Your chance to come face to face with the Abominable Snowman

It is the latest of a number of initiatives to woo tourists to a region once known as the coal capital of the Soviet Union. A special 'environmental pathway' has been created to the Azasskaya Cave in the Shorsky National Park.

Volunteers have cleared the track of shrubs and fallen trees enabling tourists to access the legendary Bigfoot stomping ground. There are tables and chairs and even a 'welcome banner' for intrepid Yeti hunters, it was announced. 

'The region has been trying to capitalise on Bigfoot since 2008, when local hunters first claimed to have spotted a giant hairy hominid in the taiga,' reported RIA Novosti news agency. Retired heavyweight boxing champion Nikolai 'Beast from the East' Valuyev personally joined a search party looking for Bigfoot in 2011, though he met with no success. 

He found 'a footprint that he claimed may have been left by some previously unknown bipedal species inhabiting the Siberian taiga', it was claimed.

The new track is separate from a Yeti track being constructed at Sheregesh ski resort, but it is in the same region, and local governor Aman Tuleyev to offer a one million rouble ($33,000) reward to anyone who can snare a Yeti and prove its existence.

'I'll pay a million to anyone who will find the Yeti and bring it to see the me. I'll sit down with him, chat and have a cup of tea', he promised earlier this year.

'We can see how Scotland exploits the Loch Ness Monster, who why can't we do the same with the Yeti?' admitted one official. 'We hope people will come from all over the world.'

The Azasskaya cave was the scene of an alleged 'find' of Yeti hair in 2011 on a well-publicised hunt for the elusive creature involving an international expedition. However, when it was sent for DNA analysis at Oxford University in the UK, Professor Bryan Sykes of the Wolfson Institute, one of the UK's leading geneticists, insisted the hair belonged to a horse. 

'The hairs did not come from a Yeti,' said Professor Sykes. The finding left Russia's leading Yeti proponent Igor Burtsev undaunted. He claimed the testing, which involved a popular newspaper, could have fallen short of scientific standards. 

'We cannot agree with the results of the test,' he said. 

'We have a gigantic number of other evidence except for the hair confirming not only the Yeti's existence, but the fact that they live in Kemerovo,' he said.

A number of sightings in Kemerovo have led to vivid accounts with no pictures, or graining images which leave a lot of questions in the minds of investigators. In one case, three boys Yevgeny Anisimov, 11, Kirill Soldatov, 12, and Alexander Pereverin, 11, were said to have filmed an image of a Yeti. 

'It is the first time in Russian modern history that someone manages to film the Yeti so clearly,' said Burtsev. 

'I don't doubt it was a Yeti. It stood in a typical pose with its back slightly bent, and its long arms down. It is a real, not falsified, video. Soon the experts will try to establish what sex the creature was. The tracks in the snow were very interesting: not only long but large. 

'It looks like it first walked towards the village and then walked back in its own footprints. It fits what we know about Yetis... they walk without a swagger.'

Now, though, tourists will have their own chance to check out a Yeti lair.