DALE DRINNON: Yetis By Altitude

Bernard Heuvelmans introduced the idea of the bigger Yetis coming from higher altitudes by quoting Tom Slick in his chapter 6 of On the Track of Unknown Animals. Toward the end of that chapter, Heuvelmans mentions that Tom Slick's most importand contribution to the subject of the Abomonable Snowman was that most of the observations by Sherpas were of creatures of about standard human size or rather smaller, it was only when witnesses were speaking of higher regions that they referred to Yetis as giants, in Tibet or the very Northenmost parts of Sikkim or Nepal. Heuvelmans then continues:

"This opinion was confirmed in 1957 by a Tibetan lama called Punyabayra, who said that the Tibetan mountain people knew of three kinds of snowmen: the nyalmo, the rimi and the rackshi bompo. The nyalmo are real giants between 13 and 16 feet high, with enormous conical heads. They wander about in parties among the eternal snows above 13,000 feet and are carnivorous and even man-eating. The rimi are smaller but still between 7 and 9 feet high. They live lower down, between 10,000 and 13,000 feet, feeding on plants as well, and are thus omnivorous...The rackshi bompo are about the size of a man"

Now when Ivan Sanderson repeated this tradition in his book Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, he reported the same categories but at a height reduction as Dzu-Teh, Meh-Teh or the "True Yeti" and Teh-Lma, a Pygmy form. The heights were reduced such that the 13 to 16 foot tall nyalmo became the 7 to 9 foot tal Dzu-Teh, the 7 to 9 foot tall rimi became the mansized Meh-Teh and the humansized rackshi-bompo became the Teh-Lmas at only 3-4 feet tall. But he kept their habitats by altitude about the same. Not all subsequent commentators have caught the importance of this.

Sanderson gives his version of the arrangement on his page 325:

"On several occasions Tibetans of higher education have said....that they know of three distinct types of ABSMs in or around the periphery of their super-upland plateau, while, in addition, they speak of two "animals" with manlike or super-anthropoid characteristics. These latter they identify as, first a giant [macaque] monkey and, secondly the Meh-Teh [not necessarily using the same names Sanderson is attempting to standardize here. The categories definitely exist in the Tibetan mind, but Sanderson's use of these specific names is only to impress upon his readers which series of reports belonged together-DD] Of the other three "Man-Creatures" they are quite cognizant, affirming that they are first, the little dwarf Teh-lma of the lower valleys, second, the man-sized hairy one [ie, the Kaptar, Guli-avan or Ksy-Giik type-ITS]and third, something quite else. This is the mighty Dzu-Teh type...a real giant, shaggy-coated, and able to stay for long periods in the ruggedest country; dangerous, a stock raider, but possessed of an almost exactly-human-type foot.This...is not found along either the Himalayas or the Southern Tibetan rim [Incorrect if going by the very large human-shaped track, for this actually contradicts Tom Slick and Heuvelmans-DD], nor even in the Nan Shans [North of Tibet-DD], but it is confined to the unnamed triangle between these, Upper Indo-China, and the Chinese Escarpment...[Sanderson goes on to say that these are the same as the North American Sasquatches. In another place he specifies that these Dzu-Tehs keep to the highest mountains, especially the Kunluns and U-Chans, and the Eastern-Tibetan regions of Sikang and Shensi-DD]

What might not be obvious in this last bunch of specific locations, Sanderson is naming the highest altitudes above 13,000 feet altitude, and the areas alloted to the nyalmo of legend., in all of the geographic ranges listed for the types by Sanderson, what he is doing is basically reading the altitudes off of a relief chart.

Ernst Schaefer, German naturalist who was the first to discern the different habitats by altitude in Tibet and Central China, discerned distinct faunal zones of the Tibetan tablelands. The southernmost part of Tibet was the comparatively lush at just above 10000 feet, and this was the gazelle steppe. In the central part of Tibet there is the colder and drier Kiang (wild ass) steppe, 12000 to 14000 feet in elevation. And in the North ithere is the highest and coldest, barely habitable Wild Yak steppe. These steppe areas are compartmentalized by the different mountain ranges. What Sanderson had done (Without saying so) was to place the Dzu-Teh [=Nyalmo] mostly within the realm of the Wild Yak steppe and in agreement with the tradition that said that yak was their preferred prey. The Tibetan "blue" bear [grizzly bear] incidentally prefers the lower Kiang steppe instead, where food is more abundant. According to the Tibetans, the main inhabitant of the Southern two steppes would be the mansized and manlike one,preferring rhododendron thickets as wll as pine and spruce forests where they occur (at that altitude) According to the Tibetan informants, the creature that Sanderson called the True Yeti did not even usually go into the mountains but preferred to live down between 6000 and 8000 feet where the bamboo grows thickest, but "Downslope" from Tibet proper, and down deeper in the jungle valleys. A smaller form of the Wildman (Rackshi-bompo, with humanlike tracks) also inhabited those levels, but other authors identify Sanderson's Teh-lma as a sort of gibbon. The Rackshi-Bompo and Rimi would then indeed be two size variants of the same species, as Heuvelmans surmised, but Sanderson makes a separation and calls the "True Yeti" a separate type. The mansized and manlike one is thus said to range from 3 to 8 feet tall, average 5 1/2 feet, which checks out: the Dzu-Teh is said to be from 7 to 15 or 16 feet, and the tallest heights given are probably due to the trick of the lighting called "Looming" which often happens in the mountains. Probably they never really get more than ten feet tall, or twelve at the most.

Putting the evidence together, the Wildman type inhabits all levels but prefers the forests when there are any: but it also follows the gazelles, goats, goat-antelopes, wild sheep, wild asses and so on, taking the young and injured ones when possible. The nyalmo, or putative Sasquatch type, goes them one better and goes up to do the same with the herds of yaks. In both cases, snow kills probably provide them a larger part of their meat. The Sasquatch type go up so high for the specific purpose of using the natural refrigeration-they haul animal carcasses up above the eternal snowline and they can eat it year-round. All the same it is not likely that they are necessarily confined to such altitudes, only that they have an adaptation that works in that particular area. They are also said to descend to the lower levels on occasion. And of course the "Real Yetis" occasionally climb greater heights, or else there would be no tracks of their to be found and called "Abominable Snowman" tracks. And the "Real Yetis" are grouped together with the smallest size category of Wildmen in the area, average adult height being 4-5 feet only, but said to be up to 7 feet or more. If one of them left the tracks found by Shipton, then the biggest ones must still be of a pretty impressive size. This probably puts them in a size range comparable to the gorillas.