Richard Steinwinkler’s Encounter With A Yeti
Richard Steinwinkler/Adventure Club of EuropeAn alleged photograph of a Yeti taken by Richard Steinwinkler in 1951.
The same year that Shipton came across strange footprints in the heights of the Himalayas, fellow mountaineer Richard Steinwinkler, a member of the Adventure Club of Europe, had a strange encounter on a remote Himalayan plateau.
One night, around midnight, upon reaching the plateau, Steinwinkler noticed a large figure moving behind an overhang. Despite his initial skepticism about the Yeti’s existence, he felt compelled, perhaps by curiosity, to investigate.
“To be honest, I thought the idea of a Yeti was a made-up fantasy,” he later reflected. “And yet — in that moment — I knew I would not come to rest here. So, I moved quietly and carefully to the overhang, behind which I noticed the creature.”
Steinwinkler came across a series of large footprints embedded in the clay, which he traced for several hours, leading him to a vantage point where he observed a creature standing roughly 160 feet away. The creature, he claimed, stood about 13 feet tall and walked on two legs.
“My only thought was, I hope he doesn’t notice me,” Steinwinkler said. “All the curiosity, all the euphoria was suddenly gone. There was only reverent fear. With shaky fingers, I reached for my camera and took several photographs. Then I crept slowly back. This was my first and last encounter with the Yeti.”
Although he received much ridicule upon his return, with naysayers doubting the authenticity of his photographs. Still, he maintained his belief in the Yeti — though he clarified that he believed it could have just been an unidentified ape-like or bear-like species, and not a mythical creature.
More shocking, though, was the gift he received from a Nepali friend four years later, in 1955: a scalp purported to belong to a Yeti, allegedly retrieved from an abandoned Tibetan monastery.
“I was skeptical at first, whether I should accept this gift: either the scalp was fake and I published a scam — or the scalp was real and belonged to an animal — maybe the Yeti — that might have been chased and killed,” he said. “The idea that the Yeti could end up on the shooting list of poachers frightened me.”
In the end, Steinwinkler handed the purported Yeti scalp over to the Adventure Club of Europe, and it remains in their collection to this day. A 1999 DNA analysis of the hair on it also could not link it to any known animal species.
And it was not the only time an alleged Yeti scalp would be found.
