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You can call me Aaron. I live in the East Cootnays, British Columbia, Kimberly Way. I spend

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my free time hiking the spurs at climb out of the St. Mary Valley. I'm not a researcher,

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or a hunter, and I'm not some proof-it-on camera kind of guy. I do carry a little point and

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shoot for some pictures of larches in the fall, and for the goats when they'll pose for me.

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But that's about it. I do listen to your show though when I'm out-sending boards in the garage.

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But my goodness, I never thought I'd be riding you. If you went the short of it before the long,

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I saw a tall, broad-shouldered figure step onto a switchback cut above St. Mary Creek at about

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30 yards. I stood there long enough for it to turn broadside, and it gave me a long stare.

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Then a bit later, a pine cone landed square between my boots, like it was sending me some kind of

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message. Well, that was the short of it. Now here's the long of it. This was the second week of

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September last year. We'd had a warm day in a cooler evening was settling in. It was one of those

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evenings where the shade goes navy a half an hour before the sun actually drops, and you can smell

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the resin seeping out of the fur trees where the sun had baked them all day. My hiking partner that day

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was my neighbor and good friend, Evan. He's in his early 40s like me, walks with a quiet, long stride,

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and he knows the difference between a black bear that wants your lunch and a black bear that wants

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to make you lunch. He's a steady and trustworthy hiking companion, and we've hiked together for years.

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That day we took a trail that switched backs above the river for maybe a mile and a half before

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cutting over to a viewpoint rock. The path is single track, packed dirt, used heavy by bike riders

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as much as us hikers, and every few turns there's a guard log that's been pegged into the outer edge,

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so you don't accidentally step off and go rolling down the slope. You can hear St. Mary Creek through

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the trees most of the way. Sometimes it's just a faint trickle that you hear. Other times it's close to a

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roar. We had that nice quiet that you get when you've already done all the conversation up front,

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and now you're just walking. Maybe 20 minutes from the car, we came into the first long switchback

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that holds a straight shot for 40 yards before turning. There's a cut bank on the uphill side

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where roots hang out like some old witch's fingers, and there's a view off the downhill side where

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you can glimpse the river when the trunks line up just so. I was in the lead. I had just come

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around the corner into the straight when the air shifted. It's a difficult thing to describe,

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but there was a heavy feeling suddenly in the air. I don't have a better way to describe it.

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The path ahead darkened in a way that wasn't cloud or shadows from the trees. It was suddenly different,

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that's all I can say. I was looking right at that when something stepped out of the uphill timber

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and stood on the cut just off the trail. I stopped cold. Evan walked right into my backpack and

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muttered, "Sorry, on reflex." I might have opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

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I was staring ahead at what was standing maybe 30 yards out from us.

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It stood where the brush thinned at the outer edge of the cut,

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not in the trail beside it, like it had been just above us, and took a single step down to get a

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better look at us. The first thing my brain saw was the shoulder line, level and wide,

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looking like the top of refrigerator. The second thing were the arms. They hung lower than

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any ones I've ever seen, long enough that the hands came well below the middle of the thigh.

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It was heading to dusk, but we still had perfect visibility. We didn't have our head lamps on

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though, but if they had been on, I'm sure we would have gotten some eye shine from it.

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Evan, always cool as a cucumber, had looked around me by them and had seen what was up ahead.

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And what does he do? Evan talks to it, like he just ran into somebody he knew from school while

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out grocery shopping. "Hey, fella," Evan said. It did not answer. It did not look amused.

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It stared at had longer than it needed to if it was going to reply, which of course I knew it wasn't

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going to do. Then it turned its upper body, the whole torso, not just the head, and it brought that

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big chest a degree more square to us. It looked like it swayed left to right, but now I really think it

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was just settling its feet more firmly on the cut after it turned its body. And the next thing,

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well, it was so fast, I barely saw it, but it launched a pine cone at me. I guess it had had it in

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its hand already, but that pine cone landed right between my boots. I looked down at it, then back up

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the thing standing out there on the cut. And space was darker, and it seemed to be angry,

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though I can't tell you exactly what I saw that made me think that, you know, 30 yards is a pretty

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good distance. Evan says that something changed in the posture. Maybe so, but whatever it was,

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I got the hint. It was not happy to see us. "Okay," I said out loud. I guess I was taking a leaf out of

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Evan's book. I kept my eyes on it, and I think the stance and posture was what I was reading,

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because the bad vibes that I was getting before intensified. A low woof came then. It was close mouth

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from the thing out there on the cut. It wasn't a growl. It wasn't a bear huff that says, "Back up,

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buddy." Now this was something else. I felt it more than I heard it. The same way you feel a truck go

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by when you're standing under a bridge. I'm not special, so my brain did the exact same dance

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that everyone else does. Guy in dark clothes? No, no shoes or boots. Big guy maybe? Now this is too

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big. A bear of some kind? No. Bears don't stand and walk like that, and they don't throw pine cones.

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A cow elk maybe standing funny? I'll don't be silly. Wrong shape, wrong smell,

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and because there was a smell now, drifting downhill, musky and damp. It wasn't so bad that I couldn't

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stand it, but I sure wouldn't want to carry that scent home. Evan said very evenly,

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"We're going to keep walking. We see you." I wanted to ask Evan if he was crazy,

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but he stepped around me and started walking slowly and evenly. Against my better judgment,

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I followed and I angled to try to be as shoulder to shoulder with him as best as I could.

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I thought this is crazy. We're going to be killed. It was on par of walking past a hungry male lion

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with big old chunks of steak and roast hanging off of you. We took a few steps, and it took a step back.

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It watched us all the way. As we got closer, it had given us the space of its arms reach, which wasn't

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nearly enough for my liking, but Evan kept going. I did not want to. As we got closer,

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I got a better look at that face, and I'm sorry I did. It was like dark hatred and malevolence.

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It was staring hard. The whole time I'm thinking, "This is crazy. We are going to be killed,

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but I kept following Evan anyway." The closer we came to it, the less I looked at its face.

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When I did, it made a growling sound, so I thought maybe that wasn't something it liked,

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so I didn't do it. We came even to it, and we kept walking. That close to it, that musky smell was almost

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overpowering, and I held my breath, but I also held my breath because I was terrified.

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Terrified, I tell you. I wanted to run to get past it, to get away from it,

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but there was Evan setting the pace, and I stayed with him.

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We walked past it, and the heat and the weight of its stare felt like a physical thing,

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but we kept walking. Every second I thought, "This is my last step," and then we were past it,

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and we kept walking. When we reached the end of that straight, I deliberately did not look over my

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shoulder. Every hair on my neck was standing up. Every instinct I had told me to turn around and put

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eyes on it, and don't take your eyes off of it, but I didn't. He was at that point I began to feel shaky.

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I hadn't before, and I guess of adrenaline, or maybe shock, maybe both. We made the turn into the next

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switchback. The sound of our boots hitting the trail sounded way too loud for how careful we were

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trying to be. I don't know if ten seconds or a minute passed, time had turned into a spiral,

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but somewhere between those two numbers, we heard it move above us. It wasn't crashing around like

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it was coming after us. What we heard were distinct sounds, a single step, a movement of a single branch,

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a second later, those sounds would repeat. It was moving in a path. The path we were on takes an

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S-curve, and then holds another long straight with a guard-log on the downhill edge, where a washout

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almost happened a few years back. The timber tracks above that stretch pretty clean for twenty yards

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before the furs and the large close in again. Halfway along that straight, a feeling like a shadow you

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just can't shake came over us. We both felt it. I looked at Evan and he looked at me. We didn't speak,

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we didn't have to. We knew. And there it went and did it again. It stepped down again out of the

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uphill and on to the cut closer to us this time. Thirty yards before, now twenty, maybe less.

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Same shoulder line, same long arms, same dark malevolent face and menacing posture.

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Taking a hint from Evan earlier, I just said, "Hey there, we're gonna keep walking."

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It stared at us and said nothing but took the step back. We took the hint and passed slow.

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The slope dropped their hard to our right toward the river, and there was a moment when I thought,

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maybe I should just go on down that side, sliding all the way if I had to. That was a plan even

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while I was thinking about it. But I considered it because I just wanted this over and I really

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didn't want to get close to that Sasquatch again. Evan, who hadn't put his hands anywhere near his

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fair spray or the small belt knife that I know he carries, just put his left hand on my pack strap,

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like we were connecting trains in kindergarten again, and we moved together like that.

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So we didn't miss a step or do something that our feet would have to correct later.

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As we came even to the Sasquatch, it did that torso turn thing again. Not a head turn,

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the whole body movement, the right arm hung just a little forward.

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The hand opened and closed just once, not like a threat, but the way someone with arthritis stretches

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their hands. And I saw the skin of the palm. If I call it skin, it looked pale against the hair

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in that low light. The way your palm looks pale when you hold it near a campfire. It wasn't shiny,

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it was matte, like old leather. We walked. I'm not embarrassed to say that my mouth went

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dry. Just as before, it gave us just enough space to get by, but I felt the heat in the weight of

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its stare. At the next turn we both exhaled like we had just narrowly escaped with our lives from

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missing a horrible car accident. This time I gave into my urge and I looked back. It had stepped off

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the cut and back up into the trees again. For about three heartbeats my couldn't pick it out from

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all the tree trunks, then I saw it. It was still watching us. I wanted all of this to end,

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but I knew running was the wrong idea. Me and Evan whispered between us a few times,

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telling each other things like, "Keep cool, we're getting through this," things like that.

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But the fact was, we had picked up our pace. We weren't running. It was more of a very fast walk,

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like some mall walkers on speed, but we did not run. In about five minutes after that,

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call it, two switchbacks a later. We heard two knocks. They were down the valley from us,

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not uphill, but there was no mistaking these sounds. Hollow, like someone hit a dead snag with

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another piece of wood. Ten seconds apart, I counted. If anyone wants to say, "Oh no, those were

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woodpeckers." I'll nod for a manor's sake, and then I won't tell you to go on up there,

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and you can hear it for yourselves, because a woodpecker goes tap, tap, tap. This was a single knock

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that happened twice, spaced just so. Evan said, "Ah, there's a second one." He said it,

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"Like I couldn't figure that out for myself, but I'll forgive him." It was stressful on both of us.

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We kept moving. We came to a spot where the trail corkscrews around a tree that grew into the cut

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when the trail builders were still kind enough to go around it, instead of through it.

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The bark on that tree is rough and furrowed. On the uphill side, seven feet off the ground,

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a long piece of bark hung, peeled down as if someone had grabbed it and snapped it back.

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I could see fresh wet sap at the tear, brightest tears, the faltering light hitting it just right

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to make it shimmer. A hair or two was caught on the jagged edge. I could just see them.

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They looked coarse, dark. Maybe four or five inches long. They were kinked a little bit, though not quite

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curly. We did not touch that hair. We saw it, but we kept moving. We did, however, mark the spot in our

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heads, though we didn't know exactly why at the time. The last half kilometer or so to the car

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is a gentler walk, and I had this little hope that we were going to make it there with no other

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encounters with the thing that I knew to only call Sasquatch. At the second last, which

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back, the trail widens, and there's two guard logs side by side. There's dirt on those logs most

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of the season. Bikes will skim it, boots scuff it, but it's always a thick layer there that you

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can write in if you drag your finger along. And that's what I did with my eyes. I looked along that

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layer of dirt. Something had left a large smear there. Might have been the Sasquatch? Might not have been,

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but it looked like a palm print that had smeared, leaving a trailing of a thumb along with it.

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I was tempted to reach out and put my hand there. It was in exactly the spot you would put your

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hand in if you steadied yourself to go over those two logs. But who in their right mind would go

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over those two logs? I had stopped and was reaching out when Evan said, "Don't, keep going."

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He said it softly, but it was more of a command, not a request kind of tone. I pulled my hand back,

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looked at Evan and I thought, "Well, he's been right about everything so far, so maybe he knows

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some things about this creature that I don't. Think I better to listen to him."

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And so we kept walking. Right before the trail head, there's a little bench of rock where you can

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stand and see the sky and the river. We stopped there, mostly out of habit, and we had a feeling

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we were finally done with this. We were past all of what had gone before. But not quite.

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From down valley, not far, maybe 200 yards, maybe three, came a soft, closed mouth sound like a strange

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of long hum. I have never heard anything like that before then, and nothing like it since,

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and I've searched the whole internet, and I've come up empty. All that was enough for us.

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We walked to the car and got in. We sat there with the doors closed,

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but we didn't start it for a minute or two, as we waited for our breathing to slow again.

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And truthfully, I was shaking a fair bit. I don't like saying it, but I was. My mind was all over the

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place, and I needed to get it together before I got out on the road. Once I felt steady and had

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normal breathing again, I surprised myself by saying, "We're going back for that hair."

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I expected Evan to protest. Heck, I wanted to protest myself. But instead, Evan looked at me

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and slowly nodded. Later, I would find out he was thinking the exact same thing at that time.

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We needed to get that hair. But first, we had to do something. We drove the five minutes to my place,

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and we grabbed a few things. We grabbed some cleanser block bags and some tape. We went straight back.

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Dusk was now putting its foot down pretty heavy by then. We walked in with our headlamps on,

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but kept them on low and pointed down. We didn't want to turn everything in front of us into a wall of

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white glare. We made past time getting there. The peeled place on the bark was right where it had been.

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The hair was still there. Two strands. Evan pulled out a very long piece of tape, long enough

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that we could use the untouched middle only. He handed it to me, making sure we only touched it at

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the outer edges. I laid the tape over the longest hair, lifted it, and folded the tape in half.

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Again, keeping the edges we touched far away from the middle. Then I dropped it into the zip block

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bag that Evan held open at the edges. Then we repeated it again for the second long hair.

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Could it have been from a bear? Yeah, it could. I do know bear hair tends to be hollow under a microscope,

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but I also knew we didn't have a microscope there, and I wasn't trusting whatever I might find out

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on the internet about how to tell Sasquatch hair from a bear's hair. We got those, and we made past

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tracks out of there, expecting a visit from Mr. Ugly Sasquatch at every second. He did not show,

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though, thankfully. We put the bag with the hairs in my glove compartment, and later I handed it to

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a friend who teaches biology at a college. He ran out of favors long before he ran out of curiosity

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with that, and all we ever learned was, unknown primate, or they simply couldn't identify it at all.

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They were told it wasn't something local labs like to put on email, and I don't blame them.

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The next day in daylight I went back alone. I wanted to see the two places on the trail again,

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and to make sure the evening light hadn't tricked my perspective. There wasn't much to find.

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On the outer edge of the trail below a set of guard logs, right, where the slope starts,

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I found a single deep heel impression. Not a full-foot, just the back half, where something heavy

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stepped on the firm or bit before the dirt gives. The sides of the heel were sharp, not crumbled,

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like the step was clean and lifted straight, instead of twisting itself out.

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I set my hand alongside. My hand didn't make a dent, and I knew it wasn't from a shoe or a boot.

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I also looked where that first cone had landed. You can tell yourself a thousand stories after

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something happens. You can twist the events and make yourself believe anything you want.

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But I stood where I had been the day before. I looked up along the trajectory that a

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cone would need to randomly fall to hit where it did. Yes, there was a path clear enough that

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maybe some long, overreaching limb lost a single pine cone, and it happened to just come down where

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my boots were. But that didn't explain that I actually saw the throw. I honestly tried to look for

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other scenarios there to explain things, but I couldn't find any. People will ask, "Why didn't we

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call the CEOs, the conservation officers, or the RCMP, or the park?" Because I don't think

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laws were being broken. And I don't think a man in a uniform would have found a subject willing

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to offer its ID. I also didn't want to watch a crew with telephoto lenses and long hashtags.

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Turn a quiet enough place into an internet argument. I like the St. Mary Valley the way it is,

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a place you can leave other people behind. For folks who believe, and for folks who don't.

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Here's how I want you to hear what it is I'm saying. I wasn't primed for these encounters that day.

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I wasn't on some Sasquatch form for weeks before that. I wasn't manifesting this to happen.

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All I was doing that day was walking to see the river and to stretch my legs as I had done

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many, many times before. But that day something tall, broad, quiet, and more than a little minising

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step down to take a look at us on a switchback. And miraculously it let us pass. A cone landed

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between my boots. We heard two knocks. We heard a strange echoing hum. And I brought home two

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strands of hair that sure weren't mine or Evans. Fear is a word that conveys too many kinds of feelings.

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I wasn't terrified the way you are when a car hide replays and you suddenly relive your whole life

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in about three seconds. I was careful that day. Deliberate and slow. There are little details that people

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always want. So let me put some in here in my email and it might be useful just beyond my story.

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Height. I am exactly six foot even. On that cut with the slope it is hard to measure.

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But when it turned square and looked at us the head was above the cut bank behind us.

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That bank stands about seven feet at that point. Add the platform it stood on and subtract the

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slope lies and you're in about seven and a half to eight foot range. Build. Well, it wasn't exactly a

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body builder v-shape. It was more like a wide column with heavy shoulders and a deep chest.

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The waist wasn't narrow like some skinny runner. It was very muscled there though.

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The hips moved like a weight lifters do. Clean, easy and powerful.

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The arms and the hands. The arms hung long enough that while it stood straight the hands were coming

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close to the knee. The palm I saw looked wide. I couldn't see fingernails and I'm not going to

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make up that detail just to impress someone. Hair. Even all over from what my eyes could take in.

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Longer on the four arms and through the shoulder, shorter on the face. And there wasn't hair there

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everywhere as far as I could tell on the face I mean. None on the lips were the eyelids.

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In that light the hair red is a dark brown. When we bagged the strands on the tape they looked dark

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brown with a hint of red when the sun touched them. The head and face. Now disappoint anyone who needs

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an in-depth face report. I got the sense of a forward set head and heavy brow ridge because

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well the silhouette didn't show a sharp forehead but I didn't see the rest of it as clear as I would

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have liked. Remember every time I looked directly at it it let me know it didn't like it.

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Most of what I saw were little tiny bits, small quick looks and from my periphery.

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I remember darkness, a lot of dark, dark eyes. The lip and the eyelids were also a dark color

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but I don't think there was hair there but it wasn't all black hair either.

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Well that's as good as it's going to get. Dark, big, hairy and some spots not so hairy.

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I didn't go looking the next night or the next. I did keep walking that trail later in the fall

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and twice since then I've had some small things happen that felt like maybe they were something.

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Once the next month in November a single cone landed in the path again at that same first

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straight section. My heart hit my feet. This time there was no dark shape accompanying it

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and I was thankful because I was alone. I smiled like a dope to nothing and I said, "Okay,"

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I said it real loud because well I'm that kind of person now I guess. I placed the cone on the

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guard log and quickly walked on. Then the month after that in December there was a dusting of snow.

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I found two toe only impressions just at the edge of a cut where the snow was beginning to melt.

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Not a full print just the pad marks and a line where someone would choose soft ground if they

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preferred it. I didn't take a photo because snow and prints there are recipe for interpretations and

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arguments. If anybody listens to this hoping for a big trophy of videos of a cast DNA they're going

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to be disappointed. I brought home the little baggy with the hairs in it as far as I know it still

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sits in my drawer because I really don't want to be the guy who knocks on doors with a baggy like

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somewhere trick or treater. The only reason I even mentioned it here was that if I were listening

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I would want to know if anything was left behind besides a memory and there was and no I'm not going

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to pursue any testing of it. I think that's opening a lot of can of worms.

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For your audience who hike in places like mine maybe this is the part worth hearing.

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I didn't feel hunted. I felt watched measured and after that escorted out.

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We were watched to the point where the trail lets out to semi-civilization and I'm okay with that.

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Now ask for Evan. He seemed to know what to do because he said he'd read on Sasquatch for years.

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I had hiked with him for many many years and I never knew. I never knew he had an interest in Sasquatch

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but it was his belief that talking to them was the way to go. Show respect and they'll let you pass.

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I'm not saying that's the true way of it but he said all the natives he knew told him that.

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And I just can't argue with what happened that day. If you do read this dance I'd ask folks not to go looking

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to corner or lure anything out with food or tricks. You wouldn't like somebody setting traps on your

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front stoop just to prove that you live in your own house would you. I'd like to keep walking that

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switch back and hearing the river and maybe picking a cone off the path now and then and placing it

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somewhere tidy. Kind of like a guest straightens the cushions when they know they were lucky to be invited

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to your house. Thanks for giving me a place to tell all of this. I don't need to be believed by

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anyone who doesn't want to but if there is somebody out there who's walked a switch back with their mouth

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that went dry and a pine cone that landed between their boots and they thought they were alone because

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they didn't get a face or a movie. I want them to hear this and know they're in good company

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when they're out there walking those woods. Signed Aaron, British Columbia.

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You've been listening to The Buckeye Bigfoot podcast. Find more stories, hundreds more

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over on our YouTube channel. Just look for Buckeye Bigfoot.