The Khumjung Yeti Scalp Examination

The relic lived at Khumjung monastery, in the village of Khumjung in the Khumbu region of Nepal. One travel source names the gompa Samten Choling. The people of Khumjung held the object to be a yeti's scalp. One account put its age at 200 years. A newspaper headline of December 23, 1960 said 240.

No one in this story claims to have seen a yeti. The evidence was the object itself, and the belief of its keepers.

End of October 1960. Sir Edmund Hillary's Silver Hut expedition crossed the Tashi Laptsa Pass from Rolwaling into Khumbu. Then it borrowed the scalp. About one month. A Sherpa had to travel with it. That Sherpa was Khunjo Chumbi, headman and village elder, guardian of the relic. He "had no doubts" that the abominable snowman existed, Stars and Stripes reported. The village elders asked for something in return. A school.

December 10, 1960. Tokyo International Airport. Hillary and Khunjo Chumbi had flown in from Hong Kong. Hillary called the scalp "the only piece of evidence we haven't found a rational explanation for."

The route after that is disputed. Some accounts send the scalp to Chicago. Sanderson wrote that a showing for scientists was ruined because "there was a heavy snowstorm over most of the United States at that date," and that the party "suddenly decided to fly on to England." In Paris, "a full-dress showing was arranged at the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle, under Prof. Millot of Coelacanth fish fame." Bernard Heuvelmans was there. The median crest of hair, he wrote, "reminded me of the mane of a Serow." Sanderson also recalled that "Sir Edmund appeared on television along with a scalp on a revolving table," and remembered "the most excellent Kunyo Chumbi who did a little dance."

December 22, 1960. Hillary, Desmond Doig and the scalp landed at London Airport.

In Tokyo, Prof. Teizo Ogawa studied the hairs under the microscope. In London, Marca Burns examined skin and hair cut from the edge of the scalp. She compared them with serow, blue bear and black bear. Her 1962 report in Genus concluded it was "probably made from the skin of an animal closely resembling the sampled specimen of Serow." She allowed for a local race of serow, or a close relative. She did not rule out an unknown animal.

The expedition reached its own conclusion. The scalp had been fabricated from the hide of the Himalayan serow, a goat antelope. Expedition zoologist Marlin Perkins, director of Lincoln Park Zoo, reportedly said "it could not be scalp tissue." Sanderson suggested it had been moulded on a wooden block, like a milliner's. Hillary was blunt. "We have found rational explanations for most yeti phenomena."

Not every voice agreed. Shackley wrote that the hairs "look distinctly monkey-like" and that the scalp carried "parasitic mites of a species different from that recovered from the serow." Heuvelmans could not see how the relic could come from the skin of a serow's neck or shoulder. Ogawa's results did not match those from other villages in Nepal. Whether the moulding was a deliberate hoax or a ritual object made in good faith has never been settled.

The scalp went home to Khumjung. It is still kept in a padlocked box, and visitors pay to see it. A replica is held at the Explorers Club in New York. The school the elders asked for became the Khumjung school, and led to Hillary's Himalayan Trust. The relic never proved the yeti. It did bring Khumjung a school.