My Quest for the Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas' Deepest Mystery [Paperback]

Reinhold Messner (Author), Peter Constantine (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 20, 2001

In a terrifying moment during a solo climb in eastern Tibet, renowned mountaineer Reinhold Messner confronted a large unidentifiable creature that moved upright with astonishing agility. Convinced that he had found living proof of a legend, Messner began a quest to the remote monasteries and isolated villages of Nepal, Bhutan, India, and Tibet, seeking an answer to a mystery that has haunted the imagination for generations.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Traveling to mountainous regious accessible only to someone prossessing his legendary mountaineering and survival skills, Reinhold Messner's quest for the elusive yeti takes us to that most intriguing and inaccesible of realms--she shadow borderland where myth encounters raw geography." --Caroline Alexander, author of The Endurance

"Messner's command of yeti tales is impressive...Viewed through his seen-it-all-eyes, the influence of Chinese occupation in Tibet is freshly devastating." --The New York Times

"Perhaps most compelling is Messner's love of Tibet, his fears for it under Chinese rule and his concern that rampant deforestation may kill the animal's habitat, even if it cannot kill the myth." --The Los Angeles Times

"An engaging blend of travelogue and cryptozoological inquiry, this book will make a great campfire read." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

In addition to his world-famous exploits in the Himalayas--including the first solo ascent of Mount Everest--Reinhold Messner has crossed Anarctica and Greenland on foot. He is the author of more than thirty books, including Everest, The Crystal Horizon, Free Spirit, and, most recently, The Second Death of George Mallory (also available from St. Martin's Press). He lives in a castle in the Italian Alps.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (April 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031227078X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312270780
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,245,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Yeti, a bear ?, February 17, 2003

By 

Frank Bierbrauer (Cardiff, Wales, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Quest for the Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas' Deepest Mystery (Paperback)

Messner, probably the greatest climber in history (e.g. climbing Everest solo without Oxygen) tells the story of his search for an explanation governing the so-called Yeti or Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas. It all started with his attempt to retread the steps of the ancient cultural treks of the Tibetan people. On the way he meets, in a moonlit forest, a dark form with great nightvision and the ability to move very quietly and with great speed through the undergrowth. Messner's description of his encounter is simply superb, so gripping and personal it must be real. One is left in no doubt at all that he has met a creature of unknown origin who moves in an upright position much like a man and makes unusual whistling sounds.

Messner, so gripped by his phenomenal encounter is driven to find out more of this enigmatic being, which he considers to be the mythical Yeti of Himalayan fame. It is the case that the first description of this meeting is the most important part of the book, it being a powerful experience beyond any other abstractions he undertakes in the remainder of the book. Over some ten years and much searching as well as research and the retelling of the experiences of Tibetans he meets, Messner comes to the conclusion that the Yeti and the Chemo are the same beast, an unusual and rare kind of Tibetan bear. Although most of the book is taken up with descriptions from history of Yeti encounters, and the denial of the possibility that the Yeti is anthropoid in nature, he fails to completely convince in his definitive statement that all of the mythical creatures of Tibetan legend used to describe such incidents e.g. Yeti, Chemo, Dremo etc are the same being. I felt his conclusion to be a little hurried. Although there must be no doubt that his observation of the Chemo is a bear this does not mean that the Yeti, as such, is also a bear. It is doubtful that a bear can spend so much time walking upright as a Yeti has been known to do and that his footprints do not show claws which are the hallmarks of a bear. Nonetheless Messner convinces in the fact that at least some common encounters must be bear encounters with a very real, but rarely seen, kind of Tibetan bear.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Rational Approach, April 6, 2001

By 

Wolf Roder (Cincinnati, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Quest for the Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas' Deepest Mystery (Paperback)

Westerners call him the "Abominable Snowman" of the Himalaya Mountains. Messner says this is really a mistranslation of the Tibetan word, "migyu," and is not the Nepalese "yeti" either. In both cases the quest refers to a large man-like animal, a primitive human or perhaps an ape, which is said to have been spied by numerous expeditions and other visitors from the West.

Why are skeptics so blatantly unwilling to credit sightings of large, uncatalogued beasts. If these animals are ordinary, undiscovered species of flesh and blood, it requires a large population for continued reproduction. As a minimum some fifty to a hundred individuals have to roam the land to assure survival into the present. A large animal also needs a large territory to support the mass of its body. And, large animals leave large signs of their presence, including footprints, feeding places, dead bodies and bones. Given the pace at which the earth is ransacked by prospectors and tourists, a large animal could remain hidden only in a very remote region. It is to Messner's credit that he realizes these requirements. Throughout the book he searches either for a real animal, or tries to pin the Yeti down as a mythical creature. A literal translation of the German title is "Yeti - Legend and Reality," and that is what Messner reports on.

The bottom line is something like this. There is the "abominable snowman" of western fantasy, a myth which speaks to our desire to find the origins of humans, and pristine human beings. This is not how the people of the region see the animal. They see a man-like animal of many stories and tales. It can come and go like a ghost, it may fly through the air, it will take their goats, and maybe a young yak. You will only see it by accident not by tracking it. It will abduct young women to live with it in a cave and have his children. Underlying these fairy tales is a real animal, a large species of animal. Perhaps there are several species, certainly a number of varieties. For understanding aspects of a real animal, think of the western fairy tale wolf, who swallows little Red Cap whole, and contrast with the real wolves in the wild or in a National Park.

The book provides clear photographs of this animal. Neither Messner nor I think that these findings will end the fantasy and speculation in the West about primitive, pre-human, abominable snowmen, or other hidden beasts.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars abominable messner, June 4, 2002

By 

peter farquhar (tasmania) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Quest for the Yeti: Confronting the Himalayas' Deepest Mystery (Paperback)

Has Reinhold Messner climbed one too many mountains?
The man who could arguably lay claim as the greatest of mountaineers - at least in the modern era - offers a slightly different view of his highland exploits in MY QUEST FOR THE YETI.
As the first person to scale all the world's 8000m peaks, Messner immortalised himself in climbing history. Unfortunately, he is better known outside such circles for daring to tell the world he stumbled across a creature known to the Western world as a Yeti in 1986.
Messner came across the creature on a solo climb that year, and made the mistake of telling the story of his encounter at a press conference in India.
``The news of my conquering the last two of the 14 eight-thousanders was lost among yeti hysteria, jeering comments, and absurd speculation,'' he laments.
He even became something of a joke in his Austrian homeland, but now, 16 years later, Messner seems determined to clarify his position once and for all.
But was it a Yeti, or actually a type of highly-intelligent bear known to the Tibetan natives as the chemo?
He asks the question early in the piece, but his inability to clearly express his line of reasoning for the remainder of the books makes for frustrating, and at times boring reading.
It does not help his case that the chemo itself is yet to be scientifically classified, or even proven to exist.
Messner is obviously no scientist, and the quantum leaps of logic that he makes to prove his claim often leave the reader more inclined to believe the Yeti theory.
However, it does not make MY QUEST FOR THE YETI an unworthy read.
Few Westerners know more about Tibetan culture and landscape than Messner, and, perhaps inadvertently, his latest book provides an engaging window through which to view it.
His battle to travel through Tibet undetected by Chinese officials, helped by a number of old friends in towns and nomadic enclaves, often contrasts starkly with what is obviously a stunning backdrop, both physical and spiritual.
Like Messner, the reader keeps one eye on the road for trouble, and the other wide open in wonder at the setting.
He also peppers the book with intriguing historical accounts of Yeti sightings _ more than enough ``facts'' to keep the myth alive, albeit it at the expense of Messner's bear theory.
Still, this remains the self-indulgent work of a somewhat righteous and often annoyingly conceited man who should stick to doing what he does better than anyone else in his field - climbing big rocks.