You can call me Aaron. I live in the East Cootnays, British Columbia, Kimberly Way. I spend
my free time hiking the spurs at climb out of the St. Mary Valley. I'm not a researcher,
or a hunter, and I'm not some proof-it-on camera kind of guy. I do carry a little point and
shoot for some pictures of larches in the fall, and for the goats when they'll pose for me.
But that's about it. I do listen to your show though when I'm out-sending boards in the garage.
But my goodness, I never thought I'd be riding you. If you went the short of it before the long,
I saw a tall, broad-shouldered figure step onto a switchback cut above St. Mary Creek at about
30 yards. I stood there long enough for it to turn broadside, and it gave me a long stare.
Then a bit later, a pine cone landed square between my boots, like it was sending me some kind of
message. Well, that was the short of it. Now here's the long of it. This was the second week of
September last year. We'd had a warm day in a cooler evening was settling in. It was one of those
evenings where the shade goes navy a half an hour before the sun actually drops, and you can smell
the resin seeping out of the fur trees where the sun had baked them all day. My hiking partner that day
was my neighbor and good friend, Evan. He's in his early 40s like me, walks with a quiet, long stride,
and he knows the difference between a black bear that wants your lunch and a black bear that wants
to make you lunch. He's a steady and trustworthy hiking companion, and we've hiked together for years.
That day we took a trail that switched backs above the river for maybe a mile and a half before
cutting over to a viewpoint rock. The path is single track, packed dirt, used heavy by bike riders
as much as us hikers, and every few turns there's a guard log that's been pegged into the outer edge,
so you don't accidentally step off and go rolling down the slope. You can hear St. Mary Creek through
the trees most of the way. Sometimes it's just a faint trickle that you hear. Other times it's close to a
roar. We had that nice quiet that you get when you've already done all the conversation up front,
and now you're just walking. Maybe 20 minutes from the car, we came into the first long switchback
that holds a straight shot for 40 yards before turning. There's a cut bank on the uphill side
where roots hang out like some old witch's fingers, and there's a view off the downhill side where
you can glimpse the river when the trunks line up just so. I was in the lead. I had just come
around the corner into the straight when the air shifted. It's a difficult thing to describe,
but there was a heavy feeling suddenly in the air. I don't have a better way to describe it.
The path ahead darkened in a way that wasn't cloud or shadows from the trees. It was suddenly different,
that's all I can say. I was looking right at that when something stepped out of the uphill timber
and stood on the cut just off the trail. I stopped cold. Evan walked right into my backpack and
muttered, "Sorry, on reflex." I might have opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
I was staring ahead at what was standing maybe 30 yards out from us.
It stood where the brush thinned at the outer edge of the cut,
not in the trail beside it, like it had been just above us, and took a single step down to get a
better look at us. The first thing my brain saw was the shoulder line, level and wide,
looking like the top of refrigerator. The second thing were the arms. They hung lower than
any ones I've ever seen, long enough that the hands came well below the middle of the thigh.
It was heading to dusk, but we still had perfect visibility. We didn't have our head lamps on
though, but if they had been on, I'm sure we would have gotten some eye shine from it.
Evan, always cool as a cucumber, had looked around me by them and had seen what was up ahead.
And what does he do? Evan talks to it, like he just ran into somebody he knew from school while
out grocery shopping. "Hey, fella," Evan said. It did not answer. It did not look amused.
It stared at had longer than it needed to if it was going to reply, which of course I knew it wasn't
going to do. Then it turned its upper body, the whole torso, not just the head, and it brought that
big chest a degree more square to us. It looked like it swayed left to right, but now I really think it
was just settling its feet more firmly on the cut after it turned its body. And the next thing,
well, it was so fast, I barely saw it, but it launched a pine cone at me. I guess it had had it in
its hand already, but that pine cone landed right between my boots. I looked down at it, then back up
the thing standing out there on the cut. And space was darker, and it seemed to be angry,
though I can't tell you exactly what I saw that made me think that, you know, 30 yards is a pretty
good distance. Evan says that something changed in the posture. Maybe so, but whatever it was,
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
Evan's book. I kept my eyes on it, and I think the stance and posture was what I was reading,
because the bad vibes that I was getting before intensified. A low woof came then. It was close mouth
from the thing out there on the cut. It wasn't a growl. It wasn't a bear huff that says, "Back up,
buddy." Now this was something else. I felt it more than I heard it. The same way you feel a truck go
by when you're standing under a bridge. I'm not special, so my brain did the exact same dance
that everyone else does. Guy in dark clothes? No, no shoes or boots. Big guy maybe? Now this is too
big. A bear of some kind? No. Bears don't stand and walk like that, and they don't throw pine cones.
A cow elk maybe standing funny? I'll don't be silly. Wrong shape, wrong smell,
and because there was a smell now, drifting downhill, musky and damp. It wasn't so bad that I couldn't
stand it, but I sure wouldn't want to carry that scent home. Evan said very evenly,
"We're going to keep walking. We see you." I wanted to ask Evan if he was crazy,
but he stepped around me and started walking slowly and evenly. Against my better judgment,
I followed and I angled to try to be as shoulder to shoulder with him as best as I could.
I thought this is crazy. We're going to be killed. It was on par of walking past a hungry male lion
with big old chunks of steak and roast hanging off of you. We took a few steps, and it took a step back.
It watched us all the way. As we got closer, it had given us the space of its arms reach, which wasn't
nearly enough for my liking, but Evan kept going. I did not want to. As we got closer,
I got a better look at that face, and I'm sorry I did. It was like dark hatred and malevolence.
It was staring hard. The whole time I'm thinking, "This is crazy. We are going to be killed,
but I kept following Evan anyway." The closer we came to it, the less I looked at its face.
When I did, it made a growling sound, so I thought maybe that wasn't something it liked,
so I didn't do it. We came even to it, and we kept walking. That close to it, that musky smell was almost
overpowering, and I held my breath, but I also held my breath because I was terrified.
Terrified, I tell you. I wanted to run to get past it, to get away from it,
but there was Evan setting the pace, and I stayed with him.
We walked past it, and the heat and the weight of its stare felt like a physical thing,
but we kept walking. Every second I thought, "This is my last step," and then we were past it,
and we kept walking. When we reached the end of that straight, I deliberately did not look over my
shoulder. Every hair on my neck was standing up. Every instinct I had told me to turn around and put
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.
I hadn't before, and I guess of adrenaline, or maybe shock, maybe both. We made the turn into the next
switchback. The sound of our boots hitting the trail sounded way too loud for how careful we were
trying to be. I don't know if ten seconds or a minute passed, time had turned into a spiral,
but somewhere between those two numbers, we heard it move above us. It wasn't crashing around like
it was coming after us. What we heard were distinct sounds, a single step, a movement of a single branch,
a second later, those sounds would repeat. It was moving in a path. The path we were on takes an
S-curve, and then holds another long straight with a guard-log on the downhill edge, where a washout
almost happened a few years back. The timber tracks above that stretch pretty clean for twenty yards
before the furs and the large close in again. Halfway along that straight, a feeling like a shadow you
just can't shake came over us. We both felt it. I looked at Evan and he looked at me. We didn't speak,
we didn't have to. We knew. And there it went and did it again. It stepped down again out of the
uphill and on to the cut closer to us this time. Thirty yards before, now twenty, maybe less.
Same shoulder line, same long arms, same dark malevolent face and menacing posture.
Taking a hint from Evan earlier, I just said, "Hey there, we're gonna keep walking."
It stared at us and said nothing but took the step back. We took the hint and passed slow.
The slope dropped their hard to our right toward the river, and there was a moment when I thought,
maybe I should just go on down that side, sliding all the way if I had to. That was a plan even
while I was thinking about it. But I considered it because I just wanted this over and I really
didn't want to get close to that Sasquatch again. Evan, who hadn't put his hands anywhere near his
fair spray or the small belt knife that I know he carries, just put his left hand on my pack strap,
like we were connecting trains in kindergarten again, and we moved together like that.
So we didn't miss a step or do something that our feet would have to correct later.
As we came even to the Sasquatch, it did that torso turn thing again. Not a head turn,
the whole body movement, the right arm hung just a little forward.
The hand opened and closed just once, not like a threat, but the way someone with arthritis stretches
their hands. And I saw the skin of the palm. If I call it skin, it looked pale against the hair
in that low light. The way your palm looks pale when you hold it near a campfire. It wasn't shiny,
it was matte, like old leather. We walked. I'm not embarrassed to say that my mouth went
dry. Just as before, it gave us just enough space to get by, but I felt the heat in the weight of
its stare. At the next turn we both exhaled like we had just narrowly escaped with our lives from
missing a horrible car accident. This time I gave into my urge and I looked back. It had stepped off
the cut and back up into the trees again. For about three heartbeats my couldn't pick it out from
all the tree trunks, then I saw it. It was still watching us. I wanted all of this to end,
but I knew running was the wrong idea. Me and Evan whispered between us a few times,
telling each other things like, "Keep cool, we're getting through this," things like that.
But the fact was, we had picked up our pace. We weren't running. It was more of a very fast walk,
like some mall walkers on speed, but we did not run. In about five minutes after that,
call it, two switchbacks a later. We heard two knocks. They were down the valley from us,
not uphill, but there was no mistaking these sounds. Hollow, like someone hit a dead snag with
another piece of wood. Ten seconds apart, I counted. If anyone wants to say, "Oh no, those were
woodpeckers." I'll nod for a manor's sake, and then I won't tell you to go on up there,
and you can hear it for yourselves, because a woodpecker goes tap, tap, tap. This was a single knock
that happened twice, spaced just so. Evan said, "Ah, there's a second one." He said it,
"Like I couldn't figure that out for myself, but I'll forgive him." It was stressful on both of us.
We kept moving. We came to a spot where the trail corkscrews around a tree that grew into the cut
when the trail builders were still kind enough to go around it, instead of through it.
The bark on that tree is rough and furrowed. On the uphill side, seven feet off the ground,
a long piece of bark hung, peeled down as if someone had grabbed it and snapped it back.
I could see fresh wet sap at the tear, brightest tears, the faltering light hitting it just right
to make it shimmer. A hair or two was caught on the jagged edge. I could just see them.
They looked coarse, dark. Maybe four or five inches long. They were kinked a little bit, though not quite
curly. We did not touch that hair. We saw it, but we kept moving. We did, however, mark the spot in our
heads, though we didn't know exactly why at the time. The last half kilometer or so to the car
is a gentler walk, and I had this little hope that we were going to make it there with no other
encounters with the thing that I knew to only call Sasquatch. At the second last, which
back, the trail widens, and there's two guard logs side by side. There's dirt on those logs most
of the season. Bikes will skim it, boots scuff it, but it's always a thick layer there that you
can write in if you drag your finger along. And that's what I did with my eyes. I looked along that
layer of dirt. Something had left a large smear there. Might have been the Sasquatch? Might not have been,
but it looked like a palm print that had smeared, leaving a trailing of a thumb along with it.
I was tempted to reach out and put my hand there. It was in exactly the spot you would put your
hand in if you steadied yourself to go over those two logs. But who in their right mind would go
over those two logs? I had stopped and was reaching out when Evan said, "Don't, keep going."
He said it softly, but it was more of a command, not a request kind of tone. I pulled my hand back,
looked at Evan and I thought, "Well, he's been right about everything so far, so maybe he knows
some things about this creature that I don't. Think I better to listen to him."
And so we kept walking. Right before the trail head, there's a little bench of rock where you can
stand and see the sky and the river. We stopped there, mostly out of habit, and we had a feeling
we were finally done with this. We were past all of what had gone before. But not quite.
From down valley, not far, maybe 200 yards, maybe three, came a soft, closed mouth sound like a strange
of long hum. I have never heard anything like that before then, and nothing like it since,
and I've searched the whole internet, and I've come up empty. All that was enough for us.
We walked to the car and got in. We sat there with the doors closed,
but we didn't start it for a minute or two, as we waited for our breathing to slow again.
And truthfully, I was shaking a fair bit. I don't like saying it, but I was. My mind was all over the
place, and I needed to get it together before I got out on the road. Once I felt steady and had
normal breathing again, I surprised myself by saying, "We're going back for that hair."
I expected Evan to protest. Heck, I wanted to protest myself. But instead, Evan looked at me
and slowly nodded. Later, I would find out he was thinking the exact same thing at that time.
We needed to get that hair. But first, we had to do something. We drove the five minutes to my place,
and we grabbed a few things. We grabbed some cleanser block bags and some tape. We went straight back.
Dusk was now putting its foot down pretty heavy by then. We walked in with our headlamps on,
but kept them on low and pointed down. We didn't want to turn everything in front of us into a wall of
white glare. We made past time getting there. The peeled place on the bark was right where it had been.
The hair was still there. Two strands. Evan pulled out a very long piece of tape, long enough
that we could use the untouched middle only. He handed it to me, making sure we only touched it at
the outer edges. I laid the tape over the longest hair, lifted it, and folded the tape in half.
Again, keeping the edges we touched far away from the middle. Then I dropped it into the zip block
bag that Evan held open at the edges. Then we repeated it again for the second long hair.
Could it have been from a bear? Yeah, it could. I do know bear hair tends to be hollow under a microscope,
but I also knew we didn't have a microscope there, and I wasn't trusting whatever I might find out
on the internet about how to tell Sasquatch hair from a bear's hair. We got those, and we made past
tracks out of there, expecting a visit from Mr. Ugly Sasquatch at every second. He did not show,
though, thankfully. We put the bag with the hairs in my glove compartment, and later I handed it to
a friend who teaches biology at a college. He ran out of favors long before he ran out of curiosity
with that, and all we ever learned was, unknown primate, or they simply couldn't identify it at all.
They were told it wasn't something local labs like to put on email, and I don't blame them.
The next day in daylight I went back alone. I wanted to see the two places on the trail again,
and to make sure the evening light hadn't tricked my perspective. There wasn't much to find.
On the outer edge of the trail below a set of guard logs, right, where the slope starts,
I found a single deep heel impression. Not a full-foot, just the back half, where something heavy
stepped on the firm or bit before the dirt gives. The sides of the heel were sharp, not crumbled,
like the step was clean and lifted straight, instead of twisting itself out.
I set my hand alongside. My hand didn't make a dent, and I knew it wasn't from a shoe or a boot.
I also looked where that first cone had landed. You can tell yourself a thousand stories after
something happens. You can twist the events and make yourself believe anything you want.
But I stood where I had been the day before. I looked up along the trajectory that a
cone would need to randomly fall to hit where it did. Yes, there was a path clear enough that
maybe some long, overreaching limb lost a single pine cone, and it happened to just come down where
my boots were. But that didn't explain that I actually saw the throw. I honestly tried to look for
other scenarios there to explain things, but I couldn't find any. People will ask, "Why didn't we
call the CEOs, the conservation officers, or the RCMP, or the park?" Because I don't think
laws were being broken. And I don't think a man in a uniform would have found a subject willing
to offer its ID. I also didn't want to watch a crew with telephoto lenses and long hashtags.
Turn a quiet enough place into an internet argument. I like the St. Mary Valley the way it is,
a place you can leave other people behind. For folks who believe, and for folks who don't.
Here's how I want you to hear what it is I'm saying. I wasn't primed for these encounters that day.
I wasn't on some Sasquatch form for weeks before that. I wasn't manifesting this to happen.
All I was doing that day was walking to see the river and to stretch my legs as I had done
many, many times before. But that day something tall, broad, quiet, and more than a little minising
step down to take a look at us on a switchback. And miraculously it let us pass. A cone landed
between my boots. We heard two knocks. We heard a strange echoing hum. And I brought home two
strands of hair that sure weren't mine or Evans. Fear is a word that conveys too many kinds of feelings.
I wasn't terrified the way you are when a car hide replays and you suddenly relive your whole life
in about three seconds. I was careful that day. Deliberate and slow. There are little details that people
always want. So let me put some in here in my email and it might be useful just beyond my story.
Height. I am exactly six foot even. On that cut with the slope it is hard to measure.
But when it turned square and looked at us the head was above the cut bank behind us.
That bank stands about seven feet at that point. Add the platform it stood on and subtract the
slope lies and you're in about seven and a half to eight foot range. Build. Well, it wasn't exactly a
body builder v-shape. It was more like a wide column with heavy shoulders and a deep chest.
The waist wasn't narrow like some skinny runner. It was very muscled there though.
The hips moved like a weight lifters do. Clean, easy and powerful.
The arms and the hands. The arms hung long enough that while it stood straight the hands were coming
close to the knee. The palm I saw looked wide. I couldn't see fingernails and I'm not going to
make up that detail just to impress someone. Hair. Even all over from what my eyes could take in.
Longer on the four arms and through the shoulder, shorter on the face. And there wasn't hair there
everywhere as far as I could tell on the face I mean. None on the lips were the eyelids.
In that light the hair red is a dark brown. When we bagged the strands on the tape they looked dark
brown with a hint of red when the sun touched them. The head and face. Now disappoint anyone who needs
an in-depth face report. I got the sense of a forward set head and heavy brow ridge because
well the silhouette didn't show a sharp forehead but I didn't see the rest of it as clear as I would
have liked. Remember every time I looked directly at it it let me know it didn't like it.
Most of what I saw were little tiny bits, small quick looks and from my periphery.
I remember darkness, a lot of dark, dark eyes. The lip and the eyelids were also a dark color
but I don't think there was hair there but it wasn't all black hair either.
Well that's as good as it's going to get. Dark, big, hairy and some spots not so hairy.
I didn't go looking the next night or the next. I did keep walking that trail later in the fall
and twice since then I've had some small things happen that felt like maybe they were something.
Once the next month in November a single cone landed in the path again at that same first
straight section. My heart hit my feet. This time there was no dark shape accompanying it
and I was thankful because I was alone. I smiled like a dope to nothing and I said, "Okay,"
I said it real loud because well I'm that kind of person now I guess. I placed the cone on the
guard log and quickly walked on. Then the month after that in December there was a dusting of snow.
I found two toe only impressions just at the edge of a cut where the snow was beginning to melt.
Not a full print just the pad marks and a line where someone would choose soft ground if they
preferred it. I didn't take a photo because snow and prints there are recipe for interpretations and
arguments. If anybody listens to this hoping for a big trophy of videos of a cast DNA they're going
to be disappointed. I brought home the little baggy with the hairs in it as far as I know it still
sits in my drawer because I really don't want to be the guy who knocks on doors with a baggy like
somewhere trick or treater. The only reason I even mentioned it here was that if I were listening
I would want to know if anything was left behind besides a memory and there was and no I'm not going
to pursue any testing of it. I think that's opening a lot of can of worms.
For your audience who hike in places like mine maybe this is the part worth hearing.
I didn't feel hunted. I felt watched measured and after that escorted out.
We were watched to the point where the trail lets out to semi-civilization and I'm okay with that.
Now ask for Evan. He seemed to know what to do because he said he'd read on Sasquatch for years.
I had hiked with him for many many years and I never knew. I never knew he had an interest in Sasquatch
but it was his belief that talking to them was the way to go. Show respect and they'll let you pass.
I'm not saying that's the true way of it but he said all the natives he knew told him that.
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
to corner or lure anything out with food or tricks. You wouldn't like somebody setting traps on your
front stoop just to prove that you live in your own house would you. I'd like to keep walking that
switch back and hearing the river and maybe picking a cone off the path now and then and placing it
somewhere tidy. Kind of like a guest straightens the cushions when they know they were lucky to be invited
to your house. Thanks for giving me a place to tell all of this. I don't need to be believed by
anyone who doesn't want to but if there is somebody out there who's walked a switch back with their mouth
that went dry and a pine cone that landed between their boots and they thought they were alone because
they didn't get a face or a movie. I want them to hear this and know they're in good company
when they're out there walking those woods. Signed Aaron, British Columbia.
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