Speaker 1: Welcome to Big for Society. If you have Bigfoot activity
Speaker 1: to report from the same areas discussed in this episode,
Speaker 1: please reach out to me directly after this episode. And
Speaker 1: if you'd like to be on the podcast to discuss
Speaker 1: a personal Bigfoot encounter, please reach out to me directly
Speaker 1: at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. Do you wish
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Speaker 1: slash the Big for Society and now let's get on
Speaker 1: with the show. The following remote interview happens in the
Speaker 1: region around Oakridge, Oregon, at a cabin out in the woods.
Speaker 1: That being said, the audio might be a bit different
Speaker 1: than what you're used to, but enjoy as this is
Speaker 1: the first time this individual has shared this information. There
Speaker 1: may be hot mics, mic issues and other things that
Speaker 1: you notice in the background, but don't let that stop
Speaker 1: your enjoyment of this and again, thank you to Kevin
Speaker 1: for coming on the podcast. Enjoy and we're okay with
Speaker 1: Kevin first name only. Okay, I'm going to start with it.
Speaker 1: Kevin introduced me to his property, which is pretty far
Speaker 1: up in the woods. Kevin, thank you for inviting me
Speaker 1: out to your picnic table at your property. It is
Speaker 1: very nice out here. Your dog is running around. We've
Speaker 1: been tossing the ball too. He's pretty good at running
Speaker 1: around getting that. But do you mind. Is there anything
Speaker 1: you can share about the area that we're in, just
Speaker 1: for the listeners to get a visual of what we're
Speaker 1: looking at.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Sure.
Speaker 3: Where we live here in Oregon, it's nestled in the
Speaker 3: west side of the Cascade Slopes and it has a
Speaker 3: lot of Native American history and a lot of settler
Speaker 3: history related to the Oregon Trail and different routes that
Speaker 3: we're trying to be discovered for easier access, because everyone
Speaker 3: was heading to the Lamott Valley, which is where Eugene
Speaker 3: sits and all the bigger cities in Oregon. So basically
Speaker 3: in western Oregon, once you get out of the valley areas,
Speaker 3: you end up with all small world towns that might
Speaker 3: be ten, fifteen to twenty miles apart and probably averaging
Speaker 3: anywhere from a thousand people maybe to three thousand or
Speaker 3: five thousand people, So a lot of small spread out
Speaker 3: towns dispersed in a really large forest system. And so
Speaker 3: where we're at here, this is the Blama National Forest,
Speaker 3: one of the largest national forests in the United States.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's just a huge amount of roads and
Speaker 3: different ecosystems, you know. I mean you go from one
Speaker 3: thousand feet in elevation all the way up to ten thousand,
Speaker 3: three hundred and fifty eight feet at the top of
Speaker 3: South Sister Mountains, which is the pinnacle of Blama National Force.
Speaker 3: And that's bordered on the eastern side by the Hush
Speaker 3: National Forest over their eastern Oregon in Bend area. But anyways,
Speaker 3: really lush area, really pretty area. And I spent decades
Speaker 3: out here, me and my wife, backpacking and exploring and
Speaker 3: really just just finding places away from people. And before
Speaker 3: I had children, my oldest daughter's nine, we always went camping.
Speaker 2: That's what we did.
Speaker 3: I worked fifty sixty hour weeks at shops in Eugene,
Speaker 3: and at the end of the work week, we'd have
Speaker 3: our packs packed and I'd cram them in the back
Speaker 3: of my ninety four jeep Cherokee and we would oftentimes
Speaker 3: leave Friday night and drive for an hour and a
Speaker 3: half two hours to get up into the National Force,
Speaker 3: and then hike into campsites just to spend as much
Speaker 3: time as we could out out in the woods. We
Speaker 3: both really enjoyed it, and it decompressed us. For me,
Speaker 3: growing up in rural communities, on farms, on ranches. I
Speaker 3: spent most of my adolescents growing up in eastern Oregon
Speaker 3: outside of Pendleton on the Indian Humuntil Indian Reservation out there,
Speaker 3: and I worked for all the ranchers that were had
Speaker 3: big ranches and big farms nestled up against the slopes
Speaker 3: of the Blue Mountains out there, and just a beautiful area.
Speaker 3: And for me, I came from Florida. I moved up
Speaker 3: here when I was eleven from southwest Florida, just south
Speaker 3: of Fort Myers, and even down there my family we
Speaker 3: lived out pretty muchut in the middle of nowhere. We
Speaker 3: were the typical southern swamp kids. I don't know most
Speaker 3: of time, I probably was barefoot and shirtless. And when
Speaker 3: I was my boy's age now, which there are seven,
Speaker 3: me and my younger brother, we'd take the john boat
Speaker 3: out and we'd go hunt alligators and bring back little
Speaker 3: three foot four foot alligators and just spent our days exploring.
Speaker 3: And the funny thing is, now that I've gotten more
Speaker 3: familiar with miss Bigfoot phenomenon and had experiences myself, think
Speaker 3: about how remote I lived in Florida, and my mom
Speaker 3: and dad got divorced at an early as, so there's
Speaker 3: two different hig This is how we spent our time
Speaker 3: at and my dad lived out and out in the
Speaker 3: middle of big swamps. There's no houses around us for
Speaker 3: six or seven miles. And I never experienced anything in Florida,
Speaker 3: you know. And I know people say that there's a
Speaker 3: lot of activity on there, and I believe them. I
Speaker 3: believe them. I think that there's a lot of people
Speaker 3: that have these experiences and they just don't automatically go
Speaker 3: to Bigfoot as a first explanation, which in my case
Speaker 3: for the experiences that I had, while the most of
Speaker 3: these happened, Most of these happened, and I didn't even
Speaker 3: realize what was really behind it until years later, even
Speaker 3: decades later, on some of these and when you start
Speaker 3: thinking and putting it together and being like, ah, that
Speaker 3: explains what happened. And it was one that finding Bigfoot
Speaker 3: show kicked off, and there's a lot of fans of
Speaker 3: that show, and we discussed my opinions on it, and
Speaker 3: I think it really mainstreamed the Bigfoot thing absolutely, you know,
Speaker 3: really brought it out there. But it was more entertainment
Speaker 3: and hooting and hollering and these microscopic noises that you
Speaker 3: hear in your TV you know, when the show's debut
Speaker 3: and they're like, here, that's a sasquatch. It's a hard
Speaker 3: bill to sell, you know, to people that never had experiences.
Speaker 3: But what I really did get out of that show
Speaker 3: was listening to people share their encounters. And after listening
Speaker 3: to several of the very first episodes of Finding Bigfoot,
Speaker 3: me and my wife both looked at each other and
Speaker 3: we're like, we started recounting all these experiences we had,
Speaker 3: and we really like that explains exactly.
Speaker 2: What we had happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with that all, I'll just jump into some of
Speaker 3: the experiences that I've had and I'll give as much
Speaker 3: detail as I can to paint the picture. Unless you
Speaker 3: for people, I've never been to the Pacific Northwest, you
Speaker 3: spent the last few days running around here, really just
Speaker 3: dipping your toes into the vastness that's out here. This
Speaker 3: is a rugged place, and nature rules out here for
Speaker 3: the most part. I mean you look at right now.
Speaker 3: I mean we're surrounded by wildfires. You know that's normal.
Speaker 3: I have my camper pack right now. I have all
Speaker 3: my important stuff in there ready to go in case
Speaker 3: we have to leave. I've had to evacuate the last
Speaker 3: five years, and so it's just one of those things
Speaker 3: you prepare for. Reminds me of being in Florida prepared
Speaker 3: for hurricanes, you know. So, I mean, nature's nature is
Speaker 3: still rules out here, and a lot of these places are.
Speaker 3: Even though there's roads going everywhere in this Lamba National Forest,
Speaker 3: there's just so much uncharted land. There's two thousand plus
Speaker 3: miles worth of road in this National forest. You could
Speaker 3: spend decades trying to drive these roads. And I'm friends
Speaker 3: with a lot of third generation loggers up here, and
Speaker 3: even these guys haven't explored all the roads out here.
Speaker 3: It's just incredible how much room there is. I ran
Speaker 3: a backpacking business where I take people out on paid
Speaker 3: hikes and everything. And after getting really involved with backpacking
Speaker 3: myself and spending spending months outside literally every year, sleeping
Speaker 3: in the stars, finding the most remote corners of this
Speaker 3: Western Oregon Cascade Slope wilderness areas, and just spending weeks
Speaker 3: out in these quiet spots, we really got to know
Speaker 3: the area well. And my experiences with Bigfoot really only
Speaker 3: started happening when I moved to Western Oregon, and once
Speaker 3: I made the realization of what was going on, Like
Speaker 3: I said, sometimes ten years later plus on some of
Speaker 3: these experiences, it was kind of exciting and made me
Speaker 3: a little bit apprehensive, especially now that I have children,
Speaker 3: and so all my kids but you know, I have
Speaker 3: to seven year old boys that are twins, and I
Speaker 3: have a nine year old daughter, and we camp all
Speaker 3: the time. We go super remote. My camp trailer set
Speaker 3: up for boon dog camping. We never go to campgrounds.
Speaker 3: We go thirty forty miles out and we'll stay there
Speaker 3: for as long as we can usually when we go camping,
Speaker 3: so usually it's three days, five days or whatever. So
Speaker 3: my kids know my stories, and I told my kids
Speaker 3: all my experiences more as a cautionary tale. I don't
Speaker 3: know if I don't think these things necessarily want to
Speaker 3: be your friends. I think they're out there. I don't
Speaker 3: think I don't think that they are prone to violence
Speaker 3: and disappear in you or murdering you with anything, especially
Speaker 3: large animals and especially intelligent large animals.
Speaker 2: You gotta consider that's a possibility.
Speaker 3: And I think it's naive to go into the situation
Speaker 3: and think that all these things are your friends and they're.
Speaker 2: Just gonna going.
Speaker 3: To do these things where they're knocking on wood and
Speaker 3: throwing rocks and charging your tent and stuff. Look at
Speaker 3: Timothy Treadwell and the bears. We talked about that. He
Speaker 3: spent decades with these bears, you know, and then moved
Speaker 3: out there and I don't know how many years he
Speaker 3: spent up there and Laska with those bears and finally
Speaker 3: came across the wrong bear and ate him and his
Speaker 3: girlfriend right there on camera. Pretty horrific. And I think
Speaker 3: that that could be the case with these animals too.
Speaker 3: And I think the more intelligent a creature is, the
Speaker 3: more likely you are to have personalities, and the more
Speaker 3: likely you are to just come across a poor, an
Speaker 3: angry sasquatch. So anyways, my kids know about it. It's
Speaker 3: really just let them know that they're out there. We
Speaker 3: deal with cougar and bear all the time up here,
Speaker 3: and wolves and everything that's not an issue.
Speaker 2: I just don't want them.
Speaker 3: If my kid ever went missing missing, the last thing
Speaker 3: I want to want to worry about is my mind
Speaker 3: would go to well, crap, like maybe a bigfoot got them,
Speaker 3: you know. So anyways, with that, I'll start some of
Speaker 3: my stories here, some thinking back to my encounters, and
Speaker 3: I listed them out here, and I got approximated, and
Speaker 3: I think for the most part, I'm just gonna I
Speaker 3: got them listed in the chronological order they happen. I
Speaker 3: don't know if I'm going to really mention the actual
Speaker 3: years of these happen. I'll give you the baseline unless
Speaker 3: you want me to throw it out there.
Speaker 1: If that's nothing that if you don't mind, that might help.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: Like I said, all these experiences that I've had, except
Speaker 3: for later ones twenty fourteen on, we had these encounters
Speaker 3: and bigfoot wasn't on my radar. I mean, I've always
Speaker 3: heard the stories growing up here, but I've hunted. I
Speaker 3: hunted a bunch you know, deer, elk, and lots of
Speaker 3: bird hunting, and so I've heard stories about bigfoots. But
Speaker 3: through most of these encounters, it wasn't like I'm being
Speaker 3: accosted by a bigfoot it was just kind of on
Speaker 3: a nerving situation and being around wild animals, I don't
Speaker 3: spook easy. I've been around play any of cougars and bears.
Speaker 3: I've been followed for a day with mountain lions, hiking
Speaker 3: up and through wilderness, and it's really just not an issue.
Speaker 3: You learn how to act around them, and you know
Speaker 3: they're there, so you never want to freak out, and
Speaker 3: you never want to freak out and run. And so
Speaker 3: with that being said, you know, so I moved to
Speaker 3: Eugene area from Pendleton when I was nineteen, and my
Speaker 3: wife went to University of Oregon and she was studying there.
Speaker 3: I was a farm boy out in Pendleton, eastern Oregon
Speaker 3: on the Until Indian Reservation. And after living in small
Speaker 3: towns my entire life and rural communities, my wife invited
Speaker 3: me to be a roommate with her and her other
Speaker 3: classmates over in Eugene. We were friends. I went to
Speaker 3: school with my wife. Her dad was my math teacher
Speaker 3: in high school actually, you know. And so I moved
Speaker 3: in with her at tuxa village in Eugene. And when
Speaker 3: I got to Eugene, about two hundred thousand ish population
Speaker 3: in that area there because Eugene is Springfielder right next
Speaker 3: to each other, second largest metropolitan area in Oregon. Small
Speaker 3: for some of the East Coast stuff, but when I
Speaker 3: got here, it was exciting moving into a bigger city.
Speaker 2: I've never been in a big city.
Speaker 3: What Eugene might be considered small city for most people,
Speaker 3: but for me, it felt like a big city and
Speaker 3: it was exciting. So I spent and we spent our
Speaker 3: first ten years, eight or nine years in Eugene, every
Speaker 3: day just exploring everything we could. It started with the
Speaker 3: city and I explored all the parks and it was
Speaker 3: fun walking through the downtown areas with big buildings and
Speaker 3: everything was so busy in the hustle and bustle of it.
Speaker 3: And we started exploring outside of the city limits more
Speaker 3: and got in a lane county and we ended up
Speaker 3: in the mountains, and that's when I really got into
Speaker 3: backpacking over here. So in two thousand and eight, we
Speaker 3: were well on our way to pretty much backpacking. Every
Speaker 3: chance we got, we just me and my wife. We
Speaker 3: went back back wintertime, it didn't matter. We went rain storms, snowstorms.
Speaker 3: So in two thousand and eight I got invited to
Speaker 3: go to Thanksgiving up in as story organ. My mom
Speaker 3: actually lives up in Warrington out there, which is sits
Speaker 3: more west of Astoria, I mean, a couple miles away
Speaker 3: from the beach.
Speaker 2: Really pretty area.
Speaker 3: Probably most people recognize it because of the Meglar Bridge
Speaker 3: at Big Green Bridge that spans the Columbia River.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: That area's got a lot of history, a lot of
Speaker 3: old history. And so we drove to Astoria. I was
Speaker 3: in my wife's ninety six hont A cord and we
Speaker 3: got to the house where my mom lived, and my
Speaker 3: brother and my sister were there, and they had kids.
Speaker 3: They had taken all the spare rooms in the house,
Speaker 3: and so we brought a tent just a case, which
Speaker 3: weren't we were actually looking forward to camp in. Anyways,
Speaker 3: we figured we would end up pitching our tent somewhere.
Speaker 3: My mom offered for us to pitch our tent in
Speaker 3: her yard, but we, like I said, we like to
Speaker 3: seek out those quieter places, and so me and my
Speaker 3: wife we decided to go find a little spot off
Speaker 3: of one of the main highways out there, a mile
Speaker 3: or two off and just pitched a tent for a
Speaker 3: night or two, and that's where we'd stay. So we
Speaker 3: got up to Astoria, met with a family and it
Speaker 3: was later afternoon, hung out with them for a few hours.
Speaker 3: And in November the sun sets quite a bit earlier
Speaker 3: up here. You're starting to it into shorter days, winters
Speaker 3: coming and everything like that. And this is before cell
Speaker 3: phones and the communions. Having a phone you could just
Speaker 3: shake and get a flashlight on and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So one thing I realized I forgot was my flashlights.
Speaker 3: And so we swung by the fred Myers in Warrington
Speaker 3: and on our way to go find a campsite, and
Speaker 3: I picked up a Coleman lantern, propane lantern, and.
Speaker 2: I'd never set one up.
Speaker 3: I was in boy Scouts, grown up and stuff, but
Speaker 3: they always had the mantles on them, and so I
Speaker 3: never had to tie myself until we grabbed a lantern,
Speaker 3: grabbed one of those one pound propane canisters and threw
Speaker 3: it in the trunk with our camping gear, and we
Speaker 3: headed off to go find a spot to camp for
Speaker 3: a couple of days. We drove through Astoria so over'heading
Speaker 3: east now on Highway thirty, heading towards Sevenson and Rainier
Speaker 3: and all those little places that are right along the
Speaker 3: Columbia River there, and we drove twelve to fourteen miles
Speaker 3: east out of Astoria. And once you get out of
Speaker 3: as story, it turns into just logging country. A house
Speaker 3: here and there, gold amongst the forest and everything, but
Speaker 3: pretty open, with a lot of little side roads that
Speaker 3: come off of it. So fourteen ish miles or so
Speaker 3: out of Astoria, we find a little road to the right.
Speaker 3: And I have tried to remember the name of that road,
Speaker 3: but I just I can't remember the exact name of it.
Speaker 3: And I've looked on the maps and I found the
Speaker 3: general area. I couldn't pinpoint the road, but we found
Speaker 3: this little road, and it's getting dusk, you know, the
Speaker 3: sign has got maybe an hour worth of light left
Speaker 3: in it. And we find this little road, come off
Speaker 3: of it off of Highway thirty. Go a couple of
Speaker 3: miles up this road and find this little four by
Speaker 3: four track some of the locals must wheel their trucks
Speaker 3: on and stuff like that drops sharply off this little
Speaker 3: gravel road that we turned on too.
Speaker 2: So I pulled the car around.
Speaker 3: Figure in there's going to be a wide spot I
Speaker 3: camp spot somewhere in there. So pulled the car off
Speaker 3: the side of the road, grabbed our tents and I
Speaker 3: didn't bring our backpack, so we were just carrying stuff
Speaker 3: under arms, you know. And so my wife had the
Speaker 3: ten I had had some gallon jugs of water, the
Speaker 3: lantern still in the box, still in the box, and everything.
Speaker 3: And we hiked down this little trail and it comes
Speaker 3: to a little a t junction. You come down and
Speaker 3: then there's a junction and we went straight and it
Speaker 3: ended up in these big maple trees and there was
Speaker 3: a campsite under there.
Speaker 1: Big for society who will be right back after these messages.
Speaker 3: In fact, actually there was a whole camp site set
Speaker 3: up and there there was multiple tents, picnic tables, camp chairs,
Speaker 3: and on the picnic table it had stuff set up
Speaker 3: what you see here. It had people's plates and there
Speaker 3: was some food, chips and stuff and bags. We got
Speaker 3: in there and everything was covered in leaves because it's
Speaker 3: fall time, so the trees are dropping their leaves, and
Speaker 3: it didn't look like anyone had been in that camp
Speaker 3: for weeks. I mean, there was a good covering of
Speaker 3: leaves over everything, and it was kind of bizarre, you know,
Speaker 3: And we looked at the situation. We thought it was odd,
Speaker 3: and we're like, who knows what the deal is? And
Speaker 3: so we just went back to that junction on that
Speaker 3: little four by four road, and then we took that
Speaker 3: other leg that came off of it.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 3: At that point in time, I've been carrying these water
Speaker 3: bottles with gallon jugs, so I set them down in
Speaker 3: the middle of that little t shape junction.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, let's just walk down.
Speaker 3: Here's see if we can't find a spot to put
Speaker 3: our little two person tent. And we walk two hundred
Speaker 3: feet down that road. And this road is surrounded by
Speaker 3: brushts six or seven feet tall, scotch, broom, himalay and blackberries,
Speaker 3: a lot of scrub pretty typical two areas that had
Speaker 3: been logged over a bunch of times. It just turns
Speaker 3: into a brushing mass. You couldn't walk through this stuff
Speaker 3: if you wanted to, you know, while walking down this trail,
Speaker 3: there was just a big enough spot, probably not much
Speaker 3: bigger than the footprint that this picnic table takes up,
Speaker 3: cleared off the side of the road there where some
Speaker 3: of some of the bushes have gott knocked down. And
Speaker 3: we set the tent up there and it's getting fairly
Speaker 3: dark now, and I'm like, I'm gonna get that lantern
Speaker 3: set up, So I unbox it out there and get the.
Speaker 2: Thing put together.
Speaker 3: I put the mantles on, and I didn't burn the mantles,
Speaker 3: and I didn't know you had to light the mantles
Speaker 3: and burn them in, so I just assembled it, put
Speaker 3: the propane canister on there, and lit it. The propane
Speaker 3: lantern lit up for about five seconds and it started
Speaker 3: burning the mantles down from the top, so it turned
Speaker 3: to ash, and now you have this heavy weight of
Speaker 3: the unburned mantle, and I just watched as both of
Speaker 3: those socks just disappeared, and what little light we had
Speaker 3: disappeared at that point in time. And so at this
Speaker 3: point in time, it's it's dusk to the point to
Speaker 3: where you can still see, but it's getting dark, like
Speaker 3: you couldn't read a book, was getting that dark. And
Speaker 3: so I told my wife, I'm like, we're just gonna
Speaker 3: have to camp without the lights tonight.
Speaker 2: It's not a big deal.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I'm gonna I told my wife, I'm like,
Speaker 3: we I'm gonna head back to that junction and pick
Speaker 3: up our water jugs that I left there and she
Speaker 3: said okay. She started setting up our sleep bags and
Speaker 3: stuff in the tent. So I headed back and I
Speaker 3: had my little dog with me, Norty, and she backpacked
Speaker 3: with such a good dog in the willness, super quiet,
Speaker 3: super calm dog.
Speaker 2: So we head back to get the.
Speaker 3: Water jugs, and we're walking and Norri's falling right behind
Speaker 3: me like she always says she never runs in front
Speaker 3: of us, and broke her of that for hiking on trails.
Speaker 3: And I'm getting close to these to these water jugs
Speaker 3: at this junction, and I can see them up ahead,
Speaker 3: sixty seventy feet up ahead, and as I get closer
Speaker 3: my dog, she kind of puffs up her scuff or
Speaker 3: her scruff on the back of her neck. I looked
Speaker 3: out at her, and she's been in the wilderness tons
Speaker 3: and round bears and cooars, and she's not a very
Speaker 3: reactive dog, and she kind of growls, and I thought
Speaker 3: it was odd and maybe that kind of put me
Speaker 3: on alert, and so I say, oh, she smells something.
Speaker 3: And so as I get closer to these water bottles,
Speaker 3: these gallon jugs, the bushes, the brush on the other
Speaker 3: side right immediately ten feet behind where these jugs are
Speaker 3: sitting that whole shrub line just starts shaking, I mean
Speaker 3: shaking so hard that leaves are falling off of them.
Speaker 3: And Nori goes to run up there and she's growling,
Speaker 3: and I call her back right away. She made it
Speaker 3: five feet in front her. I called her back, and
Speaker 3: I saw him sitting there looking at these jugs, and
Speaker 3: the bush is still shaking a little bit, and it stops,
Speaker 3: and I just decided I got this feeling. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I don't think we need water tonight. So I just
Speaker 3: turned around. I left the jugs and made it back
Speaker 3: to the tent. My wife asked me why didn't grab
Speaker 3: the jugs, and I'm like, I didn't want to tell
Speaker 3: her what happened, because I mean, it just was kind
Speaker 3: of an off putting feeling. I'm like, we'll just get
Speaker 3: him in the morning, you know. I mean, we had
Speaker 3: a little water bottle with us, so we stilled some water.
Speaker 3: You know what, we'll scrab in the morning. I don't
Speaker 3: want I didn't want a home all the way down here.
Speaker 3: We get in the tent now and it's completely dark
Speaker 3: and we're setting up to go sleep. We lay down
Speaker 3: and within five minutes of laying down, we start hearing
Speaker 3: things moving through this thick brush.
Speaker 2: I mean it started.
Speaker 3: You could hear it two hundred feet away, and sticks
Speaker 3: snapping and wrestling, light wrestling here and there, and and
Speaker 3: you know, I'm like, oh, you know, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of coyotes here, and and there's bear and I guess
Speaker 3: cougar's too. You know, you usually don't hear the cats.
Speaker 3: And I saw we're here this and my wife's like,
Speaker 3: yet you hear that. I'm like, yeah, it's probably some
Speaker 3: animals moving around through here. And well, as we were
Speaker 3: talking about it, the noises got louder, and it got
Speaker 3: to the point to where it sounded like there were
Speaker 3: three or four truck sized things running through this brush.
Speaker 3: And they'd run directly to our tent from multiple directions,
Speaker 3: and they would stop twenty feet away, and then you
Speaker 3: just hear the brush go crazy, you know, I mean
Speaker 3: as they ran back away. And this went on for
Speaker 3: thirty to forty five minutes, and they got so close.
Speaker 3: I mean, they were right outside our tent and me
Speaker 3: and my wife were laying there and just looking at
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 2: And what do you think it is?
Speaker 3: I'm like, Oh'm probably coyotes or something like that. And
Speaker 3: it got pretty intense, It got pretty loud. It's to
Speaker 3: that point to where if you've ever been intent and
Speaker 3: you hear something out in the middle of the woods,
Speaker 3: you give that I'm just going to lay here and
Speaker 3: not move a deal. And so we just pretty much
Speaker 3: laid there and listened to it. I was pretty nervous
Speaker 3: about it. It was definitely aggressive. If animals are doing
Speaker 3: that tea in the woods, it definitely brings their attention
Speaker 3: to it. And this went on, and I mean it
Speaker 3: was pretty nerve wracking when these things would run through
Speaker 3: the bushes to us, there was no going around brush.
Speaker 3: They ran right through it like a truck. And after
Speaker 3: forty five minutes the noises died down, and a couple
Speaker 3: hours later we ended up falling asleep and I woke
Speaker 3: up in the morning, beautiful morning, and got out of
Speaker 3: the tent and went for a little walk. And there's
Speaker 3: this big power line lane path that leads all the
Speaker 3: way up to the east side of the river and
Speaker 3: that connects up to Rainier And I know you've done
Speaker 3: some stories about Rainier up there, and it was just
Speaker 3: a really odd experience. And this is this stuff that
Speaker 3: me and my wife experience over the decades backpacking and hiking.
Speaker 3: And like I said, it wasn't until the Finding Bigfoot
Speaker 3: show came on that we really started putting together what happened.
Speaker 2: And it was a mix.
Speaker 3: It was actually exciting, like actually getting an answer for
Speaker 3: what it was because it explained everything perfectly. Listen to
Speaker 3: people's encounter stories on the East Coast. They were describing
Speaker 3: the same stuff that we had happened, and the exact
Speaker 3: same stuff, and I mean, there's just no coincidence of
Speaker 3: what it could be. And so we put it together
Speaker 3: what it was, and we started thinking about all these
Speaker 3: experiences we've had in years past, and so I made
Speaker 3: a little list of some of the stuff I had happened,
Speaker 3: you know. And so, like I said, we backpacked every
Speaker 3: chance we could get, and we did that pretty much
Speaker 3: till we moved out here eleven years ago. And when
Speaker 3: we moved in here, had a kid our first year
Speaker 3: in here, and now I run a business and I
Speaker 3: don't have as much time to do the backpacking that
Speaker 3: I used to do. And two thousand and nine, I
Speaker 3: still live in Eugene and it was a weekend, so
Speaker 3: we took our dogs I too at that time, Hughey
Speaker 3: and Nori, and we decided to head to the Coast
Speaker 3: Range to just find a spot out of the way,
Speaker 3: find a little swimming hole in one of the creeks
Speaker 3: up there. And this is the area is Wolf Mountain,
Speaker 3: which is west of Benita, and the Coast Range is
Speaker 3: super rugged. They don't have the big mountains that the
Speaker 3: Cascades have. But you're either going up or down. You're
Speaker 3: either the bottom of the valley or you're on top
Speaker 3: of it, and that's how the roads go too. We
Speaker 3: end up finding this section of land. It was actually
Speaker 3: Warehouser land, and they have a gate on it and
Speaker 3: they say private property, no tresspassing.
Speaker 2: It's more for hunters and stuff.
Speaker 3: And so we, being younger and more rebellious, we bypass
Speaker 3: the gate. We just went around it and we had
Speaker 3: a lunch pack and we were going to find a
Speaker 3: little creek it's in the Clay Creek area, and find
Speaker 3: a little swimming hole and let the dogs play and
Speaker 3: just spend the afternoon out there. And so we hike
Speaker 3: in a couple of miles and end up in at
Speaker 3: the bottom of this valley where there's nice creek a
Speaker 3: little swimming hole and a recent clearcut that had been
Speaker 3: done maybe a year prior, you know, so all the
Speaker 3: big trees were cut down. There was probably a one
Speaker 3: hundred acre clearcut, and the clear cut went straight up
Speaker 3: this really steep ridge, and I wanted to get to
Speaker 3: the top of this ridge to see the view. Well,
Speaker 3: this clear cut is flanked by very large trees. So
Speaker 3: when you take out these sections of these big trees,
Speaker 3: it opens a forest up.
Speaker 2: It's dark in the forest.
Speaker 3: It was a bright sunny day, but you look into
Speaker 3: the forest, you couldn't see more than twenty thirty feet
Speaker 3: into it. I just got so dark in there, and
Speaker 3: that contrast between the bright light and the dark forest,
Speaker 3: it makes it impossible as hand. While we're stump jumping
Speaker 3: climb up this really steep hill to get up to
Speaker 3: the top. And I make it about three cours away up.
Speaker 3: My wife's a couple hundred feet behind me. She's always
Speaker 3: a slower hiker, and I start getting this feeling, the
Speaker 3: same feeling I got when I was camped outside of Astoria. There,
Speaker 3: when I abandoned the water jugs, I just got this
Speaker 3: feeling a little uneasy that I was being watched. I
Speaker 3: hadn't heard anything yet, and I put it aside and
Speaker 3: just continued hiking up the trail while I made another
Speaker 3: fifty feet up this step slope, and you got to
Speaker 3: weave through this mess of slash and stump, so it's
Speaker 3: hard hiking. And as I was making my way up
Speaker 3: the hill, I hear I almost sounded like a gunsholt,
Speaker 3: a dry chunk of tree, not even a branch, getting.
Speaker 2: Snap crack, and it's in that.
Speaker 3: Big force that's flanking us on either side, and it's
Speaker 3: probably a hundred yards to each edge of this, maybe
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty yards, And I'm like, oh, I've heard
Speaker 3: it sounded like a bear moving through woods. They're pretty clumsy,
Speaker 3: they'll step on branches and stuff. I'm like, oh, it's
Speaker 3: a bear up there. They don't worry me. I've hunted
Speaker 3: them and been around them, and I'm not too worried
Speaker 3: about the bears. And I'm like, that's what it was.
Speaker 3: That's a feeling, not a guy. So I rode off
Speaker 3: the sap. I continued up and stick started snapping and
Speaker 3: breaking a big tree knox whack on the side of trees,
Speaker 3: and it was all to the right of me, and
Speaker 3: like I said, you look into this force and it's
Speaker 3: so dark, but I could see there was there was
Speaker 3: almost like shadows moving back there. I could see that
Speaker 3: there was something in there, and it made me really uneasy.
Speaker 3: And at this point, I'm only fifty yards from the
Speaker 3: top of the ridge that I want to get up
Speaker 3: on to get my vantage point. I stopped there and
Speaker 3: I got even more uneasy. And it's just one of
Speaker 3: those situations. I always followed my gut when I'm in
Speaker 3: the woods, I always have and I just felt really uneasy,
Speaker 3: and it was a turnaround now kind of a thing,
Speaker 3: and I didn't want to stand where I was standing,
Speaker 3: and so I turned around and met back up with
Speaker 3: my wife. She was a little bit lower down the hill,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, oh, just get some so rough and
Speaker 3: brushy up there, and it probably wouldn't be much of you.
Speaker 3: I'm like, let's just head back down. And my wife
Speaker 3: had heard the commotion in the wood sield. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: I think there's a bear up there. Anyways, I'm like,
Speaker 3: let's just head down to the creek and enjoy ourself sore.
Speaker 3: So we went back down to the creek and spent
Speaker 3: the rest of the day, probably three hundred yards away
Speaker 3: from where I was at the top of that ridge,
Speaker 3: just enjoying herself. Nothing else happened that day, but it
Speaker 3: was the first time that I really started more paying
Speaker 3: attention to that. Just that really off putting turnaround. Now
Speaker 3: you know, your hair is up on the back of
Speaker 3: your neck kind of deal. And I had never experienced
Speaker 3: that hunting or anything, you know, being around mountain lions
Speaker 3: and bears and stuff like that. I mean, you're always
Speaker 3: on edge when you see them, but it's not terrifying.
Speaker 3: That was the borderline terrifying. So I spent a restaurant
Speaker 3: day there, no big deal, but nothing else happened. And
Speaker 3: so the next experience I had was actually later that year.
Speaker 3: So I was in my early twenties and Eugene has
Speaker 3: a hippie influence and I was getting to that scene,
Speaker 3: and so I was. I did small grows years prior
Speaker 3: to that, little closet grows and stuff like that, and
Speaker 3: like most people did in Oregon, pot was still highly
Speaker 3: illegal felony for any of it. And my roommate that
Speaker 3: I was living with at the time, we decided in
Speaker 3: that year to do a grow out in the forest
Speaker 3: and I'm like, we want to pick a spot that's
Speaker 3: as remote as possible but has access to where we
Speaker 3: can get to it and still be able to hike
Speaker 3: in and not spend five hours hiking into this place,
Speaker 3: you know, because I mean you have to carry the
Speaker 3: plants up there. We grew from clones before planting them,
Speaker 3: so the plants were already two feet tall before we
Speaker 3: put them in the ground and threw in this group.
Speaker 3: So I think we had sixty or seventy little plants
Speaker 3: and it was an industrial operation. It was just us
Speaker 3: kids messing around. Have fund I don't think we were
Speaker 3: going to make millions off of this stuff, which it
Speaker 3: was never the case. So we find the spot, and
Speaker 3: Google Maps really was a new thing than once, so
Speaker 3: it was pretty unbelievable to be able to pull up.
Speaker 2: On your computers.
Speaker 3: I think my computer's still running Windows ninety eight or
Speaker 3: ninety five or something like that at that time, pull
Speaker 3: up these maps and be able to get these satellite
Speaker 3: overlays of these areas. And that's what I used to
Speaker 3: pick the spot where we end up growing this year.
Speaker 3: And I earmarked a couple sites that were super remote.
Speaker 3: They were nestling up into the west slopes of the Cascades.
Speaker 3: They weren't super high elevation because you don't want to
Speaker 3: get too much elevation because you need to get warmer
Speaker 3: weather in the fall. If you get too high, you're
Speaker 3: going to get froze out before your plants finish, you know.
Speaker 3: And so we go up there that early spring two
Speaker 3: scout spots to put our plants on. So I go
Speaker 3: up with my wife and my roommate Terry, and we
Speaker 3: go to check out this first spot, and it's about
Speaker 3: three quarters of a mile of a brushwhack off of
Speaker 3: these logging roads that you drive for twelve or fourteen miles,
Speaker 3: and they're so brushy, brushes dragging down in the side of
Speaker 3: your vehicle while you're doing it, you know. And so
Speaker 3: we get to the spot where I marked it, and
Speaker 3: this is before GPS and everything, so we always just
Speaker 3: navigate it with map and compass, and the GPS units
Speaker 3: they had then were expensive and fairly clunky, gray screen,
Speaker 3: none of that nice overlay like not having your tablet
Speaker 3: out in the woods like it is now, you know.
Speaker 3: And so we hike into this first spot that I
Speaker 3: had marked, and three quarter mile hike in kind of
Speaker 3: pick on our way through through this forest area. They
Speaker 3: have been logged several times over. Every time they log,
Speaker 3: they plant three trees for every tree they cut. So
Speaker 3: that process, if you repeat it over several times, you
Speaker 3: can imagine how dense the trees get after they keep
Speaker 3: on replanning three to one on the cuttings, and that
Speaker 3: stuff dense. And I'm heading for this open spot that
Speaker 3: I saw in satellite. It was probably a half acre
Speaker 3: in between all this old or this new reprodden, which
Speaker 3: is what they call the trees that they plan after
Speaker 3: the log and we get up into the spot finally
Speaker 3: antakes I don't know, forty five minutes a bust and brush.
Speaker 3: You get up there and it's actually a perfect spot
Speaker 3: to grow. I had a little spring that popped up
Speaker 3: in the middle, really brushy, some BlackBerry up in the
Speaker 3: middle of it that had enough room to where we
Speaker 3: would get sunlight, enough sun light to do what we
Speaker 3: want to do. As we got into this clearing, I
Speaker 3: got that feeling again, same feeling I got when I
Speaker 3: was over in a Wolf Mountain, and the same feeling
Speaker 3: I got outside of Astoria that the really uneasy, like
Speaker 3: you're being watched and really just very uncomfortable, like you
Speaker 3: wouldn't want to You wouldn't want to spend any mountain
Speaker 3: time up there with that feeling. And so we scout
Speaker 3: around it and we brought a lunch. We were planning
Speaker 3: eating a lunch out there, and I was talking to
Speaker 3: Terry about the spot and turs like, yeah, I like
Speaker 3: the spot.
Speaker 1: Big for society. Who will be right back?
Speaker 3: After these messages, I didn't say anything to my wife
Speaker 3: or my buddy that was with me about how I
Speaker 3: was feeling about the spot.
Speaker 2: We decided not to eat our lunch chair.
Speaker 3: We spent maybe six or seven minutes in this place
Speaker 3: before we decided to hike back to the rig. Well,
Speaker 3: we made it back to the rig, and I asked
Speaker 3: my buddy, I'm like, what do you think about this spot?
Speaker 3: And he says, well, he's like, the spot's great, he said,
Speaker 3: but I had a horrible feeling going in there, he said.
Speaker 2: He said, it is super uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: My wife said the same thing, and I told him
Speaker 3: told them how I felt about it. I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: I had the same thing happened. I was just very uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: and that walk back out was worse than anything, just
Speaker 3: because it was so thick.
Speaker 2: You couldn't move fast through this stuff. You know what.
Speaker 3: We didn't hear anything or see anything on that trip,
Speaker 3: but we decided not to grow at that spot. So
Speaker 3: we got back in the rig, drove up the road
Speaker 3: another four or five miles, so where these logging roads
Speaker 3: really start petering out, and I had another spot marked
Speaker 3: and we parked the car.
Speaker 2: We do.
Speaker 3: This spot's about a quarter mile off the road, and
Speaker 3: so we bushwhacker way to it. And this spot is
Speaker 3: up on ridges and the hillsides between the ridge and
Speaker 3: the valleys, and I mean they're probably fifty degree slopes,
Speaker 3: really steep, so when you're climbing up this you're rabbing
Speaker 3: trees and branches. And we're heading to this other open
Speaker 3: spot that we thought might be a good place, right
Speaker 3: next to a little creek. We get up there and
Speaker 3: find that there's these little terraces where the hillside slumped
Speaker 3: over the years, these little terrace spots that are pretty flat,
Speaker 3: and that's the open spots that I was seeing on
Speaker 3: the map, and there's about five or six of them.
Speaker 3: I continue down the hill, the creek kind of followed them.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was a perfect spot. And I told
Speaker 3: my buddy, I'm like, this is a spot, and no
Speaker 3: off putting feelings or anything like that on that earlier
Speaker 3: hike we did in that day, we just no one
Speaker 3: talked about it, and all the end easiness seemed to disappear.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, this is gonna be the spot. So
Speaker 3: the next week I organize a couple of my buddies
Speaker 3: to help us get our supplies up there, and we
Speaker 3: got all the stuff up there, all of our plants
Speaker 3: and all of our supplies we're going to need throughout
Speaker 3: the year. And our schedule was in the summertime. Every
Speaker 3: other week on Friday, we would leave Eugene at about
Speaker 3: eleven o'clock and we'd drive up to this area which
Speaker 3: was in the Lane County Lynn County line up there.
Speaker 3: So it took us about an hour to an hour
Speaker 3: and twenty minutes to get up drive up to the spot,
Speaker 3: and then it was another We always parked about a
Speaker 3: mile and a half away from where the spot was,
Speaker 3: even though it was only quarter mile off the road.
Speaker 3: We don't want to park right below it on so
Speaker 3: we would park and then do about a mile and
Speaker 3: a half walk in. And so it's after midnight and
Speaker 3: the stipulation I had for doing this was one, we
Speaker 3: never took any guns with us, you know it. One
Speaker 3: I didn't want that to be part of it. And two,
Speaker 3: like I said back in the day, you got caught
Speaker 3: doing the stuff, that's just an extra felony thrown on
Speaker 3: top of it. And so we would go up and
Speaker 3: hike into the spot and we would do our pruning
Speaker 3: and our watering and fertilizing and stuff like that, and
Speaker 3: spend a few hours up and up in the spot
Speaker 3: in the middle of the night doing it. We'd usually
Speaker 3: come out about about four o'clock or so in the
Speaker 3: morning back to the rig. So as we're doing this
Speaker 3: through the summer, we started having some strange experiences up there,
Speaker 3: and we heard the sound of car doors slamming, just boom,
Speaker 3: and it only sounded like they were one hundred feet away.
Speaker 3: But there's just no way, there's no cars up there.
Speaker 3: We walked the roads to this spot, and the spot's
Speaker 3: at the end of Deadon Road, and there's no roads
Speaker 3: within besides the one we came in on. There's no
Speaker 3: roads within three quarters to a mile away from there,
Speaker 3: and those roads are so brush anyways, no one's gonna
Speaker 3: be out there in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2: So we'd hear these car.
Speaker 3: Doors slam, and we would hear what almost sounded like
Speaker 3: gunshots occasionally, but they weren't a sharp I mean, it
Speaker 3: would just be a loud crack, you know. I mean
Speaker 3: maybe you know, five hundred six hundred feet away. And
Speaker 3: I mean me and Terry discussed it, and our rule
Speaker 3: was if we ever found that anyone had gotten in there,
Speaker 3: we get found out, you'd just abandon the site and
Speaker 3: you never come back. And so we just dealt with
Speaker 3: that through the whole summer, you know. And I mean
Speaker 3: the Carridor thing was the weirdest. It just sounded like
Speaker 3: a newer car, not like not like an eighty square
Speaker 3: body Chevy. I mean like a newer car where the
Speaker 3: doors closed and there's no rattle, and you get that
Speaker 3: loud as it closes, just tons of that. And my
Speaker 3: buddy Terry was joking rising, he's maybe this maybe it's
Speaker 3: haunted up here. And we always had our chuckle about it,
Speaker 3: you know. And and so later in the year, in
Speaker 3: late September, going on October, we harvested at the as
Speaker 3: far into October as we can get it before the
Speaker 3: frost kicked us out of there. We started going every
Speaker 3: week and doing our late night prunings, and it was
Speaker 3: our last weekend that we were going up there to
Speaker 3: do our maintenance before we come back and harvest our
Speaker 3: our our little crops, which they the plants, did not
Speaker 3: do good. They were tall, they were big plants, ten
Speaker 3: feet tall, nine feet tall, but they were so spindily
Speaker 3: growing in that clay soil.
Speaker 2: And we got we got.
Speaker 3: Some stuff off of them, but it wasn't anything to
Speaker 3: write home about until our innniversary there. A week before
Speaker 3: we decide to harvest, we go up to do our
Speaker 3: normal deal, get them pruned up and cleaned up, ready
Speaker 3: to go to take back and haul our bounty back
Speaker 3: home after a long summer of growing these things. And
Speaker 3: we were pretty excited about it. And so we get up.
Speaker 2: There and we do our pruning and all of our
Speaker 2: stuff that we're doing. I'm up in the upper plot.
Speaker 3: Terry's in one of the lower plots down there, and
Speaker 3: it's probably one hundred and fifty feet separated, I mean,
Speaker 3: down this incredibly steep slope and once you come off
Speaker 3: those terrace sections, you're going down your side footing it
Speaker 3: on the hills and to get to the next one
Speaker 3: while I'm stashing the stuff up at the very top plot.
Speaker 2: Oh, and I should mention I forgot to mention.
Speaker 3: We had week a couple weeks prior to that, I'd
Speaker 3: come up there on the top plot and there's probably
Speaker 3: twenty plants or so in the top plot, and three
Speaker 3: or four of them had been ripped out of the
Speaker 3: ground and thrown.
Speaker 2: Up into the trees.
Speaker 3: Really, you know, I mean fifteen twenty feet up the tree,
Speaker 3: there's this whole plant sitting there. And we saw some
Speaker 3: elk sign and growing up on ranches. I watched horses
Speaker 3: rab plants and shake them and throw them. I was
Speaker 3: just like, we might have some elk in here picking
Speaker 3: on this stuff.
Speaker 2: And we found it odd.
Speaker 3: We actually discussed actually abandon in it because of that.
Speaker 3: We're like, man, maybe someone's in here, maybe a hunter
Speaker 3: had found it, and maybe we should just call it
Speaker 3: quits and not come back. And so anyways, our last week,
Speaker 3: there I'm up there top plot, sashing my stuff underneath
Speaker 3: this s Douglas fir tree, the watering containers and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. So it couldn't be spots. They use helicopters
Speaker 3: back then, they were flying helicopters all over the place,
Speaker 3: and as on stash and this the stuff the creeks
Speaker 3: to my back here and there's a slight open area,
Speaker 3: probably about to the edge of where it drops off
Speaker 3: right there, and I see out of my per field
Speaker 3: is really dark black shadow just zoomed by.
Speaker 2: I mean, no brush noise or anything like that. Just
Speaker 2: caught my attention.
Speaker 3: I looked over there, and I should also note that
Speaker 3: I are flashlights that we used. We didn't use really
Speaker 3: bright flashlights, you know, for obvious reasons, you know. So
Speaker 3: I had LED headlamps just started coming out. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you ever bought the first generation LED headlamps.
Speaker 3: They were blue, bluish purplish colored, and you couldn't see.
Speaker 3: You couldn't see ten feet on a nice night with
Speaker 3: those things. It was enough light to work in, but
Speaker 3: and plus at wavelength too. I mean, it just really
Speaker 3: messed with your debt perception. You can't see. It drowns
Speaker 3: out some of the colors and textures of things. So anyways,
Speaker 3: i'd see this, the shadow move, and it gets my attention,
Speaker 3: And so I sat there for a couple of minutes listening,
Speaker 3: and I didn't hear anything, and so I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: maybe it's and I'll move me through there really quick
Speaker 3: so much which I mean it would have made a
Speaker 3: lot of noise if his alk, But that's the explanation
Speaker 3: I came up with that time. So packed the stuff
Speaker 3: up and put my backpack on, clicked on my CRAPPYRII headlamp,
Speaker 3: and went down to started heading down to Terry. And
Speaker 3: about the time I started coming off that first plot
Speaker 3: to come down towards where Terry was, I started hearing
Speaker 3: brush breaking. It started about one hundred and fifty feet
Speaker 3: above me on the hillside, right where that that shadow,
Speaker 3: that dark figure had ran to. And I would start
Speaker 3: walking and it would start walking, and I mean at
Speaker 3: first it was pacing. I was going at the same
Speaker 3: speed I was going by, I mean, in the thick
Speaker 3: brush moving so you hear yeah, I mean just just
Speaker 3: like walking through thick brush, snapping, crackling. It wasn't rushing
Speaker 3: at that point, and I would stop and it would stop.
Speaker 3: As I got closer to Terry down on the lower plot,
Speaker 3: it started picking up. Every time it started moving, it
Speaker 3: started getting faster and faster, and so this thing started
Speaker 3: pretty much running to me and when I would stop,
Speaker 3: a couple seconds later it would stop, but every time
Speaker 3: it would get closer, and I got that feeling again.
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, man, Harry, are middle of the night.
Speaker 3: A couple three inch three and a half inch pocket knives,
Speaker 3: you know. And I make it down Terry. I'm like, hey,
Speaker 3: I just want to let you know. When I was
Speaker 3: up there top plot, I don't know if there's a
Speaker 3: bear or nolk. I saw something move up there and
Speaker 3: it was moving down the hill with me when I
Speaker 3: was going, and Terry hadn't heard it at that point,
Speaker 3: and he's like, well, okay, And I'm like, let's grab
Speaker 3: our stuff and let's take the shortcut. Let's just go
Speaker 3: straight down the steepest parts and let's just get onto
Speaker 3: the road and get back to the car. So we
Speaker 3: as soon as we started walking through that bottom plot,
Speaker 3: this thing started running and Terry looks at me and
Speaker 3: he says, what the hell is that. I'm like, that's
Speaker 3: what I was talking about. I'm like, it'll be fine.
Speaker 3: I'm like, do not freak out and run. I'm like,
Speaker 3: if it's a bear or a cougar, I'm like, it
Speaker 3: will chase you if you run. I'm like, it'll be fine.
Speaker 3: I've dealt with animals in the woods before and I've
Speaker 3: never had an issue. I'm like, you just need to
Speaker 3: be cool about it. And so we start moving down again,
Speaker 3: and this scene starts running and every time, I mean,
Speaker 3: it sounds like a truck driving down this hill, just
Speaker 3: snapping breaking up trees. Like trees that were in there
Speaker 3: were twenty year old, fifteen year old reefrod. So they're
Speaker 3: all about this big round about six to eight inches,
Speaker 3: you know at the base and Douglas fir they grow
Speaker 3: in pretty thick, and these things are thick in there,
Speaker 3: you know, so you can't see more usually, especially once
Speaker 3: you get off these plots, you can't see more than
Speaker 3: five or six feet in front of it. Before you
Speaker 3: have a tree and branches and you can see the
Speaker 3: gaps in between there. We start making it off this
Speaker 3: edge and this scene starts coming and now it's within
Speaker 3: seventy five feetish of us, and we start and stop
Speaker 3: multiple times, and I told Terry, I'm like, take your
Speaker 3: knife out, and he takes out this little pocketknife. I'm
Speaker 3: in front when I pull my pocket knife out, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, I told Terry, I'm like if this animal
Speaker 3: comes down and starts attacking, I'm like, you stab it
Speaker 3: until it stops attacking, and I'll make sure I do
Speaker 3: the same for you. And Terry look quite nervous. I'm like,
Speaker 3: but do not run. And Terry's okay, you know. And
Speaker 3: so we stop and listen. We don't hear anything. We
Speaker 3: start walking, and again this scene starts coming, and now
Speaker 3: it's coming. It's just coming with a vengeance. And we stop,
Speaker 3: and this time it doesn't stop.
Speaker 2: And it's just coming. We're sitting there looking up the hill.
Speaker 3: I mean, time seems to slow down in those moments,
Speaker 3: and it's just coming towards you. And you think about
Speaker 3: all these movies you watch and everything about these animals coming.
Speaker 2: And grabbing me.
Speaker 3: You have nowhere to go, nowhere to run. You can't
Speaker 3: move over this train. And the only thing to do
Speaker 3: is stand there and just prepare. And so I'm down
Speaker 3: and the ready when this scene's coming, and it's coming,
Speaker 3: and my heart rate's sitting there pumping. But it's a
Speaker 3: chilly night, so as I'm exhaling, my breath is it's
Speaker 3: a nice still night too. My breath is just coming up,
Speaker 3: wrapping over my headlamps. I'm exhaling to the side so
Speaker 3: I can and get the conversation from my breath out
Speaker 3: of my field of view. And this thing is just
Speaker 3: running straight at us, and I'm sure we're about to
Speaker 3: get attacked by whatever it is, you know, And so
Speaker 3: I'm down ready. It's brush snap and breaking closer. Stops
Speaker 3: about ten feet in front of me, directly in front
Speaker 3: of me, and so I'm sitting there looking straight ahead,
Speaker 3: kind of slightly hunched down, kind of in that batter's position,
Speaker 3: you know, ready to go, and this thing stops and
Speaker 3: the noise stops, and looking through the trees with this
Speaker 3: crappy headlamp in between the Douglas fir branches, there's gaps
Speaker 3: and I can see this blackish fur and it's got
Speaker 3: a little bit of a shine to it, and I'm
Speaker 3: looking and as I move my head lamp up, I
Speaker 3: see these splotches of her. And I get to about
Speaker 3: eight feet where I'm looking up about eight feet tall,
Speaker 3: just ten feet in front of me, and I can
Speaker 3: see black fur still, and I can see these lighter
Speaker 3: pass and I think I was looking at his chest.
Speaker 3: So I sat there with my knife ready. My buddy
Speaker 3: Terry had his hand on my shoulder behind me and
Speaker 3: just waiting for the scene to come the rest of
Speaker 3: the way and confront us. And we sat there for
Speaker 3: probably six or seven seconds, just staring at it, and
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, I hear it shuffle and it turned,
Speaker 3: and when it turned, I saw this light flash come
Speaker 3: through and I think what I saw was it's palm,
Speaker 3: and it was about the size of a baseball mint,
Speaker 3: like adults baseball mint. It's just this flash that went
Speaker 3: through this crapy. My eye was really cussing that headlamp.
Speaker 3: All I wanted to do was see. You just want
Speaker 3: to You can't run, and you want to be able
Speaker 3: to see. And this thing turned and you can hear
Speaker 3: it on two legs taking these huge steps going down
Speaker 3: this really steep slope, and I mean it disappeared out
Speaker 3: of earshot within five seconds, just disappeared. And we sat
Speaker 3: there for another minute, and I told Terry, I'm like,
Speaker 3: let's head back to the truck, you know, And so
Speaker 3: we hiked out of there, headed back to the truck.
Speaker 3: And anyways, we ended up going back the next week
Speaker 3: and finished up our plants and stuff, and you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, I didn't know what to think of it,
Speaker 3: and I really never We chatted about a little bit
Speaker 3: on the way back to town, but I just didn't
Speaker 3: know what to think about it, and really didn't have
Speaker 3: a firm place to put this experience, you know, And
Speaker 3: so time goes by and it just was one of
Speaker 3: those odd experiences. And then, like I said, once that
Speaker 3: show came on TV Finding Bigfoot and stuff, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I was a big foot stand in front of me.
Speaker 2: I saw a bigfoot. And years later, actually a few
Speaker 2: years later, Terry.
Speaker 3: Now lives in Idaho, and I went to buy that
Speaker 3: camper over there because I had a really good deal
Speaker 3: during the pandemic, and so we drove over to Boise
Speaker 3: and I hadn't seen Terry and seven or eight, and
Speaker 3: I'll probably even longer that, maybe ten years, And so
Speaker 3: we meet up with them in town while I'm waiting
Speaker 3: for the paperworking done on the camp trailer, and it
Speaker 3: was on my mind because I now I knew i'd
Speaker 3: have put all this stuff together, and I had a
Speaker 3: pretty good idea about what was going on to us
Speaker 3: out there. And I talked to Harry about him, like, hey,
Speaker 3: you remember that like grow we did out in Lane
Speaker 3: County Line he's oh, yeah. I asked, Terry, you remember
Speaker 3: that thing that chased us down the hill. He'sa, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I remember that.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what did you see?
Speaker 3: Because I never asked Terry what he saw when he
Speaker 3: says I didn't see anything. I was behind you, when
Speaker 3: nice hunch, I'm like, you didn't see the things standing
Speaker 3: right in front of us? And Terry's like, I didn't
Speaker 3: see it. I was actually a little disappointed. I'm like, man,
Speaker 3: and maybe it's a good thing you didn't see it,
Speaker 3: because I'm Terry was pretty spooped and walking back on
Speaker 3: that road, I mean, you know, I mean I heard
Speaker 3: it run off and that uneasiness just left on just
Speaker 3: back in the woods again.
Speaker 2: And but yeah, it was incredible.
Speaker 3: And I don't know the whole door slamming thing and
Speaker 3: stuff like that, like how they make the noise, but
Speaker 3: it's so distinctive and I heard I've heard that many
Speaker 3: times before in places where you wouldn't expect to hear it.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if it's them smacking their chest
Speaker 3: and making a big exhale, but it's pretty incredible.
Speaker 2: Sounded mimicry.
Speaker 3: I think the things mimic the sounds that they hear,
Speaker 3: and I don't know why they do it. It seemed
Speaker 3: territorial obviously, because I mean, this run is out there,
Speaker 3: But why waited all summer with having these those noises
Speaker 3: around us all summer?
Speaker 2: I don't know. But made it out of.
Speaker 3: There unscathed with another experience, and so where am I
Speaker 3: at here?
Speaker 2: So I'm okay. So the next year I kept on backpacking,
Speaker 2: and that was last year. I grew. It's just it
Speaker 2: was just too much work and I get busier with
Speaker 2: my career. I'm a mechanic, big for society.
Speaker 1: Who will be right back after these messages.
Speaker 3: I've been a mechanic for twenty five years, and it's
Speaker 3: just the whole growing thing, especially once it turned legal,
Speaker 3: Like I just didn't want any part of it. It was
Speaker 3: fun to you as a kid. It wasn't a commercial venture.
Speaker 3: It was just kids being kids. But anyways, backpacking was
Speaker 3: my true passion and that kind of took away from
Speaker 3: backpack So me and my wife was she and my girlfriend.
Speaker 3: Then we found the spot and South Sister or Three
Speaker 3: Sisters Wilderness. This is on the western slopes of the
Speaker 3: mountains there and the Lama National Forest. Probably thirty five
Speaker 3: miles forty miles as crowde fly from here. Just an
Speaker 3: absolutely gorgeous area in my opinion, being around the state
Speaker 3: and backpack in the whole state, it's some of the
Speaker 3: prettiest hiking you can find. An Organ and Linton Meadows
Speaker 3: in particular, it's this meadow system that comes off the PCT,
Speaker 3: runs on the top side of it, and this meadow
Speaker 3: system drops for miles and miles below. So you get
Speaker 3: these terraced lava flows that have huge meadows, two hundred
Speaker 3: acre meadows, and they open up to South Sister, this
Speaker 3: huge volcanic mountain that's got glaciers on it, and South
Speaker 3: Sister has a lot of red rock and it's just
Speaker 3: absolutely stunning. We actually end up getting married out there.
Speaker 3: That's where my wife we did a wilderness wedding. You know,
Speaker 3: I got my brother ordained and hiked in my inlaws
Speaker 3: again only takes aeve people in the wilderness. And I
Speaker 3: was starting to get into guiding at this point in time,
Speaker 3: so I was running some nonprofits as a as a
Speaker 3: guide and taking a bunch of people out and so
Speaker 3: I had tons of year for backpacking, and me and
Speaker 3: my wife decided we didn't want to we didn't want
Speaker 3: a church wedding, but anyways, we chose a spot because
Speaker 3: it's so pretty and it's off the beaten path. A
Speaker 3: lot of people might day trip it if they're out
Speaker 3: there backpacking, but it's thirteen miles to the nearest trail
Speaker 3: head is hard hiking. So Aileen Lake was our main destination.
Speaker 2: So we go in.
Speaker 3: It's about twenty ten and we always liked later season hikes,
Speaker 3: so it was September, maybe a couple weeks into September,
Speaker 3: and we picked that because one of the crowds are
Speaker 3: less and the bugs lead. The mosquitos can be horrendous
Speaker 3: out there all the way through August, and it's such
Speaker 3: a pretty spot. It sucks if you got to spend
Speaker 3: your time under mosquito netting. And so we hike in
Speaker 3: just me and my wife and spend all day hiking.
Speaker 2: Is a hard hike.
Speaker 3: I mean, my packs were heavier than they should have been.
Speaker 3: I was probably carrying seventy pounds. My wife is probably
Speaker 3: carrying fifty five or sixty.
Speaker 2: She's a trooper.
Speaker 3: She could put miles on and never complains about it.
Speaker 3: And she I introduced her to backpacking, so she cut
Speaker 3: her teeth with it with me, and it was just
Speaker 3: it was such a great experience. So we hike in
Speaker 3: to Lint Meadows and it takes us all day to
Speaker 3: get into there. By the time we get into Linton Meadows,
Speaker 3: super dry year, we were running low in water. We
Speaker 3: had been out of water for the last few miles,
Speaker 3: and I knew there were springs down there and Lint Meadows,
Speaker 3: So our plan was to just get into where the
Speaker 3: meadows start and post up camp, find some water, and
Speaker 3: then the next morning hike the rest of the mile
Speaker 3: and a half two Island Lake, which is our destination.
Speaker 3: We were gonna spend about a week and a half
Speaker 3: out there. So we drop into the meadow and the
Speaker 3: sun's got about an hour and a half worth left
Speaker 3: a light on it. But it gets start quick up
Speaker 3: there because everything's so up and down and we're in
Speaker 3: this valley. You can be a couple hours away from
Speaker 3: sunset and be in complete shade and darkness.
Speaker 2: So we set up our We come.
Speaker 3: Into this meadow and it's one of the larger meadows
Speaker 3: that are up there, and you get out of the
Speaker 3: trees and all of a sudden, the views open up
Speaker 3: and there's a mountain I mean lit up by the
Speaker 3: setting sun alpine glow, and it's just you know you're
Speaker 3: gonna spend We can half up there and we have
Speaker 3: nothing to do, and it's the best feeling.
Speaker 2: And we're tired, we're thirsty.
Speaker 3: We find a little spring that's trickling right by the
Speaker 3: trail as we enter the meadow, so we set our
Speaker 3: tent up right where this meadow starts to open up,
Speaker 3: and there's these little tree peninsulas that open up into
Speaker 3: the meadal, so you get these little kind of jets
Speaker 3: of trees that come out in between the meadow. So
Speaker 3: we camped about fifty feet away from the edge of
Speaker 3: this tree line, right where you come into the meadow
Speaker 3: where you first start to get to the meadows, set
Speaker 3: our tent up, got water, feed the dogs they're dehydrated dog,
Speaker 3: backpack packing food, and made our dinner and we're sitting
Speaker 3: in our camp chairs, shoes off, just enjoying it.
Speaker 2: And we're looking.
Speaker 3: Across the metal on the other side, and metal runs
Speaker 3: up this really steep hillside, and as we're eating our dinner,
Speaker 3: this whole herd of deer. I've never seen so many
Speaker 3: blacktail deer out there, but this whole herd of probably
Speaker 3: twelve deer just explode out of the woods through the
Speaker 3: past the trail that we came in on, probably one
Speaker 3: hundred feet away from us, and they are running full
Speaker 3: board and they run straight up this hillside. I mean
Speaker 3: you'd have to use you know, you'd have to use
Speaker 3: all fours to climb up that that mountain side.
Speaker 2: I mean it's steep. You can just see this.
Speaker 3: They are just running and I told my wife, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: something's chasing those things. Mountains and mountain lions and bears
Speaker 3: are really common up there, and so I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: probably cat chasing them. And so we just sat there
Speaker 3: and watched them run, and we're like, oh, that's cool,
Speaker 3: like really cool, and we.
Speaker 2: Finish our meal.
Speaker 3: Our dogs were done. Who make them carry their gear?
Speaker 3: And humans can walk way farther than dogs. You thirteen
Speaker 3: mile a day for a dog. In that heat, it
Speaker 3: was really hot. They were ready for bed, So open
Speaker 3: up the tent, they go in, they go to sleep.
Speaker 3: We finished cleaning up camp and we get in our
Speaker 3: tent and we didn't see anyone hiking in there.
Speaker 2: We didn't see anyone.
Speaker 3: In the last probably eight miles, so there's no one
Speaker 3: in the meadow system. There's no sign of people in there,
Speaker 3: no noise. It gets dark, starts getting dark, and we're
Speaker 3: laying in the tent and we hear what sounds like,
Speaker 3: I want split in firewood just as dry.
Speaker 2: As firewood crack. It was so loud, echoing off these
Speaker 2: huge metal walls and its meadows probably three quarters a
Speaker 2: mile across. You just hear it echoing.
Speaker 3: And I knew that there's another camping area about about
Speaker 3: a quarter mile up the trail, on this other tree,
Speaker 3: this tree island that's in the middle of the meadow system.
Speaker 3: There's really pretty spot to camp, so I assume people
Speaker 3: were camping there. And this wood splitting went on for forty.
Speaker 2: Five minutes or more. You know, loud, I mean just loud.
Speaker 2: Eyes remarking to my wife, Man, I'm like, it almost
Speaker 2: sounds like gunshots. It's so loud.
Speaker 3: And it started getting closer to us, to the point
Speaker 3: to where the sounds of this what we thought was
Speaker 3: would be being split was one hundred feet into the
Speaker 3: trees that we are now camped next to, Like there
Speaker 3: are people camped in there, so we hear that wood
Speaker 3: splitting crack right in there. And it was odd, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, man, we didn't see anyone in there, and
Speaker 3: we're right right next to where this happening. Now, I'm like,
Speaker 3: it doesn't really make much sense that they're moving splitting firewood.
Speaker 3: But we chalked it up to people being out there camping,
Speaker 3: and the wood splitting stopped after about forty five minutes,
Speaker 3: not noise anyways, and then we started hearing the sound
Speaker 3: of the thump on that ground up there, being volcanic
Speaker 3: and made with a lot of pumuses, a lot of
Speaker 3: air pockets in the ground, and when you run on
Speaker 3: that stuff, you get you can hear the foot footsteps,
Speaker 3: even humans walking on and people walking on it. But
Speaker 3: it wasn't footprints or footsteps. It was rocks being thrown
Speaker 3: towards our tent, big rocks, football size, soft all sized rocks.
Speaker 2: Boom boom boom.
Speaker 3: And these rocks got closer and closer, I mean to
Speaker 3: the point to where they were hitting five feet away
Speaker 3: from our tent. And I told my wife, I'm like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm like, these are drunk out here camping.
Speaker 3: I'm like, we come out here to get away from people,
Speaker 3: and here we are we end up setting up right
Speaker 3: next to someone. I'm like, you know, if this continues,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm gonna go out there and talk to him.
Speaker 3: My wife's, oh, don't go out there and get in
Speaker 3: a fist fight. And middle of the forest, I'm like,
Speaker 3: there's plenty room for these people to go camping.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 3: They are camp right next to us and being drunks
Speaker 3: thrown rocks at her tent. So this continues, and it
Speaker 3: gets closer to the tent and I'm like, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: go out there and talk to him. So I started
Speaker 3: getting up and my wife's just leave it me. Well,
Speaker 3: I'm like, if they hit her tent, I'm going out there.
Speaker 3: And so we listen to this rock throw and go
Speaker 3: on for thirty to forty five minutes. You know, it's
Speaker 3: well dark now, and the rock throwing stops, and a
Speaker 3: few minutes later we hear three or four things standing
Speaker 3: maybe twenty five feet away from her tent, in between
Speaker 3: our tent and the tree line. You can hear them talking,
Speaker 3: but it's not a discernible language.
Speaker 2: It's super low.
Speaker 3: And the best way I heard it described is if
Speaker 3: someone was talking in a really deep voice and you
Speaker 3: played it backwards, you catch sections of it, and then
Speaker 3: it is so low and frequency like parts of it
Speaker 3: would drop out from what you can hear, and then
Speaker 3: you pick it back up and you'd hear these things
Speaker 3: chattering back and forth right outside our tent. And it
Speaker 3: probably only lasted a couple of minutes, and then it
Speaker 3: was quiet the.
Speaker 2: Rest of the night.
Speaker 3: In the morning, we woke up early, so we wanted
Speaker 3: to get up get the Island Lake. So we were
Speaker 3: up and out of the tent by six and I
Speaker 3: decided to hike into that tree area where where the
Speaker 3: people were. I thought people were camping, and there's no
Speaker 3: campsite in there. There's no sign that anyone was ever
Speaker 3: camping in there. But around our tent were quite a
Speaker 3: few large rocks that weren't there. In the morning, you
Speaker 3: could see where they had hit on the pumissey ground
Speaker 3: and skidded, and like I said, it was I just
Speaker 3: assumed it was people, but there was no people there.
Speaker 3: And so we packed up a tent and hiked up
Speaker 3: the Island Lake and spent our week or so time
Speaker 3: up there and join us up. Never had anything else
Speaker 3: happen up at Lint Meadows that whole trip. Our first
Speaker 3: trip into Linton Meadows. By the way, we hiked from
Speaker 3: the Cascade Lakes highwayside of it, so it was a
Speaker 3: sixteen or seventeen mile hike. I ended up taking a
Speaker 3: wrong turn and ended up adding a couple miles to it,
Speaker 3: and our first hike in there just the only other
Speaker 3: thing I've had happened our first time up there, we
Speaker 3: went to Husband Lake, made it in there. We were whooped,
Speaker 3: The dogs were whooped, and they are laying down in
Speaker 3: the shade every time we stopped. So it is time
Speaker 3: to stop. Our goal is to get Island Lake. When
Speaker 3: that was our first time up there, we camp on
Speaker 3: this huge out rock outcropping that overlooks this lake, and
Speaker 3: as after we set up the tent, this five point
Speaker 3: black tailed deer just comes out of the bushes and
Speaker 3: it's within ten feet of our tent. And I have
Speaker 3: my two dogs there and they're not grounding or barking,
Speaker 3: they're watching this year. It's just clopping around. It was
Speaker 3: so close I could have reached out and touched this animal.
Speaker 3: And it made me a little uneasy about the health
Speaker 3: of this animal. It's getting later in the year too,
Speaker 3: so I possibly could have been rut and so I
Speaker 3: told my wife and I just don't mess with it,
Speaker 3: and it'll goa hung around our tent well into the
Speaker 3: evening to the point to where the sun had dropped down.
Speaker 3: In fact, actually I was laying in there and it
Speaker 3: was sniffing the tent and it ended up laying down
Speaker 3: right outside of our tent, feed away from us, laying down.
Speaker 3: And I never put two and two together, but I
Speaker 3: think what it was that deer had been being chased
Speaker 3: and it was around us for safety, And that's my
Speaker 3: speculation on it. Anyways, really odd. Yeah, you could have
Speaker 3: gotten that thing with a slingshot. Boy, I would have
Speaker 3: been a hunter streamed. He was a nice looking buck.
Speaker 3: It was a beautiful buck. But yeah, So that was
Speaker 3: my experiences in Litton Meadows there and I spent a
Speaker 3: lot of time in that area, a lot of time
Speaker 3: in that area. In fact, actually years later me and
Speaker 3: my buddy that I ended up starting the back hiking
Speaker 3: Guide service with we bush whacked eight miles from Linton Meadows.
Speaker 3: No trail route to get to or Linton Lake to
Speaker 3: get to the meadow section.
Speaker 2: And it's super rugged.
Speaker 3: I mean you're going up steep hillsides that are just
Speaker 3: covered in eight to ten foot rhododendron. And I remember
Speaker 3: on my hike up there that I ended up coming
Speaker 3: across tree structures in there and just in the middle
Speaker 3: of absolutely nowhere where no one hikes, you know. I
Speaker 3: mean you might get a hiker through there once every
Speaker 3: ten years, you know, someone like us. I was really
Speaker 3: pushing what they wanted to do, a miserable hike up
Speaker 3: beautiful though multiple tree structures up in their big trees
Speaker 3: piled up on each other. I always side it as
Speaker 3: odd as let's just do an I mean, it wasn't treefall.
Speaker 3: I mean someone had stacked it, you know, And I
Speaker 3: just thought it was odd. And but that area up
Speaker 3: there ended up burning later in a fire around twenty.
Speaker 2: Fifteen or so.
Speaker 3: I think there's a big fire up there, and it
Speaker 3: burnt through a lot of that stuff up there. And
Speaker 3: I actually went took my family on a week long
Speaker 3: backpacking trip up there the following year, or maybe it's
Speaker 3: two years after that fired burn. Actually, my neighbor has
Speaker 3: a little airplane, so actually traded off some work with
Speaker 3: him and he took me on a flight so I
Speaker 3: could do reconnaisance to make sure it wasn't we weren't
Speaker 3: just gonna be hiking through a complete burn for a week.
Speaker 3: And it's a beautiful area. But yeah, I took my
Speaker 3: family up there and they really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Half of them.
Speaker 3: I had already been up there for my wedding that
Speaker 3: we did up with those lakes and yep, never had
Speaker 3: anything else that happened up there.
Speaker 2: And then.
Speaker 3: Twenty eleven Dine Peak Wilderness. So that's just east of
Speaker 3: us you out Hills Creek, and I don't know where
Speaker 3: you've been around here, but I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 3: you went out that direction because that's a great direction
Speaker 3: to go. But east of Eugene or east of Oakridge
Speaker 3: you run into Dime Peak Wilderness.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean. It's a big mountain you
Speaker 2: can see when you're driving up the highway. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: I got it.
Speaker 3: Yep, Snowpeak Captain everything, and there's a beautiful loop in there,
Speaker 3: and I really like love backpacking in that area, and
Speaker 3: so we were It is my first time doing the
Speaker 3: Wilderness Loop and it's about a thirty mile loop and
Speaker 3: we like take about a week to do them. And
Speaker 3: so my wife, me and my buddy Ryan from Pendleton
Speaker 3: that I went to school with. We start out from
Speaker 3: Trapper Creek trailhead, which is by Chilter Co Resort there
Speaker 3: on Oda Lake, and our second night we end up
Speaker 3: at Marie Lake. Well, we me and my wife had
Speaker 3: just bought a brand new Arii backpack intent I mean
Speaker 3: it was the big Agnes sl It was a six
Speaker 3: hundred dollars tent, really nice piece of gear and only
Speaker 3: weighed two and a half pounds. It was so nice
Speaker 3: to really get her pack weight trimmed down, you know,
Speaker 3: so we could do these bigger trips and not die
Speaker 3: doing them. And so we set up at Marie Lake
Speaker 3: and there's one camp spot that's at the front side
Speaker 3: of the lake. There there's another one you got a
Speaker 3: bushback to on the other side, but there's no one
Speaker 3: in the first so we took it. No people around
Speaker 3: or anything like that. We set up on the grassy
Speaker 3: area in between the campsite that was in the woods
Speaker 3: about a hundred fet from the side of the lake.
Speaker 3: We were about fifty feet closer to the lake than
Speaker 3: the grassy area that leads right to the lake's edge.
Speaker 3: And we did our thing, went to sleep. I had
Speaker 3: my two dogs with me, yuey Nori. And we wake
Speaker 3: up in the morning and my wife's side of the tent,
Speaker 3: it's got a full rain fly on it. It's a
Speaker 3: heavy dewty tent for backpacking, three and a half plus
Speaker 3: season tent. It's stout, this ink can take some storms.
Speaker 3: And we wake up and the rain fly is ripped
Speaker 3: on her side, with the zippers rip ripped out of
Speaker 3: the seam on her side.
Speaker 2: The mesh body of the.
Speaker 3: Tent, which is all mesh her zipper side, was ripped open,
Speaker 3: destroyed the zipper, and there is urine on top of
Speaker 3: this tent and it's about probably close to five and
Speaker 3: a half feet tall. The peak of the town just
Speaker 3: about tons of the stinky urine on it. And I
Speaker 3: was pretty pissed off. I'm a brand new tent just
Speaker 3: got ripped up and shredded. And I don't know why
Speaker 3: I did wake up. My dogs didn't alert us, my
Speaker 3: wife didn't alert us, and she was on that side
Speaker 3: of ten. I was actually just talking to her about
Speaker 3: this the other night. I'm like, and we just didn't
Speaker 3: know what to think about what happened with the tent,
Speaker 3: so we taped it back together to make the trip work.
Speaker 3: And the funny thing is where it was ripped. Like,
Speaker 3: as my wife'side, I'm like, yeah, now that now I
Speaker 3: kN know what was going on. I'm like, you could
Speaker 3: have had something reaching in over the tent on you.
Speaker 3: I don't know why we didn't wake up. You know,
Speaker 3: that's the only weird you know, I'm not much on
Speaker 3: the wu side of the phenomenon, but that's unexplainable because
Speaker 3: you're gonna hear that stuff that rips up nylon to
Speaker 3: be able to rip it, I mean, it's loud if
Speaker 3: you rip it, it's super loud and man at least
Speaker 3: for the dogs to alert. So luckily ari I had
Speaker 3: their return policy. We took it back and got a
Speaker 3: brand new tent for free.
Speaker 1: Big for society, who will be right back after these messages.
Speaker 3: So there's no loss on that. So that was a
Speaker 3: dime peak Wilderness in two thousand. In twenty thirteen we
Speaker 3: moved up here and bought this property that we're on
Speaker 3: right now. Moved from Oakridge or from Eugene up to here,
Speaker 3: and it was so nice to get back out of
Speaker 3: the city. Spending in a decade plus in Eugene was
Speaker 3: all the city, all the need for the rest of
Speaker 3: my life. And so we got up here. I know
Speaker 3: this area well, and we started. As we were living
Speaker 3: up here, we explored it like I did Eugene when
Speaker 3: I first got out here. And now I was living
Speaker 3: up here, I could just leave out my back door
Speaker 3: and in fifteen minutes I could be at wilderness wilderness edge,
Speaker 3: and it was just so much.
Speaker 2: To see and do.
Speaker 3: So we decided to check out Huckleberry Lake, which is
Speaker 3: just up the road from us. It's about eleven miles
Speaker 3: from here, probably twelve miles, not very far. It takes
Speaker 3: about twenty minutes or so to get up there, and
Speaker 3: it's this little lake that isn't used a lot. So
Speaker 3: we pull off at this trailhead, really brushy road. So
Speaker 3: you're driving truck down. Everyone calls a cascade pin striping here.
Speaker 3: Anyone that's out in the woods up here and drive.
Speaker 3: You can tell by looking at the truck what they do,
Speaker 3: because everyone's got the scrape marks from these branches dragging
Speaker 3: down inside of their vehicle. So we find this trailhead
Speaker 3: and this lake drops. This lake's in this bowl that
Speaker 3: sits well below the road, and it's backed up by
Speaker 3: this big, thousand foot tall cliff that makes Huckleberry Mountain.
Speaker 3: There's a fire lookout up on top of it, which
Speaker 3: you can't see from the lake, but I had my
Speaker 3: boys were probably about two years old at the time,
Speaker 3: so we had them in backpack carriers. Abby was three
Speaker 3: and a half or four, and I usually open carry.
Speaker 3: When I started hiking with my kids, I started just
Speaker 3: bringing a gun just in case I'm not scared or
Speaker 3: worried about it, and it just fell out. It was
Speaker 3: a smart move to make, especially where we went and
Speaker 3: the stuff we did. And so we hiked down to
Speaker 3: this lake and come up to it and it's really brushy.
Speaker 3: There's just a big enough spot to get out of
Speaker 3: the brush to see the lake when you first come
Speaker 3: down to it, and there's this really faint fisherman's trail
Speaker 3: that goes around the east side of the lake and
Speaker 3: it takes you through this rhododendron thicket seven eight foot
Speaker 3: tall rohdodendron thicket, and you're stepping over logs and you
Speaker 3: get to the outlet creek and you got to walk
Speaker 3: a log to get over the creek to this semi
Speaker 3: established camp spot that's at the end of the lake,
Speaker 3: and it's up in these bigger trees the rhododendron there,
Speaker 3: so it was a spot to put a tent. We
Speaker 3: hung out there and had lunch, the kids splashed around
Speaker 3: in the lake. We spent probably an hour there and
Speaker 3: I started getting that uneasy feeling again. And my wife,
Speaker 3: I know, she was packing up stuff. I'm like, are
Speaker 3: you ready to get out of here?
Speaker 2: And she said yep.
Speaker 3: So we put the boys back in the back cock carriers.
Speaker 3: I had one and my wife had the other boy
Speaker 3: on her back, and my wife led the way out
Speaker 3: on so I had Abby in front of me. And
Speaker 3: as we're walking we crossed that outlook creek and we
Speaker 3: get back into the really thick rhododendron. That feeling that
Speaker 3: I got, like when I was scouting some of those
Speaker 3: gross sites over there, it came back on. It just
Speaker 3: hit instantly. It was like, oh man, I just want
Speaker 3: out of here. I just want to get back to
Speaker 3: the truck and get out of here. And it was
Speaker 3: so strong on that trip that I Abby was about
Speaker 3: about twenty thirty feet in front of me.
Speaker 2: Up.
Speaker 3: I told her to come back towards me and actually
Speaker 3: unholstered my gun and took it off safe and just
Speaker 3: kept it out the ready on the side and just
Speaker 3: waiting to see it. My wife wasn't eyesight, and we
Speaker 3: walked through there. Just a horrible feeling, absolutely horrible feeling.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've ever experienced that. It's yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it's just and you're in it too. When
Speaker 3: you're out there, you can't You're not going to run
Speaker 3: from it, so you just deal with it and slowly
Speaker 3: move on.
Speaker 2: But boy, is it uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: My hair was up on the back of my neck
Speaker 3: and I'm just sitting there there waiting for something to
Speaker 3: come out. I'd stop every every minute or so and
Speaker 3: just listen. I never heard anything, but the feeling got stronger,
Speaker 3: ass the thicker, the deeper. We made into tho rhodendrons,
Speaker 3: and we made it back to where the trail dropped
Speaker 3: into the lake, and then you switch back up this
Speaker 3: ridge back to the road and we get up there,
Speaker 3: load the kids up, load the backpacks up. And I
Speaker 3: asked my wife, I'm like, what did you think of
Speaker 3: that lake? You you probably go backpack in there's right
Speaker 3: out our back door. And my wife says, I never
Speaker 3: want to go back down there again. She said, I
Speaker 3: got the worst feeling coming out of there, and that's
Speaker 3: when I told her that I experienced the same thing.
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, I actually unholstered my gun, I had
Speaker 3: all fun safe and called Abby back to me because
Speaker 3: it just felt so imminent, so eminent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 3: I actually years later, actually he's the idea of going
Speaker 3: down there with my buddy, which you met down there,
Speaker 3: because he's had his experiences, and he's actually so frightened
Speaker 3: by his experiences that he hasn't really gone camping since then.
Speaker 3: And I never stopped camping. And the more I know
Speaker 3: about this, a little bit more apprehensive I am about
Speaker 3: putting myselves in these vulnerable situations. But we were actually
Speaker 3: going to go up there and camp at that lake,
Speaker 3: just me and him, just to understand this a little
Speaker 3: bit more. I've had so many encounters with this, and
Speaker 3: now that I'm starting to wake up to what was
Speaker 3: going on, I wanted with some clarity to experience this
Speaker 3: and get some more answers. And we end up having
Speaker 3: a massive fire Cedar Creek fire burnt through that year
Speaker 3: we were going to go up there. I mean that
Speaker 3: couple weeks later was when we were planning on camping,
Speaker 3: and the Cedar Creek fire burnt through in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one and it just cooked all that area of Huckleberry
Speaker 3: burnt and the lake around it burnt. I haven't been
Speaker 3: up there since they they've had the road closed off.
Speaker 3: I think it's back open now, but I wouldn't imagine
Speaker 3: it would be the same kind of place to go to,
Speaker 3: plus camping under burnt out trees that have been there
Speaker 3: for a couple years, isn't the best to say to
Speaker 3: make Yeah, it's right out our back door, and the
Speaker 3: same right out my back door. My property backs up
Speaker 3: to National Forest. There's private lots around us, but we're
Speaker 3: this little tongue of houses that are spread out all
Speaker 3: on big plots of land like what we have. You know,
Speaker 3: I probably have one of the smaller chunks of land
Speaker 3: out here at fourteen acres. You know, almost everyone else has,
Speaker 3: you know, sixty two hundred acres. But outside of that,
Speaker 3: it's just National Force. And when I first moved up here,
Speaker 3: the logging that you saw coming up the road that
Speaker 3: hadn't happened, So it was a continuous thick stretch of
Speaker 3: nice eighty two hundred year old trees that are grown
Speaker 3: up here. I mean you're just driving the trees the
Speaker 3: whole way. So I worked in Eugene at the time,
Speaker 3: and I always did side jobs. So I take customer
Speaker 3: side jobs in on chainsaws, generators or whatever, just to
Speaker 3: make some money on the side. And when I get home,
Speaker 3: I would go out to the shop up there, the
Speaker 3: Red Shop, and I would work on these things. And
Speaker 3: sometimes I'd be out there till midnight or later. And
Speaker 3: as I'm working out there, I had this happen. Eight
Speaker 3: or nine times. I'd be out there working middle the
Speaker 3: night and something would come and hit the side of
Speaker 3: that shop so hard. I mean it shook that whole
Speaker 3: the whole shop. I mean the whole shop would shake
Speaker 3: hard enough to wear. It's a two two story bar,
Speaker 3: and essentially, you know, hard enough to wear. Dust would
Speaker 3: fall through the slats from the upper story. Adia you know,
Speaker 3: I thought it was an animal upstairs a couple times,
Speaker 3: so I went up there with a pride bar, waiting
Speaker 3: to clever a raccoon or something. But there was never
Speaker 3: anything up there. And now I realize it was probably
Speaker 3: being harassed and.
Speaker 2: Chased by these things.
Speaker 3: But I got that feeling a couple of times up
Speaker 3: there when I shut it down and walk back to
Speaker 3: the house late at night, I got that same kind
Speaker 3: of creepy feeling that I get it that I've had
Speaker 3: at Huckleberry Lake and other times, and once the logging
Speaker 3: kicked in there the last six years or so, a
Speaker 3: lot of that seemed to have gone away. But of
Speaker 3: course I don't spend late nights out there doing anymore.
Speaker 3: You know, I run my business from my property now,
Speaker 3: so I mean I'm already doing forty fifty hour weeks
Speaker 3: out there, so I'm not out there at eleven o'clock
Speaker 3: or twelve o'clock a night anymore. But really interesting stuff,
Speaker 3: And at that point in time, I was pretty well
Speaker 3: aware about what was going on and felt pretty lucky
Speaker 3: to have the stuff so close for a guy that's
Speaker 3: looking for some answers and clarity on it, so I
Speaker 3: don't have to go two hours away to find the
Speaker 3: answers for the stuff that's happened to me. And recently
Speaker 3: here in December of last year, I went up to
Speaker 3: kitsen Or, a CT beach area, and explored with the kids.
Speaker 3: And there's a little bridge that goes across one of
Speaker 3: the arms of the reservoirs in the winter time, they
Speaker 3: drank the reservoirs for flood control, and so what would
Speaker 3: normally be underwater is just back down to mud banks
Speaker 3: and the river that used to feed the reservoir body.
Speaker 3: And I took the kids there after Christmas. It was
Speaker 3: a few days after Christmas, so December twenty eighth, twenty ninth,
Speaker 3: and it was a stormy, snowy day, but I wanted
Speaker 3: to get out and do some exploring. So we went
Speaker 3: down there and hiked down to the river, parked on
Speaker 3: top of the no cars, no people around us, And
Speaker 3: while we're down there, we got almost sounded like gunshots,
Speaker 3: these sharp cracks ringing out through the woods, and I
Speaker 3: almost assumed that someone was up there shooting. So the
Speaker 3: kids came running over to me, and we're down lower
Speaker 3: elevation from of the noise is happening, and I'm like
Speaker 3: that there might be someone over there, maybe shooting their
Speaker 3: pistol or something like that, you know, So we end
Speaker 3: up hiking out of there.
Speaker 2: I hiked across the bridge.
Speaker 3: I was going to go talk to these people about,
Speaker 3: you know, making sure that they were shooting a safe
Speaker 3: direction and stuff like that. And so we get over
Speaker 3: there and there's no cars on the other side of
Speaker 3: the bridge, and the only road going in there is
Speaker 3: a really narrow paved road. There's no other roads above it.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't thinking about it. It wasn't someone up
Speaker 3: there shooting their gun, because people are out there shooting
Speaker 3: their pistols. It didn't sound like high powered rifle. It's
Speaker 3: definitely a pistol. It sounded more like a pistol. And
Speaker 3: when people are shooting their pistols still.
Speaker 2: Go bang, you know what I mean. This is just
Speaker 2: like crack crack.
Speaker 3: And then to change directions where it's coming from in
Speaker 3: another portion of the wood. But we loaded up in
Speaker 3: the truck and we went a little further down the
Speaker 3: road in this place called Kits and Hot Springs. It's
Speaker 3: administrated and owned by BSA. Now it's a little chunk
Speaker 3: of private lamb that's nestled in the National forest there.
Speaker 3: They used to have old Hot Springs house there. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you made your way up there, but
Speaker 3: oh man, it's super cool, super cool. This was right
Speaker 3: after the ct Beach incident, and so we go in
Speaker 3: there and I always wanted to explore it. And they
Speaker 3: have the whole Hot Spring Foundation for the lodge that
Speaker 3: these have. They're still hot water coming up through there,
Speaker 3: and really cool area. We hiked across this little bridge
Speaker 3: and there's these three sided shelters that the boy Scouts
Speaker 3: used to use for their summer jamboreez and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And in the mud on these trails and these roads
Speaker 3: that ran on the other side of there, there were
Speaker 3: old footprints, big ones, sixteen seventeen inch footprints. There were
Speaker 3: small footprints. They were all over the place and there
Speaker 3: from fresh to ones that utel had been up there
Speaker 3: for a few weeks, and I know people have had
Speaker 3: run ends and encounters up there before. And I've never
Speaker 3: cast at a track, and I would. I'm planning on
Speaker 3: going back up there later in the year and when
Speaker 3: things slowed down, and I want to find a good
Speaker 3: track to at a cast in my collection. So I've
Speaker 3: had other stuff happened to me. I've had the classic
Speaker 3: wooden knocks and stuff like that happened. I've never heard
Speaker 3: screams or yells. I've had buddies that have and the
Speaker 3: guy that you met one, but I never had other
Speaker 3: than the murmuring that I heard at Lent Meadows. That's
Speaker 3: the only audible noise I've ever heard from it. Also,
Speaker 3: I want to note something too, I never have had
Speaker 3: the smell never.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, that's really interesting.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: And people talk about it, and I have never when
Speaker 3: I've had these run ins, I have never smelled that
Speaker 3: smell that people described. And maybe it was the way
Speaker 3: the wind was blowing. But for me, in my situations
Speaker 3: that I ran into, smell wasn't part of it.
Speaker 2: It just wasn't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a rundown of what I've experienced that since
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: And like I always tell some of.
Speaker 3: My friends that know my stories that they don't backpack,
Speaker 3: they're always really curious about it. And I think about
Speaker 3: how many nights I've spent out camping and the remote
Speaker 3: spots that I've gone to, and you have to be
Speaker 3: out there so much ninety nine point nine percent of
Speaker 3: the time you're not gonna have anything happen. It's that
Speaker 3: point one percent of the time that this stuff happens,
Speaker 3: and it's a it's such an odd ball event that
Speaker 3: you don't really think much of it. People are always like, oh,
Speaker 3: why don't you go out there and just see what
Speaker 3: it is? You have to be in the situation. To
Speaker 3: understand it, you really have to be in there, and
Speaker 3: it's just so close to what humans would sound like
Speaker 3: that that's why I think it gets rid off more
Speaker 3: than not as people just thinking they're hearing other people
Speaker 3: out there, and maybe more people would be surprised that
Speaker 3: may not always be the case.
Speaker 1: Kevin, thank you so much for sharing your years of
Speaker 1: things that have happened all over the state, which just
Speaker 1: is incredible. Do you have a few minutes if I
Speaker 1: could ask you a few questions? Okay, And the Diamond
Speaker 1: Peak Wilderness incident. We had discussed that at the booth,
Speaker 1: but it's really interesting to hear more details about it.
Speaker 1: There was actually a lot of urine that was gathered
Speaker 1: at the top of the tent.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because when the fly got when the fly got
Speaker 3: torn as a full coverage rain fly that goes over
Speaker 3: the main body of the tent as most modern backpack
Speaker 3: intents look like this and has this hubsystem where the
Speaker 3: poles cross over on top, so clay creates a flatter
Speaker 3: spot on top.
Speaker 2: If the fly is not.
Speaker 3: Zipped up, it loses that, so you get a little
Speaker 3: low spot like kind of forms in the top when
Speaker 3: it's un zipped. Yeah, and there was that yellowish urine
Speaker 3: that was up on the top side of it.
Speaker 1: That's what I was going to ask if you remembered
Speaker 1: any details. And being in a wilderness individual, you've probably
Speaker 1: are aware of what kind of urine from different creatures
Speaker 1: in the forest looks like. And so this was you said,
Speaker 1: a yellowish color, yellowish, it is urine.
Speaker 3: I'm the only animal I know around here that would
Speaker 3: could could possibly deposit something like that up there would
Speaker 3: be would be male cougars, you know, and they spray.
Speaker 3: They can spray pretty far. They can put their markings
Speaker 3: five feet up on a tree and stuff then back
Speaker 3: up to it and pretty gross future and stuff.
Speaker 1: Big for society. Who will be right back after these messages.
Speaker 3: But this wasn't katgurn smelled like someone's been eating too
Speaker 3: much of sparagus and drank a bunch of beer the
Speaker 3: night before, you know. But yeah, it was pooled in
Speaker 3: the rain plot that was down on the ground. But
Speaker 3: it's on the side that was ripped out. When I
Speaker 3: tease my wife about that, like you're there are sleeping
Speaker 3: and imagine you might have this big hand reaching I
Speaker 3: couldn't imagine that it wouldn't have reached into the tent.
Speaker 3: I'm like, pretty incredible, and I've always intererstained the idea
Speaker 3: of taking a game camera with me when I'm going
Speaker 3: out back back and now, but I just I don't
Speaker 3: know if they can detect it. I don't speculate too
Speaker 3: much on that, but the fact that there's just very
Speaker 3: few game camera pictures that are get to be credible
Speaker 3: enough to even want to talk about, I think it
Speaker 3: would lessen your chances of experiencing anything.
Speaker 1: We had discussed Spirit Lake at the booth right. That's
Speaker 1: come up with a few individuals, And I've talked to
Speaker 1: people before I got here about a lot of different
Speaker 1: encounters that have happened in that area. Were you the
Speaker 1: individual that had talked about the sticks in Spirit Lake?
Speaker 1: Have you heard about that?
Speaker 3: I've heard people have had strange run ends up there.
Speaker 3: I mean, here's the namesake of the lake, Spirit Lake,
Speaker 3: Devil's Canyon. All these places I guess condessate from the
Speaker 3: schnook jargon of the Indians that around here. But no,
Speaker 3: I've camped up there quite a bit, very remote. That
Speaker 3: part's all.
Speaker 2: Burnt up in the Cedar Creek. Now, that's all a
Speaker 2: big burn scarf there. No, I never I've camped up
Speaker 2: there plenty.
Speaker 3: I haven't had any run ends up there, but I
Speaker 3: will say the times that I've camped up there, it's
Speaker 3: been with my group of backpacking buddies. We all drag
Speaker 3: our campers up. They have kids that are my age
Speaker 3: and they'll be eighteen of us up there and going
Speaker 3: in big groups and backpacking with big groups. There's just
Speaker 3: too much noise, in my opinion, but only happens when
Speaker 3: you're being quiet, and I think smaller groups maybe it's
Speaker 3: more approachable.
Speaker 2: But I could see it.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's plenty of I've had locals that I
Speaker 3: have told me about stuff that's gone on up there,
Speaker 3: you know, And I know that area carries a lot
Speaker 3: of that kind of those kind of stories.
Speaker 1: And the specific thing I want to make sure that
Speaker 1: I remember to put on recording is I had multiple
Speaker 1: hunters say that they've been there in around dusk or
Speaker 1: night time, all the sticks that are in the lake
Speaker 1: will go to the center of the lake form a
Speaker 1: circle and then start rotating in a circular fashion, which
Speaker 1: magnetic field or just tie strangeness. It's it seems like
Speaker 1: a really interesting area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. I've hiked into Spirit Lake once.
Speaker 3: It was actually right before the summer, before Cedar Creek
Speaker 3: burnt it up there, and I just wanted to.
Speaker 2: Check it out. And it's beautiful lake. The hike going
Speaker 2: in there and it's absolutely was absolutely gorgeous, huge trees.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we got up there and there's a big
Speaker 3: meadow on one end of it, and I didn't see
Speaker 3: anything unusual. It is a beautiful lake, though, absolutely beautiful.
Speaker 3: I didn't I've been around a lot of these mountain
Speaker 3: lakes and I don't. I can't say I've ever seen
Speaker 3: any weird anomalies with sticks floating around and swirling in
Speaker 3: the middle of a lake. But in come evening time,
Speaker 3: you get these inflows and outflows of air that move
Speaker 3: through these valley systems, you know, So during the daytime,
Speaker 3: as the lowlands heat, the wind moves up valley and
Speaker 3: as it cools, that colder sinks back down. And Spirit
Speaker 3: Lake's kind of in this bowl. And so I mean,
Speaker 3: if you ever watch the win come in on these lakes,
Speaker 3: you can actually almost see that, you can actually see
Speaker 3: the ripples on the lakes. It actually hits the lake
Speaker 3: from straight up on top and billows out and around.
Speaker 3: If I saw something like that, I would probably attribute
Speaker 3: it more to that. I'm not saying that these guys
Speaker 3: didn't experience something that strange.
Speaker 1: Kevin, this has been an incredible interview, and thank you
Speaker 1: for your hospitality for allowing me to come out to
Speaker 1: your beautiful home area. The woods are literally just on
Speaker 1: the side of your yard and it's like everything is
Speaker 1: right here. And thank you so much for your hospitality.
Speaker 3: Oh no, no problem. Is a pleasure meeting you all
Speaker 3: the way from Iowa too. So what do you think
Speaker 3: you think you come back to Pacific Northwest for more
Speaker 3: bigfoot adventures.
Speaker 1: I think it is definitely just beginning, and I don't
Speaker 1: think this is the last time that I will be
Speaker 1: in Oakridge for sure.
Speaker 2: I might have a couple questions for you on this side.
Speaker 3: You being from Iowa, we talked about your experiences that
Speaker 3: you experienced in your neck of the woods over there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how does it rate for your.
Speaker 3: Iowan big footed experiences compared to what you've experienced in
Speaker 3: the last few days here in this area.
Speaker 1: What I experienced just outside of Oakridge has blown everything
Speaker 1: that I've ever experienced out of the water, because we
Speaker 1: experienced things like growl, slash, green vocalizations. Right next to
Speaker 1: the meadow we were at, I found a track by
Speaker 1: where a visual had been seen just a day before.
Speaker 1: And then we wrap up there and he was able
Speaker 1: to really analyze the area for about forty five minutes
Speaker 1: to an hour and he found a solid set of
Speaker 1: tracks and these are like splayed you have. The tracks
Speaker 1: were like really spread out like that. Like I actually
Speaker 1: saw that in real life and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this these can be legit. Usually those tracks look like
Speaker 1: they're faked, but like it was there. I saw it.
Speaker 1: They were not casted the way that it was. What
Speaker 1: it was stepping over would have made it extremely hard
Speaker 1: to be casted. But there's no doubt there was. Did
Speaker 1: I tell you about the apple the fruit? Okay, so yeah,
Speaker 1: the apple and the orange and banana that was left
Speaker 1: from the group the day before and that we went
Speaker 1: back and the apple was left there uneaten and the
Speaker 1: orange was on the ground uneaten, but the banana was
Speaker 1: on the ground and peeled and eaten and just things
Speaker 1: like they've never experienced stuff like that in Iowa. I
Speaker 1: have had some things happen, but like it is a
Speaker 1: totally different world out here, and you do have to
Speaker 1: be really careful. You go out there and there's no
Speaker 1: cell service, there's huge predators. You get a flat or
Speaker 1: your car blows up, you have to hike back to
Speaker 1: town at least twenty miles, and there's not many chances
Speaker 1: out here for sure. But it is beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yep. They lots of people.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, the sneaky thing about this area
Speaker 3: is the access is so so good. There's so many
Speaker 3: points of access, and they can take you so far
Speaker 3: out into the wilderness. A lot of people don't realize
Speaker 3: how far out there they really are. You have these
Speaker 3: roads that go forty fifty miles sixty miles into these
Speaker 3: wilderness areas, and your cell phone coverage drops as soon
Speaker 3: as you get off fifty eight. You know, anywhere off
Speaker 3: fifty eight were out here, it's dropped. And that's just
Speaker 3: kind of part of this area. But yeah, that's the
Speaker 3: way I've always looked at it is I think it
Speaker 3: should be approached with caution. When I'm not much on
Speaker 3: the Bigfoot Woo side of things, I've looked a little
Speaker 3: bit into it, and from my experiences it.
Speaker 2: Doesn't line up.
Speaker 3: I think it's some kind of biological, physical animal. It
Speaker 3: seems that's the most logical starting point. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you have any opinions on what you think it
Speaker 3: is from a physical standpoint.
Speaker 1: Relic commented after experiencing something that could peel a banana
Speaker 1: and eat it, it's definitely a physical creature. I think,
Speaker 1: physical creature that can do stuff that science has no
Speaker 1: idea how to explain it. So some people say that's
Speaker 1: a cop out, but I think that it's not too
Speaker 1: bad of an explanation. That's what I'm thinking right now.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's been my take on it. So my
Speaker 3: word of caution is kind of Bigfoot's been mainstream for
Speaker 3: quite a while and a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Out there looking for it.
Speaker 3: My experience and run ins with these things, last thing
Speaker 3: I would do is go out there and start hooting
Speaker 3: and hollering and banging your chest. I think one as
Speaker 3: little as we know about these things, and as intelligent
Speaker 3: as a I presume they are, I think caution should
Speaker 3: be used, especially with small kids and being a father
Speaker 3: of three and camping in remote spots, and we still
Speaker 3: back back quite a bit. I think it's really important
Speaker 3: to keep an eye on this stuff and realize that
Speaker 3: this isn't a zoo, You're in a super rugged wild area.
Speaker 3: If it isn't animals you have to deal with. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's other natural phenomenon like these wildfires. That we're surrounded
Speaker 3: by wildfires, and that's been the norm for quite a
Speaker 3: while up here. And I'm not on the I don't
Speaker 3: s sscribe to the idea that these things want to
Speaker 3: be friendly and want to be seen. I obviously if
Speaker 3: they want to do harm, they have their chances with me,
Speaker 3: and they could have. But the fact matter is it's
Speaker 3: a really thin line from what I experienced to actually
Speaker 3: having physical altercations with them. And I think if you
Speaker 3: do it enough, I think you're going to come across it.
Speaker 3: Like even Ronnie and Dwayne, those guys, they've been dealing
Speaker 3: they've been experiencing this for decades, and you see all
Speaker 3: uncomfortable they can get in those experiences.
Speaker 2: That should show you.
Speaker 3: So the people that are out there that think that
Speaker 3: these things want to sit down and enjoy their campfire
Speaker 3: with them, I think they need to understand that these
Speaker 3: are wild animals. We know very little about them, and
Speaker 3: they're unpredictable.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Kevin, thank you so much again for your invitation
Speaker 1: to come out to your property and hopefully I'll be
Speaker 1: able to continue conversation in the future.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, Thanks thanks for taking time out to interview me.
Speaker 3: This is the first time I've made any officials on it.
Speaker 2: So look forward to.
Speaker 3: Some of your podcasts coming from this area, especially you
Speaker 3: know your earlier or late last week stuff. I think
Speaker 3: that'd be really interesting. I don't know how much you're
Speaker 3: going to put out there.
Speaker 1: The following audio shares what happened immediately after this interview
Speaker 1: in Oakridge. We're in a bit of an issue. When
Speaker 1: I went in the woods Thursday, I thought I got
Speaker 1: horse fly boats, but I thought I got horsefly bites.
Speaker 1: They've escalated into what the Wilderness Guide says. Wilderness Guide
Speaker 1: I interviewed this morning for the podcast says I potentially
Speaker 1: have staff infections in both of my legs. The one
Speaker 1: small doctor's office in Oakridge has said I need to
Speaker 1: immediately go out to urgent care in Springfield, Oregon. Supposed
Speaker 1: to be flying out tomorrow, so Oakridge is going to
Speaker 1: have to, unfortunately, say goodbye to interviews are not going
Speaker 1: to happen the or the old This sucks. The old
Speaker 1: timers are not going to happen unless I come back tonight.
Speaker 1: But it all depends on what the urgent care says. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I made it up to Springfield, Oregon, went into
Speaker 1: the urgent care per the advice of the Wilderness Guide.
Speaker 1: Thankfully it was not staph infection. However, they have no
Speaker 1: idea what's going on. They say it makes no sense.
Speaker 1: It looks like something hit a log across my two legs.
Speaker 1: They say, there's bruising. It looks like blood is leaking
Speaker 1: out from inside. I have no idea they've did. They
Speaker 1: did a few, did a full barrage of blood testing,
Speaker 1: which they'll be sending directly back to my doctor in
Speaker 1: des Moine. I'm not gonna lie. I'm freaked. I've got
Speaker 1: a fever, a little bit of a fever right now,
Speaker 1: so heed for me to go on antibiotics right away,
Speaker 1: even before the blood tests are back, just in case
Speaker 1: there is some bacterial infection. They're saying some sort of cellulatus,
Speaker 1: one of the causes of which on the paper can
Speaker 1: be high energy raised. I'm headed back to Oakridge. I
Speaker 1: got my two hour interview this morning, but I've fortunately
Speaker 1: had to cancel a few because of this. This health mishap,
Speaker 1: but we are headed back to Oakridge, back to the hotel,
Speaker 1: and then I'll be flying out of Eugene tomorrow and
Speaker 1: then going directly to my doctor. Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: head back to Oakridge. As of time of recording in
Speaker 1: late August twenty twenty four, my legs have completely healed.
Speaker 1: Both doctors in Oregon and Iowa are not quite sure
Speaker 1: or what caused that issue, but we are in a
Speaker 1: great spot healthwise right now. No issues. I'll tell you this,
Speaker 1: next time I got into the woods, I will be
Speaker 1: wearing appropriate attire such as pants and not shorts. Take
Speaker 1: care of yourselves out there, guys, and we'll talk to
Speaker 1: you next time. Please take a minute to help out
Speaker 1: the show by subscribing on YouTube, making sure you hit
Speaker 1: the bell so you don't miss any notifications, and share
Speaker 1: the episode on YouTube with a friend. Also, if you're
Speaker 1: listening to us on a podcast, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: make sure that you're subscribed, share the show with a friend. Really,
Speaker 1: it's all about sharing the show wherever you can. If
Speaker 1: you've had a bigfoot encounter related to the following, or
Speaker 1: know someone who has, please reach out to me at
Speaker 1: Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com or pass on my email.
Speaker 1: Here's the list. If you've had any encounters in Oregon,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure there's probably a few of you out there,
Speaker 1: please feel free to reach out immediately. You can use
Speaker 1: email Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. A special thank
Speaker 1: you to all the big Foot Society, Patreon and YouTube
Speaker 1: channel members. It's your support that helps keep the show
Speaker 1: going and I extremely appreciate it. If you want to
Speaker 1: join in the fun, you can join over at patreon
Speaker 1: dot com. Forward slash the big Foot Society. I'll see
Speaker 1: you there, and again, thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: Her and I can get on here. We can tell
Speaker 2: our stories. Maybe there's somebody else out there listening that's
Speaker 2: too afraid to tell their story. Maybe this will give.
Speaker 1: Them the courage to come out and now feels so
Speaker 1: bad about it.
Speaker 2: Who cares what anybody thinks. I know what I saw,
Speaker 2: I know what's out there. That's all I care about.
Speaker 2: Please let people know, Please let them know.
Speaker 3: If you ever see one of these things, you need
Speaker 3: to tell because if you don't, be
Speaker 1: Shame on you, you know, shame on you.