Yeti Project Japan's bipedal "Yeti" footprints on Dhaulagiri IV

Yeti Project Japan had been here before. The autumn 2008 search was its third. Leader Yoshiteru Takahashi said that on the 2003 trip he had seen something on the mountain. "It was about 200 metres away in silhouette. It was walking on two legs like a human and looked about 150 centimetres tall."

The ridge held older stories too. Takahashi and deputy leader Kuniaki Yagihara said they had seen footprints along it in autumn 1975, on an earlier Dhaulagiri IV expedition. Nepali Times reported that Takahashi saw yeti footprints on a 1994 visit as well.

August 2008. A Reuters story from Kathmandu announced a 50-day expedition. Base camp went up on 31 August at 4,350 metres on the western slope of Dhaulagiri IV, a 7,661 metre peak recorded in the Himalayan Database as Myagdi Matha. Observation camps followed on the ridge at 4,720 metres and on its slopes. The highest point, 5,100 metres, was reached on 5 September.

The team carried long-lens cameras, video cameras and telescopes. Nine motion-triggered cameras waited for anything that moved. Before leaving, team member Tamotsu Ohnishi was modest about the odds. "I want to shake hands if I meet him. But it is very difficult. They are shy, so we want to just take pictures."

Somewhere on that ridge, on snow at about 4,800 metres, the team found them. Three footprints. About 20 centimetres long. They looked like a human's.

"We saw three footprints which looked like that of human beings," Yagihara said. "We know how the footprints of bear, deer and mountain goat look like and it was none of that. We believe it is that of Yeti." Takahashi agreed. "Myself and other team members have been coming to the Himalayas for years and we can recognize bear, deer, wolf and snow leopard prints and it was none of those."

No creature appeared. The cameras recorded nothing the team could use. The Himalayan Database adds one more detail, and leaves it unexplained. A fuzzy creature moving along the ridge.

The expedition ended on 11 October. On 20 and 21 October 2008 the team was back in Kathmandu, speaking to reporters. AFP, Reuters and the Daily Mail carried the story worldwide. The photographs of the prints were posted on the expedition website. No government body or scientific institution examined them, and no one has accused the team of a hoax.

Not everyone on the team was convinced. Ohnishi thought the prints could have been made by any animal and distorted by the sun. In 2003, Nepali Times had noted that most earlier explorers concluded yeti reports came from a Himalayan bear wandering into snow and "leaving ape-like footprints". NBC reminded readers that the yeti is largely regarded by the scientific community as a mythical creature. The accounts also differ. A later ExplorersWeb guide gives the prints as 45 centimetres long, and Reuters said in August that the 2003 figure was seen by one team member and three Sherpas.

Team member Yusuke Kakuhata wrote a non-fiction account of the search, The Yeti Came From Over There. It won the 31st Nitta Jirō Literary Prize. The footprints themselves remain what they were in October 2008. Photographs of three prints in the snow, and an open question.