Peter Byrne came to work on a tea plantation in Northern India in the late 1940’s, after a stint in the Royal Air force in WWII. He opened Nepal’s first tiger hunting concession (today he helps protect the) and soon found himself face to face with stories about the "abominable snowman" or yeti.

Funded by a Texas oil man, with the unlikely name of Tom Slick, he began a three year mission to hunt and track down the Yeti. They found footprints and a mummified hand in a monastery, but the creature remained shrouded in the blowing Himalayan snow. Hearing of the discovery of big footprints in California, Slick asked Byrne to head up a "Pacific Northwest Bigfoot Expedition" in 1960, which for a short time included Rene Dahinden and John Green.