Photographed Yeti Footprints In The Mud
Photograph of a purported Yeti footprint taken by C.R. Cooke in 1944.
In June 1944, British mountaineer C.R. Cooke embarked on an expedition along the Singalila Ridge near Darjeeling, India, climbing to an elevation of roughly 14,000 feet.
Like Shipton, Cooke also came across a series of large, odd footprints. This time, however, they were imprinted in the mud rather than the snow. And like Shipton, Cooke documented the discovery through a series of photographs, using items at his disposal for scale.
In his autobiography Dust and Snow: Half a lifetime in India, Cooke recalled, “We laid Margaret’s sunglasses beside each print to indicate its size and took photographs. These prints were strange and larger than any normal human foot, 14 inches heel to toe, with the great toe set back to one side, a first toe, also large, and three little toes closely bunched together.”
Public DomainAnother angle of the footprint by Cooke, with his wife’s sunglasses laying next to it.
Although Cooke’s photographs did not create the same stir that Shipton’s had, the fact that they predate Shipton’s has regularly been cited as further evidence of their authenticity. Cooke’s photographs predated the Yeti fever that captivated explorers after the Shipton prints, and although Cooke heavily implied they belonged to the Yeti, the official claim at the time attributed the prints to the “Jungli Admi,” or “wild man.”
Still, others have attributed the Cooke prints to other known animals like bears, possibly distorted by environmental factors, or even to unknown primate species in the region. Once again, the result was inconclusive, with Cooke’s photographs remaining a vital part of Yeti lore.
