Tonight's encounter comes to you from long ago.
We're pulling this one out of the vault.
Living in Vancouver puts me within reach of breathtaking rugged wilderness at almost every turn.
British Columbia is a paradise for any lover of the outdoors.
It's also a paradise for Sasquatch.
I'd always heard that, but never gave it much thought.
But that changed one afternoon in August of 2019.
One of my favorite hikes is up to Brunswick Mountain.
Now this hike is a challenge, but the stunning views of How Sound below and all the other surroundings.
Well, they're enough to make your jaw drop and your heart skip a beat from the beauty, and it's all worthwhile.
On the weekends, the trail that goes up to Mt. Brunswick and Mt. Harvey is almost never empty.
Now during the weekdays, well, that's a different matter. It's a lot less traveled.
Turned out one week, I had time off in the middle of the week, so I drove up to Brunswick Beach and made my way to the trailhead.
The first part of the climb is relatively easy from an elevation climb standpoint.
There are several switchbacks that help you make a gradual lateral climb without too much effort.
I was coming up to the spur that takes you to Mt. Harvey, and I encountered a group of five hikers that were coming down the trail towards me.
They were all smiles, happy, and relaxed.
We nodded, said hello as we passed, but otherwise did not speak.
Passed the spur over to Mt. Harvey, there are two mountain streams flowing down to How Sound below.
This is a natural hollow dip between the two mountains, but I wouldn't call it a valley floor.
I came up to the first creek and off to my ride at some distance of some 30 or more meters.
I was shocked and surprised to see a tall, human-like outline moving quickly between the trees.
It's a long arm swung back and forth as it took wide strides covering great ground in a short time.
At that time I didn't believe that the creature had seen me, but given later events, I do believe that it did.
I believe it was going ahead to ambush me, but we'll get there.
I stopped in my tracks on the trail.
I waited, watched, and listened.
I was disbelieving of what my eyes had just seen and what my brain was trying to identify it as.
I wasn't panicked or fearful at that time.
I didn't believe in a sask watch, and I would have to do that for any of those things to happen.
I was calm and questioning.
I tried to observe it as long as I could before it was lost in the horizon of tree trunks.
I looked around, half expecting someone to jump out from behind a tree and yell that it was a great joke,
and they had played a good prank on me, and they got it all on film.
That I looked around, and all I heard was the sound of a normal forest and the wind as it went through the trees.
I still am unable to explain what exactly was going through my mind right then.
It wasn't shock, exactly.
It was more of an unwillingness to allow that it was a sask watch that I had really seen.
I did not believe in such things.
I started out by telling you that one of the perks of living in Vancouver is the proximity to incredible wildernesses,
and I have taken full advantage of that perk since I moved here with my parents when I was 12 years old.
Now whether it was with my father, my uncles, or a church group or some other entities,
or just a group of friends as I got older, I can honestly tell you that I can account for hundreds of days and nights
spent in some very far-flung remote areas of British Columbia,
and quite a few more down in the northern parts of the 48.
And in all that time I have never had a moment's unease caused by a sight or sound that I couldn't firmly place
in the normal scientific world.
But what I had just seen didn't exactly fit in the normal scientific world.
I was still calm but I felt my heart beating faster,
and I now had a bit of sweat on my upper lip that had nothing to do with the climb that I'd been making.
I stood there for a few minutes, letting that natural world around me continue on
while I struggled to work through what I had just seen.
Now seeing it at 30 or maybe 40 meters doesn't seem very momentous,
not when I say it like that anyway.
But the way it felt, well it was like a kind of being Roger Patterson or maybe Bob Gimlin at Bluff Creek.
Only mine wasn't seen in an open creek area, and I didn't have a camera.
Yes, their encounter was much closer and definitely more definable.
But the surprise of running into something like that, well it felt the same to me as I imagine it
must have felt to them. I was still not ready to admit that I had just seen a sask watch,
and after a few minutes I told myself it was some trick of the eye with the sunlight filtering
down through the trees. I had seen something else that the sunlight and the shadows and the
distance had made me think I was seeing something else. In hindsight it's really quite amazing
the things that you can convince yourself. Why didn't I turn around right then?
Well I can't explain that other than I didn't believe that I had seen a sask watch.
It was headed off to the right of me, while the trail I knew would be heading straight
and up to the left a bit, and then it would curve after the second mountain stream.
I felt we were going in opposite directions. Little did I know.
After waiting those few minutes and seeing and hearing nothing more, I continued on on the trail.
I breathed in deeply, walking a steady pace to slow my pulse, all the while coming up with all
sorts of things that I could have maybe seen, not what I thought it was, and some of those things
were pretty ridiculous, but none some ridiculous to me as a sask watch.
I got to the second stream and I decided it was time for a rest.
The most difficult part of the trail I knew was right ahead of me.
The closer you get to the summit, the more it becomes slippery shale and tumbling rocks,
and between where I was and that point, well it was some stiff elevation climb.
There were times it felt more like mountain climbing than mountain hiking.
So I took this break time to get the trekking poles off my back, unfold them and extend them.
I knew I would need them the further up I went.
Why it was that I deliberately chose to stop there and to stay for a bit?
Well, that's still something of a mystery to me.
Knowing myself, though, I think my subconscious was forcing me to stay in that area,
to confront or disprove what I thought I had seen.
Maybe it was a way to prove to myself that it had been nothing at all.
I guess I'll never really know because it turned out it was something after all.
And I was about to get a look at it.
I was sitting, leaned up against a tree, just a few meters from the stream.
I was ready to get up and start the trail again, and I leaned slightly over to my right to pick up
my water bottle that I had just sat down next to me a moment before, only to discover that it had
fallen and rolled a little bit away from me. I had leaned over and was reaching out to get it
when bang! I felt small bark chips and a good-sized rock rained down on my shoulder and my left arm.
Instinctively, I sat up wondering what had just happened?
I thought maybe something had fallen down from the tree, so I looked up.
Then I start to stand up, and I sidestepped the tree and stood away from it so I could look up at it.
When another large rock pounded against the tree at head height, exploding more small bits of bark.
In a split second, I saw the mark that had just been made and the one that was lower from it.
Right where my head had been. Someone was targeting my head with very large rocks.
I was not connecting this with what I had recently seen. It would seem improbable,
especially when I wasn't a believer in Sasquatch. To my way of thinking there was some crazy
person out here targeting hikers. That made more sense to me than Sasquatch trying to bring me with a
rock. I got behind the tree that I had just been sitting against. My heart was pounding now.
"Who would want to hurt me and why?" I had nothing of value with me.
There were a stream of questions and answers and thoughts that ran through my mind.
My pack, my trekking poles, and those were all on the ground on the other side of the tree.
I crouched low and took a peek around the tree, then reached out for my pack.
Only to have another rock knick the side of the tree where my head had just been before I pulled my
pack and my head back around to the back side of the tree. If I had had any doubts before,
they were now gone. I was being targeted. Specifically, my head was being targeted,
and the thrower had a powerful and fairly accurate aim. I couldn't reach my trekker poles,
but I no longer cared. I didn't care if I left those, those were replaceable.
My only thoughts were centered on getting back down to the trailhead to my car.
I had nothing stronger than bear spray on me, which was one of the reasons I chanced it to get my pack.
Well, that and my keys were inside the pack, as was my phone, although I knew the phone was useless
in that area. It hit me very hard that someone was, presumably, trying to kill me,
or at the very least, incapacitate me. Like a candle flame coming to life, I then thought of what I
had seen a half hour before, and the ideas sparked to life in my mind that they were somehow connected,
that it might be what I had seen. After all, I still have believed that it was a prankster,
another hiker, or something plausible along that vein. But if so, why would they want to hurt me?
Slow and powerful were the sounds I now heard of something large forwarding the stream.
I heard the rocks clatter and shift as it came to the bank. I swallowed my fear, got to my feet,
and flipped up the safety guard over the thumb depression of my bear spray. Whatever it was,
it was coming straight for me, and I could only assume it meant to finish the job.
The light breeze came from my back, so I was in the perfect position if I needed to use the bear spray.
I stayed behind the tree as much as I could, then I leaned out and pointed the bear spray.
This is the moment where panic and shock could have been the end of me if I had faltered.
You hear and read about how big or powerful a sask watch is, but nothing prepares you for the reality.
It was within 15 or 20 meters of me, and it was closing the distance fast.
This was a mammoth-sized sask watch. I presume it was a male, but I have no proof.
Full black hair, deep set eyes, and a towering, powerful height.
I had little time to take in more than those details, and I let loose with the bear spray.
My bear spray had a 30-foot range I knew, but with the breeze, it carried it forward,
and with the strong stride of the sask watch they met in the middle as it walked toward me.
There was a sudden gagging, shrieking sound. I saw the sask watch blindly wave its arms around
like it was looking for an opponent to attack. That opponent, of course, would have been me,
but I wasn't staying there any longer than necessary.
I hit the trail at a dead run. I didn't know if I could outrun a sask watch,
but I knew I wanted to get as much distance between us as I could.
My mind kept blinking out as I ran. All I could think of was one foot to the next, to the next, to the next.
I kept thinking this is not real. This isn't happening. This isn't possible.
I kept thinking this is going to be on the news later tonight because somebody pulled a prank,
and they then ended up in a hospital from burns to their eyes from a direct hit from bear spray.
But there was also a running theme whispering under all of those thoughts that I had just come up
against a sask watch, one that had tried to kill me with rocks thrown at my head.
But I couldn't think of that at that time. It was just too much to process.
It was only later that I began to give this some real thought, and I will share those thoughts with you,
but for now I want to finish telling you what happened.
I crossed that first creek, and I thought I had put enough distance between us,
and I was getting tired for sure. I am used to elevation climbs and challenging hiking,
but this is not the same as being a long distance runner. I was slowing to a jog by then,
but I made myself keep going. I was probably a half kilometer from the creek area,
and I was coming up to the first switchback, then and only then did I feel I could start to slow down.
I was flooded with adrenaline still, but it was beginning to fade.
I no longer heard the creature behind me, so I felt safe, but how wrong I was.
I had stopped to get my phone out to check for a signal. I had a very weak signal,
not enough to get a call out to complete. So I started walking.
And I suddenly heard a twacking sound behind me.
I rolled around, and there was one of my trekking poles sticking up at an odd angle in the dirt wall
side on the trail. It had thrown my trekking pole like a javelin. I looked back, frantically looking
for the sask watch. It had to be close, but I couldn't see it. I put on a burst of speed which could only
have been possible because of another flood of adrenaline. The mortal human in me, though,
was getting close to giving out adrenaline or no adrenaline. The only thing that saved me was going
down in elevation. If I had been going up still, well, I don't want to imagine that.
I looked back several times, and on the fourth or fifth look back, it was there on the trail behind me.
Once again, it was closing the distance alarmingly fast. I'd like to tell you that the face was all
puffy and the eyes were amassed from the spray that I had really deltied a blow back there.
But I couldn't tell anything like that. It just looked like a massive oversized human-shaped black
fur barreling down the trail toward me. It wasn't running exactly. It was more like a speedwalk.
I missed the area with me again with bear spray, and then I turned and ran.
I heard it shrieking pain immediately when it hit that misty cloud that was hanging over the trail.
By then my legs were true rubber, and my lungs were on fire, and I really couldn't think clearly
for the pounding of fear in my head. But I ran. I ran until I honestly could not run anymore.
By the time I made it down to the trailhead, I was a mess up quivering jelly.
I had pushed my body to levels that I didn't know it could achieve. I don't think I've ever had such a
sustained release of adrenaline in my life, and coming down from that kind of adrenaline rush,
well that's no fun. On the way down, I did pass a couple that was on their way up.
I tried to tell them not to go up, but I guess I was a mess in shaking and hard to understand.
They saw that I had a bear spray in my hand, and I think they assumed that it was a bear that I
had encountered, and that's what I was trying to warn them against. They assured me they would be fine.
They've dealt with bears before, and they both showed me their spray.
They said they'll take a break right there and give it some time to move on.
Nothing I said could convince them to not go further.
Truthfully, I was too terrified to stay there any longer with them, and continued to try to
convince them. I even said the word "saskwatch." I did. I told them it was a saskwatch and not a bear.
The looks on their faces and their patronizing words and tones told me I wasn't going to waste
any more time with them. When I got down to the trailhead, I did try to report what happened.
And you can guess how that went. Again, I finally said the word "saskwatch."
And again, it did not go well. I broke off making the report, and I told them I guess I was mistaken.
They asked, superstitiously, about the substances that I might be carrying or have used.
I let them go through my pack to show them there was nothing there, and there wasn't.
Well, I was still shaking by the time I arrived home. But once in the safety of my home,
with the late afternoon sunlight coming in through the windows and the sound of traffic and people
just outside, well, what had happened to me earlier that day seemed more like a movie that I had seen
rather than something I had experienced. I mentioned that I have a lot of thoughts on what happened
that day, and that I would share them with you. So here it goes. Some of the things that have struck
me while learning about saskwatch and the history of events surrounding it has led me to tangential
side subjects that most people will eventually come upon if you do enough searches on the subject of
saskwatch, namely missing people. My personal theory is that saskwatches will often use a rock to kill
or at least stun their prey, whether that prey is human or some other animal. I am no expert on
primitive peoples or their skill levels and what they knew at different times during evolution.
But I must believe the discovery of a headshot with a heavy rock was a very useful hunting technique
and that it came to those people rather early in evolution. I believe this is what has happened to
so many missing people, including hunters. They never see that rock coming. Even if it doesn't kill
them outright, a rock to the head will stun them or knock them unconscious, and that makes it easy
to drag them away or carry them away. There is no blood at the scene usually where they have been
taken. There are no sounds, there is no yelling, they are just taken, and no one is the wiser.
The rocks thrown that day were being thrown by a very powerful arm, powerful enough to make the
bark of a tree explode when hit. I've since tried to recreate that by just throwing a heavy stone
at a tree with everything I've got. I only make the bark fly with something that increases the
velocity of the stone, such as a wrist rocket with a smaller stone. I can't begin to calculate the
force and strength that a stone roughly the size of a baseball or larger wouldn't need to recreate
the same bark flying on impact and leaving the same deep wound in a tree. I've also been interested
in native accounts of Sasquatches through the years. Many, both here in Canada and down in the United
States, say they are violent and that they have a history of hunting and maybe eating humans.
My question is, if any of their accounts detail how they hunt and kill them, I can't find any that
explicitly say. If anyone listening has heard of how the native said Sasquatches killed people,
please speak up and let me know. I really do want to know. You know what I think? I think stones have
been around long before humans, of course, and a stone was surely the first murder weapon in history.
I think it's still in use by Sasquatches today. I also think the rock to the head attack fits a lot
of the strange missing person scenarios. You know, no one hears the rock that hit the last person
in the group on the trail. That hunter, glassing down an area, he never sees or hears that rock smashing
him from the side or from behind. One powerful rock throw, that could explain a lot of bloodless
disappearances where all of their things were left behind. It does make me wonder.
I have not gone back up that trail since. I probably never will. I also never hike alone now,
although I do hike still quite a bit, and I always have a satellite phone with me now.
I survived that day. I feel like someone who walked away from a huge auto accident that killed
everyone else and should have killed me. At there I am, walking free. It's a strange feeling.
I wanted to share this for others to be aware, and to hear what others might know and what they
think on this. I am genuinely interested. Do you think that Sasquatches kill people with headshots
with rocks? I do. Thank you. Signed J.W. You've been listening to The Buckeye Bigfoot Podcast.
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