Indian Army "Yeti" footprints near Makalu Base Camp (2019)

March 27, 2019. An 18-member Indian Army mountaineering expedition was flagged off from Delhi. Its goal was Mount Makalu. At 8,485 metres it is the fifth highest mountain in the world, about 19 km southeast of Everest, near Nepal's border with Tibet. The team was led by Major Manoj Joshi. On April 2 it began the trek toward base camp, through Makalu-Barun National Park.

April 9, 2019. The team was acclimatising at Langmale Kharka, a spot the Army placed at 3,500 metres above sea level, close to Makalu Base Camp. There, in the snow, they found a series of huge footprints, each measuring 32 by 15 inches. The team photographed them and filmed them. The pictures were sent back from the field by satellite link.

Nobody saw an animal. The photographs show a single line of large oval depressions running across a snow slope, one behind the other. The edges look softened, as though partly melted. Small streaks mark where snow had slid downhill.

The Army held the material for about ten days. Then, on April 29, its official account, ADG PI, posted the photographs. "For the first time, an #IndianArmy Moutaineering Expedition Team has sited Mysterious Footprints of mythical beast 'Yeti' measuring 32x15 inches close to Makalu Base Camp on 09 April 2019," the tweet read. "This elusive snowman has only been sighted at Makalu-Barun National Park in the past."

An unnamed Army source explained the wait. "We got the inputs about 10 days back and yet we held on to it… nature, history and science never write their final story." The Army said it would share the photos and videos with domain experts.

Within hours, the tweet drew more than 7,000 retweets and 16,000 likes, and CNN, Reuters, Al Jazeera and many other outlets carried the story. Much of the response was ridicule. Critics focused on the single line of prints and questioned how a biped could have made them. BJP leader Tarun Vijay took a different line. He asked the Army to show "respect" and say "snowman" rather than "beast".

Across the border, the Nepali Army sent liaison officers to the spot. Its spokesman, Bigyan Dev Pandey, said the marks had already disappeared by the time they arrived. Locals and porters told them that "such unusual footprints appear frequently in the area and are made by wild bears."

Experts largely agreed. Daniel C. Taylor, author of Yeti: The Ecology of a Mystery and a veteran of fieldwork in the Barun valley, pointed to the scale. "If that is the footprint of an animal or a single animal, it's the size of a dinosaur… we know for sure that there are no dinosaurs living in the Barun valley." Taylor said the measurements needed to be confirmed. Sharon Hill put it bluntly: "Any reasonable person can see these are melted prints." Palaeogeneticist Ross Barnett said that without good photos a snow leopard or a brown bear could not be discounted. The press also recalled a 2017 study led by Charlotte Lindqvist of the University at Buffalo. Of nine "yeti" samples, eight came from Asian bears and one from a dog.

The Army's expedition video has not surfaced in public. No expert verdict has been made public either. What remains is a handful of photographs, a famous tweet, and an old question asked once more in a valley the legend has long called home.