Speaker 1: It was late in the year and I was a
sixteen year old son of a coal miner and an
avid deer hunter. My father showed me an old wagon
trail that cuts around the top of the mountain, leading
up a couple of miles to an old farmhouse where
the deer hunting was likely to be good. To get
up there, even on my four wheeler, i'd had to
clear the road of small trees. There wasn't much left
of the old farmhouse beyond its stone chimney and foundation,
but I worked hard to clear a path out behind
where three or four apple trees stood in a field,
along with a few other small trees. Back behind that field,
I'd found a really nice deer trail, so I hung
my tree stand there and I left. Deer season was
still a week away. A week later, I was excited
to make the two hour trip up to the old
farmhouse on my four wheeler because of all the good
sign I'd seen when I was up there before. It
was a foggy morning, the kind of heavy fog that
soaks in your clothes. It was so dense I had
to turn my headlights off to see. Once I got
up there, I left my four wheeler at the farmhouse,
and I began my track out to the deer stand
to begin the day. I was halfway to the stand
when I heard something walking in the woodline that ran
down the edge of the field. That fog was really
setting the kind of slasher movie atmosphere that would put
anybody on edge. My vision was extremely limited, so I
took a few more steps and then I stopped. Whatever
it was took about three or four more steps. I
really didn't know what to think about that, so I
just moved on. Forty yards from my stand. I stopped again.
I heard four or five more footsteps before it stopped. Two.
Between the dense fog and my dim flashlight, I couldn't
see much, but I could definitely hear it. I knew
something was out there, so I quickly climbed up into
my deerstand, and not a minute too soon, I could
hear footsteps coming directly at me. As I climbed up
the tree, I was thirty feet off the ground when
I heard it directly below. I felt the thud against
the tree, followed by another that made me think it
was going to climb up after me. I was trying
to get my flashlight out of my pocket and I
was fumbling with it when I dropped it, leaving me
blind and vulnerable to the foggy darkness. Now I could
hear this thing walking around and around my tree, and
I was sure at any moment it was going to
climb up the tree to where I was. So I
got my boat positioned and I was ready to do battle.
My heart was pounding. I had no idea what was
down there or when it was going to come up
to see me. I was poised for action and holding
my breath when the sun broke the horizon, tracing the
line between land and sky and a familiar pink color.
Whatever was at the foot of my tree turned then
and walked down in a hollow somewhere off to my left.
I managed to stay in the tree and hunt all day,
but my mind kept going back to the thing that
I had encountered in the pre dawn. I didn't see
any deer that day, and I stayed until dark, you know,
about the time deer start coming out. I finally had
to accept that there would be no deer that day,
and I got my gear ready for the climb down.
Climbing down, I was eight feet above the ground, and
I heard twigs snapping. Something was coming from the hollow
behind me. Now, while I was still trying to identify
that sound, I saw a large black silhouette run pass
from my right. For a second, I thought it was
coming directly at me, but it wasn't. It was running
straight at the twig snapping thing from the hollow behind me.
They collided like a couple of Titanic football linebackers, slamming
their bodies against each other and exhaling furious roars as
they did so. I couldn't see anything in the dark,
but I could hear as an awful fight ensued. They
were screaming and growling as they threw each other over
the ground, thumping and shaking the earth. Electric tension filled
the air as they regained their footing and charged at
each other again and again, knocking the wind from each other,
slapping at and hitting each other, and then wrestling each
other to the ground again. My harness kept me from
turning around and seeing anything, so all I could do
was listen as the two combatants carried their fight down
into the hollow. I seized the opportunity and grabbed my
tree stand threw it on my back and walked as
fast as I could back to my four wheeler. On
my way back, I began to hear the twig snapping again,
like someone was stomping, but I didn't look back. I
didn't know if the fight was over and the victor
was coming to claim his prize, or if this was
another one altogether. I just knew I needed to get
to my four wheeler and get out of there. It
only took a second to get it fired up, and
I flew down the trail wide open, never looking back.
This is my story. I'm an outdoorsman. I've camped on
that mountain all my life. I'm forty six years old now,
and I know there's something on that mountain. I hope
your listeners will find this story interesting. This is an
email from Crag and here's what he writes. I've included
an encounter that both my son and I had back
sometime on Vancouver Island. I've always been a lover of
the back country, spending every possible moment in the forest.
This passion is the same in my son. Vancouver Island
was so different back then from our home in Langford,
just outside of Victoria. We could escape into the forest
in minutes. Within fifteen or twenty minutes, all indications of
humanity became distant for us. That was paradise. Virtually any
free time we had we were off exploring the amazing wilderness.
A beautiful weekend was forecast during the spring of two
thousand and five. On Friday, I closed down the job
site early, much to the thrill of my guys, and
headed home. Just afternoon. My son Alex had our pathfinder
packed for another weekend in the backcountry. Some extra excitement
for him was that there were no sisters coming this weekend.
They had recently discovered boys and parties. This was great
for them, but the start of my gray hair. No
sisters meant what he called real camping. No showers were required,
sleeping bags on the ground, and staring at the stars.
It was perfect. We took a slow trip up the island,
stopping for ice cream on the way. We made it
past Campbell River somewhere before we decided it was time
to head into the backcountry. A no entry gate appeared
and we squeezed the pathfinder around it and headed down
an old logging road. These were the best roads to travel.
We headed west for a couple of hours bumping and
crawling along the old road that had almost been completely
taken over by mother nature. Two hours before dark, we
came upon a little clearing beside a small creek and
it was perfect. That was home for the night. It
was hot dogs and burghers that night. We told tall
tales well into the night while roasting marshmallows by our
little fire, and later we crawled into our sleeping bags.
Around eleven, I drifted off to sleep, looking at the
sky full of stars and listening to my boy breathing.
Life couldn't have been better. We slept well that night
to a symphony of a forest combined with the background
of a babbling creek. We woke early on Saturday morning.
I'm not sure when, and I didn't care. It didn't matter.
It was cool and crisp. The morning dew was on
our face. There was a slight fog in the air.
The sun still had not crept above the trees in
the east. My son's excitement for the day ahead quickly
brought my Saturday morning burnout body back to life. Kids,
happiness and excitement can be contagious. It wasn't long before
the bacon and eggs were in the pan over the fire.
We even added potatoes and onions to round out the meal.
After we cleaned up and packed our gear away, we
decided some walking was a must. We explored the area
for a couple of hours, coming across an old, long
forgotten railway trestle. It was overgrown with trees brushing grass.
It was tiring, almost fifty feet in the air, and
it came to an abrupt end. It appeared that the
bridge construction had stopped midway. There was no falling section below,
it just stopped. It was a bit haunting, I think,
and my son said, I guess they ran out of money.
I think you're right, son. After getting back to our campsite,
we did another walk around to make sure that we
hadn't forgot something or left any indication that we had
been there, nothing other than footprints, and we were delighted
to see we had a medium sized bear visit while
we were away. It was too bad that we missed it.
We continued on down the island. We hadn't explored that
area before, and we just maintained a western compass heading
that was good enough for us. Lots of cool places
to see. There were huge trees and quiet meadows. We
saw elk and black bear and deer. We ran up
on the remains of what must have been an old homestead.
There was a fieldstone foundation and a fireplace. There were
remnants of rotted old logs and rough song lumber. It
was almost completely lost to mother nature. It was a
typical Vancouver Island adventure. The sun started to sink in
the western sky and we found ourselves creeping along a
trail not quite big enough for our little pathfinder, more
of a large game trail actually. The saplings and brush
being bent over by our bumper and sprang back to
life after our passing. The trail seemed to go on forever.
It must go somewhere, we decided, so we battled on. Besides,
there was nowhere to turn around many areas with steep
drop offs. We broke from the dense brush into a
small clearing and straight ahead. The clearing ended at the
shores of a large lake. By the landmarks that we
could see, I think we were at Lake Kawakan. The
water was calm and flat, and the late day sun
glinted off the water. Here and there the clearing was
surrounded by brush. On three sides. A few feet up
the bank there was old growth fir trees that towered
into the air. They are nature's skyscrapers. The tranquil atmosphere
could mollify the hard soul. We turned the pathfinder around
so it was pointing back up the path. That's anal
I know, but it has saved us on numerous occasions.
We quickly set up camp and we prepped for the evening.
My boy, he found some shotgun nine millimeter and forty
five shells laying around that, along with an overgrown fire ring,
told us that we weren't the first ones to enjoy
this view, but maybe we were the first to get
there that year. It was another great dinner over the fire,
A couple of steaks and some potatoes and onions cooked
in foil with lots of butter, topped off with a
couple of cans of coke for Alex and a seven
up for me. We were overstuffed and a walk was
in order. Alex had seen another path about a mile
back up the trail that headed into the trees. We
had our destinations set. I did have my spidy senses
acting up since we got there. A close bear or
a cougar. I thought that was no problem, nothing we
hadn't dealt with before. So I took my knife in
a can of bear spray. I hung them off my belt,
and we headed out. Alex had a superpower, as do
most kids his age. He could talk for hours NonStop
without taking a breath. That evening was no exception. We
made our way back up the path. We were laughing
and joking and teasing each other as always. It was
great fun. He was right. It was close to a
kilometer and we came to a break in the brush
off to our left, seeming to be more of a tunnel,
and it was about six feet wide and seven feet tall.
And I followed the boy in Hey, slow down, wait
for me, I said. We traveled about fifty feet into
this thick tunnel, and it was dark and it had
an ominous feel to it. Alex, wait the hell up,
I said. I ran forward to catching and I just
about fell over him at the end of the tunnel.
He had stopped dead in his tracks. Looking up from him,
I was treated with old growth firs right up to
the shoreline. Tree trunks that were easily two to three
feet around. The first branches were twenty feet up, and
they twisted and entangled into the full canopy. Moss hung
from the lower branches, swaying in the breeze. There were
large ferns, some up to six feet tall, that spotted
the ground amidst the occasional boulder or fallen tree. The
same sparkling lake off in the background, and the round
sun settling behind the trees. It was really peaceful. What
the hell is that, he whispered, Watch your language, boy,
I reprimanded him, putting my hand on his shoulder. Though
I felt tension, his muscles seemed tight. He was shaking slightly.
I followed his gaze down to towards the water, and
no more than one hundred feet away, about halfway between
us and the lake shore, was a dark figure standing
out among the greens and browns of the forest. I
thought it was an animal, but I wasn't sure. It
wasn't moving, and it should have been. If it was
an animal, it was watching the lake, and it was
not concerned with us. It had to have heard us.
This kid makes a lot of noise. It was about
five feet tall and four feet wide. It didn't look
like an animal, but if it was an animal, it
appeared to be looking at the ground. I stared for
a few seconds, trying to process what I was seeing,
and I bent over and I whispered in Alex's ears,
it's just a stump, son, Let's go on back. Now.
That is not a stump, Dad, He said, that's a
sasquatch on que. The stump began to rise, and rise
and rise some more. Now it was nine or ten
feet tall. This thing was huge. It had a massive
barrel chest, long, thick arms, and legs bigger around than
my waist. It was completely hair covered. I had spent
most of my free time in the forest and had
never come across anything like that before. To say I
was terrified was an understatement. A chill ran right through
my body and I began to tremble, and I was
almost sure that I was about to lose my bowels.
Coherent thought was completely gone. We both stood frozen in speechless.
It began to swing its body around. It was in
no rush. As it turned to look at us from
this angle, I saw that I was wrong. It wasn't
looking down. Its delts made its neck look nonexistent. It
stared at us for what felt like an eternity, but
was probably only a few seconds. My mind started bouncing
back and forth, trying to figure out how to save
my son and not get us both eaten. Even in
the good physical condition I was in at the time,
I knew that it would end me with a single
swat of its giant arm. It finally made a noise
that I can only describe as being the same as
the raspberries that I would blow on my kid's stomachs.
It turned back and paused, as if it was taking
the lake in one final time. It turned to its
right and slowly walked away, eventually disappearing into the denser forest.
Alex was bouncing off the walls all the way back
to camp Me. I couldn't say a word. I had
seen the Patterson Gimmelin film, and I had watched the
Legend of Boggy Creek at the theater when it came out.
Never ever did I think these things were more than
a Hollywood creation designed to sell movie. When we got back,
I ducked around the truck and I vomited. It took
me a few minutes to collect my composure. Coming back around,
I discovered Alex had already stoked up the fire. It
was a blaze. What are you doing? I said, We're
getting out of here. A lengthy argument ensued. That fire,
the now pitch blackness of the night, the dangerous terrain
we encountered on our way in, and the fact that
the thing did nothing aggressive towards us won over my decision.
We slept in the truck, though, with the seats reclined,
keys in the ignition, or maybe I should say the
boy slept like a rock. I stared into the darkness,
jumping at every noise the whole night. My knuckles were
white from gripping my knife. Dawn finally came. I was
tired and grumpy. I worked with Alex to clean the
campsite and we loaded the back of the Pathfinder, picked
our way along the path around the rocks and stumps,
avoiding the drop offs, finding our way back to the
main logging road, and in a few hours we were home,
just north of Victoria. We quickly discovered that mentioning our
encounter brought laughter and ridicule from others. Things were not
the same back then as they are now. If you
admitted to seeing one of these creatures, you were either
on drugs, drunk, or crazy. Our lives changed that day, though,
we went from non believers to knowers. I started on
a major research program. I absorbed any info that I
could get. I now see some previous strange happenings in
the forest as possible encounters, cryptids and aliens. To me,
none of these subjects were out of the question anymore.
And rather than life and ridicule people, I listened with
great interest to anything anyone had to say, no matter
how far fetched the story was. And yes, some stories
were the result of vivid imaginations. They were good stories, though,
but often bits of one person's stories matched to another,
and then another. It took me a few weeks to
get back into the backcountry again. The passion for exploring
has never eased. Though we now live in the backcountry
of northern British Columbia. My son and I own a
small piece of land far from town. Neighbors are few
and far between, just the way we like it, and yes,
we sometimes hear the now familiar howls and screams of
the beast among the many other forest creatures. At night.
My son came across a bone pile not far from here.
Last year. Some of the local youth get all excited
about a forest game they played called a Sasquatch tag.
I'm looking forward to learning about that. The natives are
always complaining about them peeking in the windows on the reservation.
The general consensus up here is similar to most deep
woods towns. They are here. Leave them alone, and they
will leave you alone. And he signs off. Craig, Man,
who what a great story. I mean, he got the
experience Bigfoot with his son. And what's cool is I
think he said his son was nine years old, was
excited when he saw this thing. I don't know. I
think I would sit there and just watch it. I mean,
if it wasn't coming at me or something, I would
probably feel like his son. I mean would be I
would feel like a little kid. I gotta see this thing.
I gotta see it as long as it's visible. But
I understand Craig was shook up because he had a
son there with him and he didn't know exactly how
this thing was going to go. But what a cool story, man,
What a cool story. And Craig, you said that you
may have some other incidents from where you live now
that you might write at a later date. I would
look forward to getting that because that sounds interesting. Either way.
Is a great story and I really appreciate it, and
thanks for doing such a good job right in it.
I'm from the UK, I'm thirty eight years old, or
I was at the time, and I'm just an average guy.
I got into snowboarding back in the late nineties and
I loved the mountains in the winter. I'd been to
the European Alps many times and also a few times
in Ferny, British Columbia. I wasn't an experienced outdoor man
or anything, but I've always had a good sense of
what is normal and I'm pretty observant. A best friend
of mine and his girlfriend had recently moved to Aspen
for work. I'll not use their real names here, and
at the time they were working illegally. They invited me
over to stay for a few weeks for a snowy break.
It was a week before Thanksgiving in two thousand and seven.
I landed and I hooked up with the couple let's
just call them Ned and Margo, and I stayed at
their house for a few weeks. I started to look
at Aspen Mountain opening times and I realized the mountain
was still closed. I had come out to snowboard, but
I'd be waiting until it was nearly ready to go home.
Don't worry, mate, Ned said, I have a contingency plan.
He had recently bought a snowmobile and also a pickup
truck for his work, so all was going to be okay.
The first day out, we took the snowmobile up onto
the Aspen Ski Area. We parked the truck at the
bottom of the Midnight Mine Road and we used the
snowmobile from there onwards. I think that's the route we took,
looking at Google Earth while I'm writing this. Myself and
Ned were the first to the top, and then we
went back for Margo. The snow was deep and the
mountain was empty. All three of us would use the
snowmobile to hitch back up to the top after each run.
What a stunt placed with no one around. The snow
was above the tops of the shelters, so a good
two meters deep to the top. After a great day
of illegal writing, I know that now, but at the
time I didn't realize it was such a serious offense.
It was starting to get dark, so we set off
back home. Ned would take me halfway down the backside
of the mountain, and then turned around to go collect Margo,
who was waiting at the top. I was dropped off
with the light fading fast on a good straight stretch
of track. It was a half a mile or so long,
and I would ski the rest of the way. This
was a steep run, and there were patches of trees
down the valley on each side. The track came to
a ninety degree right hand turn and down towards a
patch of trees. I came to a turn and went
on my heel edge to stop and observe where I
was going, when in the distance I saw something on
the track in front of me. At a distance of
about a third of a mile, the light was almost
gone now, but I could see something against the white
of the snow covered path. At first I frozed, thinking
it was a bear that was standing straight up, but
quickly I realized that it wasn't moving like some awkward animal.
Then I thought it was a big fellow with a
Crombie jacket with the collars turned up. I don't know
if you know what a Crombie is in the States,
but it's a black wooly jacket that comes to below
your knees. It was made fashionab by the Skinheads and
the criminals of the eighties. I think that due to
the light and the distance, I started to doubt myself.
It was hard to tell the height at this range,
but it was moving pretty quickly, straight up the path
and right at me. Suddenly I was afraid I was
somewhere I had never been before. It was dark, I
had no weapon or no communications. Taken me and ned
about twenty minutes to get to the drop off spot,
and he had turned around to collect Margo, so it
was going to be a while before he got back.
I started to freak out, but I also tried to
keep calm, is not to draw attention to myself. Surely
in this silence something would have heard me scraping my
board and cussing down the track. To this point, I
strained to see what the figure was, and I noticed
the coat wasn't solid. As it started to get closer,
I could see the background through it, or so I thought.
The moonlight was shining on the figure's back, so it
cast a shadow on its front part that I was
looking at. I saw no eye shine, and I detected
no odor. All I could think was I was going
to die. This thing just kept walking straight at me
as it bobbed up and down as it walked, and
swung its arms all the way up the track. It
was moving up to a set of trees to the
right of its position, and then it made a forty
five degree change of course and it walked off the
path into the set of thinly planted trees, and it disappeared.
No sound was made in this action. I stood there
for what seemed like fifteen minutes but was probably more
like thirty seconds before I dropped the snowboard onto the
track and straight lined it passed where I saw the creature.
I did not stop to look for footprints. I was
only interested in getting out of there. Down the valley,
I could now hear dogs barking. When I was a
mile or so further down where the track was leveling off,
and I stopped, I was still in a fight or
flight mode. I removed my board and walked at a
quick pace in the direction of the truck. A minute
or so later, I heard the sound of the ring
ding two stroke motor of the snowmobile. I've never been
as happy to hear the sound of an engine like
this before relief doesn't start to explain the feeling of
safety that came over me. Are you okay? They said
you look a bit piale mate. I didn't say anything
because Ned is a practical guy and he takes no crap,
but he will sure dish it out for a long
wind up. I'll never go back country again without backup
of other people, and I have no desire to go
back to North America to snowboard again. This has played
on my mind for all these years, and I'm kind
of obsessed with the reports. I know there is some
lack of detail in this story, but that's what happened
and nothing more. A quick local holiday is more than
enough for me these days. All the best, Paul, Paul,
you got to come back to North America. Man, you
got to get back on the slopes. The last time
I went skin was out to Tahoe. I won't tell
you about the trip, but it was a disaster. But
every ski trip I've ever taken before that has just
been a blind It's one of my favorite things in
the world to do is to ski, and I love
Breaking Ridge and Copper Mountain. I love Winter Park and
all those parks out in Colorado, and I did try
Tahoe once. Brother, you need to come back and get
on those slopes and snowboard and just do it during
the day, and do it legally during the ski season,
and you'll have a great time because there's hundreds of
people's on the slope and you won't have to worry
about a bigfoot grab and you unless you sail off
into the woods and get off in that real ten
or twelve foot deep powder and you can't get out,
maybe bigfoot will help you out. But I'm just rambling.
I just I appreciate the story, Paul. It's great. And
whenever I hear somebody, you know, stop doing something they
love because of a bigfoot, I'm like, oh no, no,
don't let them ruin your life. Come on back, So
that that's on my mind, Paul. So I hope you
I hope to see you here, and I hope to
hear from you again. Brother. Thanks for a great story.