In the season two premiere, Gates ventures to Nepal to uncover the truth behind the myth of the elusive Yeti, which leads him to the discovery of three separate and mysterious footprints. With Destination Truth about to make its sophomore debut, The Deadbolt conducted its own investigation that lead to a call with Destination Truth sleuth Josh Gates who shed some light on the show's return, what type of creatures fans can expect to see this season, and his time in the Himalayas hunting the Yeti.

THE DEADBOLT: If money and time weren’t an issue, what do you think it would take to actually find a Yeti?

JOSH GATES: Well, I think if we’re talking specifically about the Yeti in this case, which is the premiere episode - I think that this is one of those cases where you have an enormous geographic area to canvas. And I think also, there is an enormous amount of work to be done, not just in this case but in all these cases of anthropology, of really talking to these cultures and determining where these stories come from and what their real genesis is within each of these kind of disparate groups that live in the Himalayas. So I think that it would take an enormous amount of resources coming from different scientists to actually get a more cohesive beat on what’s going on there.

THE DEADBOLT: Is it hard to get hardcore anthropologists interested in studying this? It’s basically viewed as cryptozoology, correct?

GATES: It is. I mean, I think that it has not been difficult for us to get those people involved because there are different ways of looking at all of these creatures that we go look for. There is obviously the cryptozoological angle, which is we’re going to go and find a living creature and throw a net over it. And there’s also this other really fascinating cultural angle, which are these stories -- whether you believe that there’s a heartbeat, if there’s a creature out there actually undiscovered -- there is this very real story.

And these stories carry -- especially in the case of the Yeti -- they carry a lot of weight in these cultures. People in Nepal and in the Himalayas in general, they have a lot of respect for that story. And they really believe it in a very deep way. And so certainly, it is a question that I think is really interesting to people in different disciplines. And so no, it hasn’t been difficult for us at all to get people to come and talk about the story because I think that, to anthropologists especially, it helps to learn more about the culture of the people that are there.

THE DEADBOLT: I remember coming across one theory that some people believe the creature is interdimensional, that it can actually leave our world and come back. What are your thoughts on that aspect?

GATES: You know, I’m kind of a hands-on kind of guy. Like I’m willing to believe in things I can sort of see and feel and touch and smell. And so for me, I don’t think that there’s really a preponderance of evidence that that is probably what’s going on because I don’t really think there’s a preponderance of evidence that kind of interdimensional anything is really going on. But it’s a kind of thing that Big Foot in general is a story - is another great story of a creature that a lot of people that are relatively disconnected geographically are having experiences with. And whether or not we believe that there’s actually this uncatalogued primate roaming around out in the jungles of the Pacific Northwest and in Canada, there’s certainly something to that story. So for me, it’s a question of finding the evidence and really kind of flushing out, what has caused that story to come into popularity.

Searching for Yeti with Josh Gates of Destination Truth Page 2