footprints in snow can become very interesting
I lived in a remote part of Canada with in walking distance of the rocky mountains, saw many tracks that would become affected by weather conditions
Bear, wolf, and human prints can be acted upon by wind, thawing , freezing, and some times other animals will step in existing tracks... it is fun to try and analyse and speculate what these prints orgionally were. Many bear and human tracks have been labelled "sasquatch" and "bigfoot", and the evidence never supports these interpretations.
Some look "alien". That is, the tracks can not be attributed to a known/template print, but the most likely suspects are either human or bear and wolf. Bear stools occassionally accompany bear tracks, and that can help confirm if the tracks are eroded and malformed my weather conditions. Wolf and coyote have a distinct "wandering" pattern, generally with "S" curves". Hares can leave some interesting tacks, as can lynx and couger.
Human prints are conspicuously even paced, and linear. Snowshoe imprints can be fun, and you can pull someone's leg
if snowshoes are not within their experience.
Yoshiteru Takahashi said he had seen footprints on Mount Dhaulagiri during trips to the world's seventh-highest mountain in the 1970s and 1990s which he believed belonged to the Yeti. "They [the footprints] were very, very close to human footsteps," Takahashi
The article does not mention it, but I wonder if Tahahashi mentioned that he would consider the high probability that the prints were human, after all he was on the mountain, presumably leaving prints... perhaps he was walking in circles and encountered his own tracks that were changed by wind and new snow fall. Perhaps another human was on the mountain just mere days before.
Have fun with these track fields.
There are no correct answers when interpreting animal tracks, unless, of course, you saw the animal make the tracks. However, there are good and bad interpretations. Good interpretations are based on skillful observation and deduction and are most often very close to the truth of how the tracks were made.
Tahahashi's interpretation, as reported in the article, is a bad interpretation of the tracks he saw. His interpretation is not close to how the tracks were made. Yeti tracks are out of the scope and experience of Tahahashi, myself, and billions of others, and there is no frame of reference to draw on. Not a robust interpretation; it will not hold up to scrutiny.
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