Sir Edmund Hillary, explorer, skeptic

The conqueror of Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary, who died January 11, 2008, was a man of many famous exploits. Less well known was a 1960 paranormal expedition he conducted in the best skeptical tradition.

Born in Auckland, New Zealand, on July 20, 1919, Hillary studied science and mathematics at Auckland University College, later adopting a summer occupation, beekeeping, which allowed him to pursue his winter avocation of mountain climbing. In 1939, he reached the summit of his first major mountain, Mount Olliver in the Southern Alps. In 1953, with Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay, Hillary conquered the world's tallest peak, Mount Everest, for which he received worldwide acclaim, including knighthood. He subsequently climbed many other mountains, trekked overland to the South Pole (1958), and accompanied astronaut Neil Armstrong in a ski plane that landed at the North Pole (1985). In addition, he devoted much of his life to humanitarian efforts on behalf of the Sherpa people of Nepal.

Hillary gave other attention to his beloved Himalaya mountains, including becoming intrigued by persistent reports of the legendary man-beast of the region, the "Abominable Snowman" or Yeti. Evidence for its existence has proved as elusive as the creature itself. One famous photograph of a Yeti turned out to be that of a rock, while celebrated photos alleged to show the beast's footprints were determined to be in one instance those of a bear, and in another the trail of a mountain goat. (For more on this, see Joe Nickell's book, Entities, 1995.)

Hillary resolved to get to the bottom of the Snowman mystery. Among the purposes of a 1960-61 expedition financed by World Book Encyclopedia to study high-altitude effects on climbers and other aspects of mountaineering, meteorology, and glaciology, Hillary added Yeti-hunting. The expedition included mammalogist Marlin Perkins (the late, beloved host of television's Wild Kingdom) and various physiologists, zoologists, mountaineers, and journalists. Hillary was determined either to document or debunk the fabled creature. His team searched the region and reviewed evidence regarding the Yeti's existence.

The investigators came upon what appeared to be fox tracks in shaded snow, but where these led into a sunny area they had melted and thus become elongated into a semblance of large, human footprints. Hillary realized that this phenomenon of melting and enlarging of tracks--such as those of a bear or snow leopard--could account for many of the huge "Yeti footprints" that had been photographed. The team analyzed various alleged Yeti relics with consistently negative results. "Yeti fur" turned out to be from the rare Tibetan blue bear, and a "Yeti scalp" was a fur hat made from the goat-like serow.

The results of his investigation led Hillary to conclude that the whole concept of the Yeti was nonsense and that the creature existed only in legend. Monster buffs were angry, but Hillary's prestige and background gave him credibility among scientific-minded people. After all, says Daniel Cohen (in his book Encyclopedia of Monsters), "Sir Edmund Hillary, the great mountain climber, could hardly be criticized as being an armchair critic."

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Joe Nickell is CSI's Senior Research Fellow.

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