SKIER/Bigfoot Eat Their Dead

If there’s one

thing

the perpetual

fogs of the Pacific

Northwest

have in common with the mists of time, it’s the

mysteries contained within them.

BIGFOOT EAT THEIR DEAD by

Leslie

Anthony photos:

Paul

Morrison LYNSEY DYER AT STEVEN’S PASS, WASHINGTON.

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Saturday, March 22, Harrison Hot Springs, B.C.

So pervasive is the hirsute hominid vibe here that, shoveling down the last of my eggs, I overhear this from a mother riding herd on a nearby family of scribbling brats: “That’s a nice, hairy Sasquatch, dear.”

In a nearby souvenir shop, however, lurks the true Bigfoot bonanza: T-shirts, mugs, key fobs, fridge magnets, letter openers, teaspoons, pins, books and a genuine “Sasquatch Crossing” sign. When we mention we’re “hunting” Bigfoot, the shop girl pauses to take our measure, then grows straight-faced with concern.

“You guys know there’s a law here that says you can’t kill a Bigfoot, don’t you?”

First light on a stormy March morning. We’re driving east along the broad reach of the Fraser River on British Columbia’s dank south coast. It’s murky, with rain falling in sheets, smoky tendrils of cloud angling off mountainsides, and fog pooling in the valley—typical winter conditions.

When the sky clamps down here, the clouds swallow peaks whole, and roadways become veritable enclosures; colour bleeds into the dark forms of rock and tree that loom from ditches, shrinking suggestively toward the woods in the rearview and defining the region’s oftSunday, March 23, Hemlock Resort, cited spookiness. Nosing off the highway toward Harrison Hot Agassiz, B.C. Springs, such foggy phantoms take on a whole new context.

The sign as you enter town reads “Sasquatch Country.” And The short drive from Harrison to Hemlock is tantamount to running a whether the legendary creature exists or not, Harrison can claim the Bigfoot gauntlet. At the confluence of Highway 7 and the Hemlock sign as legit. After all, this is where John W. Burns first alerted the road sits the Sasquatch Inn, Café and Pub, showcasing another, public to what local Chehalis Indians were telling him about hairy almost comic-like carving. (Most in the region feature caveman-style giants; “Sasquatch” being Burns’ spelling of the Chehalis name. clubs, but this one has a rock attached to its weapon in an advanced The iconography parades past: Sasquatch Provincial Park, Neolithic overture.)

Sasquatch Springs RV Resort, and Bigfoot Campgrounds, with its lifeUnsure of the gimmickry’s origins, all the owner knows is that his size wooden carving hoisting a rock, and next door a Sasquatch burgers move well: “It’s local culture. A 30-foot-tall statue with an erect, foot-long penis that woman up valley who says she saw it was interviewed municipal council forced the owner to turn because its here in the bar a couple years ago by the Discovery phallus pointed directly at people entering town.

Channel. But for real believers, talk to the natives… it’s Today, 90 years after Burns’ proclamation and an part of their mythology.” avalanche of alleged sightings later, Harrison remains This is obvious when we pass a native healing centre ground zero for Sasquatch lore and research, or— whose sign features a Sasquatch rendered in the famildepending on your point of view—the industry of deluiar, stylistic Northwest native art form. Once again, the sion that clings to it like a hungry tick. pose—full stride perpendicular, nonchalantly turning It’s also a jumping-off point for Hemlock Resort, a its head toward the viewer—is lifted from the iconic smallish ski area 45 minutes to the west with the Patterson clip. motto “Discover the Secret.” Intended or not, this douThe road winds up through dense brush, with cotble entendre alludes to Hemlock’s role as one of a ton-candy fog teased through the teeth of an evergreen handful of areas—Mt. Baker, Alpental, and Stevens comb for a classic West Coast feel. Up top there’s new Pass in northwest Washington being others—rooted snow, and we waste no time charging the socked-in deeply in both the soils of Bigfoot belief, and the pistes. promise of another captivating myth: sunny powder A true family gem, Hemlock’s three chairs service days in empty resorts in one of the wettest places on 35 runs of mostly intermediate and expert terrain comEarth. Which is more realistic? prising a wide, wraparound bowl with open powder Considering that the magnitude and density of the fields up top, natural halfpipes down the middle, a region’s mountainous jumble is a virtual metaphor for smattering of trees, several cool terrain features and wilderness, it had seemed a reasonable plan to plumb hiking that accesses everything from open bowls to the intersection of both. The kicker was something I’d classic slot-like Cascade couloirs. In big snow years— —Richard Knoll, read. frequent, given the region’s heavy precipitation—it proEdmund, Washington, “It would be kind of sad if we found [him],” Bigfoot vides plenty of powder for the dedicated Fraser Valley Bigfoot enthusiast enthusiast Richard Knoll of Edmund, Washington, clientele who help dig out the lifts. mused in an Oregon newspaper. “Without the possibilThe wind howls and graupel stings our faces as we ity of Bigfoot, there is no wilderness left.” make several runs in uncertain conditions with zero visibility.

Welcome to Harrison.

Wondering where we are, we huddle around a rime-encrusted sign that confirms Hemlock—with rumoured annual sightings and Bigfoot hecking into our hotel, I jokingly ask the clerk if she’s seen as de facto mascot—as the heart of the legend. Its infrastructure Sasquatch. prominently features the nomenclature: Sasquatch Triple, Bigfoot “No, I’ve heard it, though. And a girl in my class saw it. And another Lodge, runs like Abominable and Yeti. girl in my class—well, her grandfather is an expert. He lives here. Want The lodge’s bar contains a DJ booth set into the discarded cab of a his phone number?” groomer and walls adorned with the usual ski kitsch. Looking around, John Green turns out to be an internationally renowned we marvel at an old-style poster of helmeted, goggled, smiling parentSquatchophile, with several books to his credit and a sideline career and-child Sasquatches, skis slung over their shoulders. Created long of verifying reports filed with The Bigfoot Field Researchers before Kneissl introduced its “Bigfoot” snowskate or B.C.’s Kokanee Organization (bfro.net). He isn’t home when I call, a fact for which I’m Brewery dreamed up its popular snowboarding-Sasquatch campaign, strangely grateful. the Hemlock poster stands as the first official pop-cultural melding of The Lakeside Café, facing the beach, engages in the ubiquitous pracsnow-sliding tomfoolery and corporate Bigfootery. tice of giving kids crayons to draw on placemats. Waitresses tack the Marketing/promotions manager John Ens, who’s skied Hemlock more interesting ones to the wall. Among these is an excellent rendersince 1976 and worked here 25 years, follows our gaze. ing of a Sasquatch—the pose culled directly from the infamous and now “Yup, that’s a good poster,” he allows, “but we want to update the story discredited 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film of a supposed Bigfoot crossing a a bit, modernize it, you know? We’re thinking about a race of snowboardcreek bed in Northern California. How many kids would know this? ers that result from crossing a Sasquatch with a human. Whaddya think?”

“There had been sightings… near our home, and at that time my husband and I laughed about [it]…. One [spring] morning, I decided to take a walk… I had crossed [the] small creek by our place… when I heard the most God-awful sound. I can still hear it in my mind… the volume was immense…. I knew all the calls of the animals around… and this wasn't the same…. Later I was watching Unsolved Mysteries. They played [Sasquatch] sounds that [were] very similar, and [I] said to myself, ‘There’s the sound… no one’s going to believe this!’ For 10 years I walked all through those mountains, my small children with me, and these Sasquatches never bothered us.” —1970 report, Stevens Pass, Snohomish County “…my husband… and I were picnicking… in the area of Heather Meadows. About 2 p.m. we observed a large black figure that appeared to stand erect traversing a snowfield below Table Mountain…. At first we thought we were watching a person but realized a human could not move at that speed…. We were mesmerized by the speed and the steepness of the terrain...” —2001 sighting, Mt. Baker, Whatcom County

“For a Sasquatch to be an easy target for casual photographers, it would have to wander repeatedly into the open, in daylight, and in predictable places frequented by humans.… Because viewing opportunities are exceedingly rare to begin with, especially in daylight, the odds of a random person photographing a Sasquatch are negligible.” —bfro.net

would “beItkind of

sad if we

found [Bigfoot].

Without the

possibility

of Bigfoot, there is no

wilderness

left.”

C

LYNSER DYER, ALPENTAL, WASHINGTON.

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BRYCE PHILLIPS, ALPENTAL, WASHINGTON.

Monday, March, 24, Mt. Baker Ski Area, Glacier, Washington The notion of a human-Sasquatch mating seems as remote as being abducted by aliens… until you drive the Deliverance-esque back roads of Washington’s Whatcom County. Typical Bigfoot signposts may be few and far between, but the hulking, bearded primates lurking around tarpaper shacks and backing rusted Subarus up to the gas pumps in Glacier (the most backwater “ski” town in the lower 48) make up for their absence.

Glacier is gateway to Mt. Baker, a legendarily isolated ski area situated in what can only be described as a contemporary visage of Middle Earth. If Sasquatch exists, then the creeping, iridescent, mossencrusted understorey of this claustrophobic landscape is just the place you’d expect it to dwell.

Above snowline, however, it’s a whole new ballgame. With the glacier on 2,900-metre Mount Shuksan hanging like a malevolent chandelier, Mt. Baker boasts the most dramatic ski-area backdrop in the U.S.—not that many see it; with annual snowfall averaging 20 metres and a world record approaching 30 (1998-99 season), any visibility here is considered a blessing.

But sunny skies are only the first of several benefactions. The second, as we crest the top of the C-8 chair, is patrol’s opening of Shuksan Arm—Baker’s massive, in-your-face OB showcase—to hikers after 100 centimetres of new. Should we be surprised? Not at a place that advertises 94 days of fresh snow per winter, 35 powder days of 20cm or more, and 15 days of 35 to 95cm. As we offload, the rope drops and a steady stream boot-packs up the ridge through deep snow. From the crest, we get a commanding view of the area’s sprawling layout, substantial given the modest 460m vertical. Nine lifts service about 30 parsimoniously designated runs, some of which are acres across.

Joining the scramble on Shuksan Arm, we make tracks on a myriad of lines that represent one of the continent’s best-kept ski secrets, catching low traverses back to Daytona, one of many impeccable cruisers, then bombing that back to the chair. It’s a glorious yin morning, followed by the yang of afternoon gloom and fearful turning in heat-weighted snow—Pac-Nor’westese for “time to leave.”

On our final run I gaze west toward the 3,250-metre volcanic cone of Mount Baker, across an expanse of snow-covered mountain wilderness that, according to bfro.net, represents dozens of Sasquatch sightings.

The truth, it seems, is out there.

est and I know he’s out there. I did see a UFO, though. I was sitting right out here in the parking lot, and…. Hey, Barb—you remember that UFO that scanned us?”

The sudden, lateral digression toward other paranormal phenomena sends us scurrying for the car. On the way, a pierced and goateed modern primitive overhears our mutterings.

“My old man swears he saw one,” he offers enthusiastically. “Up near Mt. Pilchuck, where we used to go hiking when I was a kid. He told me about it over and over. Don’t know if he was just trying to scare me or not, but he had that look—you know the one someone gets when they’ve seen something real spooky? So I think he was telling the truth. ’Course, he used to tell me moose were 16 feet tall….“

C

onsulting my sightings file, we opt for a lengthy detour before the return to Seattle. Roslyn is a tiny, coal-mining community on the eastern slope of the Cascades, a patchwork of hopeful pastel roofs adrift in a sea of skeptical pine. The town’s most recent claim to fame—real-life set piece for filming of the popular ’90s television

series Northern Exposure—is a perfect ode to its outpost feel and quirky characters.

We’re in the local pizza parlour only five minutes before we’re tipped off that a woman named Sarah—who claims a recent sighting— is drinking at a bar called Marko’s. Electric at the thought of a genuine encounter, we track her down.

Young, hippie-ish, half-cut, and rolling a cigarette with methodical precision, Sarah is happy to talk: “Dad and I were putting up signs near the watershed, watching some goats across the valley feeding on the hillside, when all of a sudden they got spooked, and something huge starts running up the hill, arms swinging side to side. Just booking it. All of a sudden it turns and looks at us. It was big and white—you know, like a Yeti, an Abominable Snowman. Weird. We just clearing day, said, ‘Let’s get out of here.’ Dad wanted

We’re lucky

enough

to have another 65 centimetres

of unforecast MOUNT SHUKSAN, WASHINGTON.

March snow, pole position for the opening of the chair,

and two unchallenged

runs down the region’s

all-time, fall-line tree run.

Tuesday, March 25, Alpental Ski Area, Snoqualmie Pass, Washington Two days later, a slow-moving Pacific front drags in a long night of precipitation. At Alpental, 40 minutes from Seattle up I-90 in Snoqualmie Pass, we find decent turning in deep but dense snow in the higher reaches of the resort.

Alpental’s steep-sided geographic twilight zone offers a hodgepodge of secrets: Although the vertical is added up in increments, pockets and terrain pods abound, and the rock gardens, cliff hucks, back bowls and welcoming glades form an amalgam that reeks of a smaller, wetter, more northerly Squaw Valley.

Eventually the scary high traverse to Alpental’s bountiful backcountry opens (mercifully closed to snowboarders and other two-legged creatures), and we follow out under nasty loaded chutes, crossing heinous ribs of avie debris just shot down by patrol, who uncorked 70 kilos of bombs in the area. The descent offers plenty of vertical; the first 450 metres are deep untracked pow, the last 160 scary pig snot, an acceptable tradeoff by local standards.

Despite good skiing, yo-yoing freezing levels make for a soggy day.

As the meagre light is eclipsed by even denser evening cloud that has fog battling with silver-dollar flakes for supremacy, we head for the bar, where the lone server—whose name-tag reads “Rex: Alpentender”—responds willingly to interrogation.

“I ain’t seen no Bigfoot, but I heard lots of strange noises in the for-

“The Sasquatch is a wild man… who makes his home in a cave [near] the head of Harrison Lake. He is… the legendary enemy of the Chehalis Indians. How many… there [are] is not known, no census taker ever having been brave enough to make a cave-to-cave survey.” —“Sasquatch Still Feared

by Indians,” Vancouver Daily Province, January 1, 1914 “Search for Bigfoot Outlives the Man Who Created Him.” —New York Times headline, January 2003

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to report it to town council….”

But dad didn’t, echoing the unreported nature of most sightings and begging the question: With so many reports documented, and an order of magnitude more not, just what is going on out in these woods? Whatever it is, folks seem more comfortable with bemused beliefs than actual facts. Fittingly, the wall at Marko’s features Kokanee big-feet—six-toed graphic reminders of Sasquatch’s whimsical hold on the region and perfect comic juxtaposition to someone seriously discussing the issue.

As Sarah finishes, expertly crafting another handrolled while juggling a pool cue, a wild-eyed character named Aaron—who’s been sitting silently next to me at the bar—leans over and, in hushed tones, offers: “I think they can materialize and dematerialize. You know?

Appear and disappear whenever they want.”

“They’re of higher intelligence, like humans, but just decided to go a different, kinda spiritual route,” explains Aaron. “They’re watching us and thinking, Whoa, don’t want to be like that, so they just evaporate whenever we get too close. That’s why there are so many sightings but no actual proof.”

Satisfied his hypothesis covers all the bases, Aaron sits back, sips his beer and moves on to other concerns.

“Hey, nice jacket…. Do you ski?”

Wednesday, March 26, Stevens Pass Ski Area, Stevens Pass, Washington

“We both spend our lives chasing that beast, and we both have to look at ourselves in the mirror every morning and say, ‘I am not a fool!’” —One Sasquatch hunter to another in Universal Pictures’ Harry and the Hendersons “Bigfoot eat their dead.” —Regional axiom explaining the lack of evidence

“I… came upon three creatures I thought were grizzly bears, but they were upright and… scuffling. Two began mating in the normal human fashion instead of from the rear. I… took a shot at one with a rifle but missed, and the three ran into the woods...”

—A case of Sasquatch coitus interruptus?

“I noticed what looked like a big stump at the back of the sunlit area. All of a sudden it got up and started running… I saw a long thigh come up level as it ran… it was very muscular in the back; I could see how the hair came to a V shape at the spine…” —1999 sighting, Chilliwack, B.C. “I looked at the ‘tree trunk,’ and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I was about 25 yards from it and… it had eyes and they moved. My son said [yes], he saw it move… It was almost black with a lot of grey hair… about six to seven feet tall, no neck, very wide.” —1990s sighting, Cle Elum, Kittitas County BRYCE PHILLIPS, STEVEN’S PASS, WASHINGTON.

Ascending a grimly dark expanse of the highway between Seattle and Stevens Pass, with the jaggedglass massif of 1,900-metre Mt. Index rising from the forest and dense brush cowing the road, we round a corner to behold a most bizarre oasis.

The Espresso Chalet, caught in the crosshairs of Seattle coffee culture and Bigfoot leitmotif, is surrounded by signs hollering, “Welcome to the Cascade Mountains Bigfoot Park” and “Bigfoot Crossing next 4 mi.”

Whether cause or effect, a litany of Bigfoot paraphernalia reveals this as the filming location for the Bigfoot Museum in Universal Pictures’ Harry and the Hendersons—the John Lithgow vehicle documenting the adoption of a Sasquatch by a Seattle-area family that hit it with their car. In fact, the actual Sasquatch suit worn in the movie now sits, ratty and sun-damaged, behind a cracked pane of glass illuminated by bare light bulbs— like some macabre diorama from a turn-of-the-century carnival sideshow.

Proprietor Mark Klein pulls espresso and chatters about the movie production through a trailer window framed with Sasquatch dolls, postcards and jerky. But lest we think this enclave simply a slice of Disneyesque whimsy straight off the Universal back lot, Klein dispels the notion with a quick shrug.

“First time I came across Sasquatch I was 25 miles up Chiwawa Creek with my sled dogs,” he states matter-of-factly. “There were tracks coming over a hill and down to the river. They couldn’t have been made by anything else, and there was no one else around because I broke trail all the way in. The dogs weren’t happy.”

As if to emphasize the point, a spine-tingling howl erupts from the valley and is soon joined by others, rising into a wailing canine chorus. Spooked, we stare into the forest, shifting feet.

“My dogs,” interrupts Klein, prying our minds from werewolves and wendigos, but keeping them firmly submerged in freakishness, “probably know we’re talking about them.”

“Anyway, I made an outline of the tracks from memory,” he concludes, fishing under the counter for a wooden replica, an unremarkable giant foot covered in what could be a coffee menu—or simply the autographs of visiting Sasquatch scholars and Bigfoot groupies.

Another wooden footprint, hanging on the map board and labeled with “Nordegg, ALTA, 1969” and “Ruby Creek, B.C., 1941” looks suspiciously similar. But then, so do all the footprints.

H

alf an hour later we’re making our own footprints in the snow. It’s positively blizzarding at Stevens Pass; the jet stream has shifted south, and heavy snow showers accompany the unstable air of a descending cold front. Up high, it’s blowing a gale, and deposition in lee areas is over the knee, ramping up the already considerable avalanche hazard above 1,400 metres. Careful but dedicated powder hounds like ourselves are in heaven.

The terrain at Stevens—550 metres of vertical on three sides of two separate mountains—is wicked, and the snow quality a blush of midwinter magic; a short stroll from the top of Double Diamond chair, the steep chutes into Big Chief Bowl offer an energizing intro to a Mach 3 pow-fest, while the Mill Valley side’s Orion powder fields are sweetly deep and empty. Late in the day, local Zach Getsinger, an Oregon State grad who’s been here three winters, leads us on a long tramp across ridges to a secret cabin, below which spread several hundred virgin turns down to the highway. But it’s nothing compared to what’s to come.

Late in the afternoon, intermittent snow showers harden in their resolve, and by sundown it’s dumping several inches an hour. We spend the night at Zach’s cabin buried—literally and figuratively—deep in the pass. When the snow finally slows around midnight, there’s a solid 30 cm of new, and by morning 35 more.

There are no questions next morning, save which shovels to dig out with, and the only lingering mystery is how we’re lucky enough to have another clearing day, 65 cm of unforecast March snow at January temperatures, pole position for the opening of the Big Chief chair, and two unchallenged runs down the region’s alltime, fall-line tree run, Wild Katz. It’s a long-suffering Pac-Nor’west skier’s dream come true.

After that it’s a shot of steep, thigh-deep on Double Diamond before plumbing more trees around Sohim’s Meadow. We join local cognoscenti keeping an eye on the 7th Heaven lift on Cowboy Mountain, which has been closed for days. Joining a line of folks who’ve been standing there an hour while we shralped fairy dust, we watch several give up and leave, while others, even in the complete absence of any evidence the lift will open, hang on with grim determination. It makes me realize that our apparent luck is, in fact, no mystery.

The diehards understand what it has taken us a full week to learn. In the Pacific Northwest, encounters with both powder and Bigfoot clearly involve similar leaps of faith and blind trust. So sighting the beast or finding deep snow and blue skies is as simple as this: You’ve simply got to believe.

DNA Ski areas: hemlockvalleyresort.com, mtbaker.us, alpental.com, stevenspass.com

Bigfoot areas: Believe it or not, Sasquatch sightings occur in almost every state and province. Predictably, Washington, Oregon, and California lead the way with triple-digit report numbers; B.C.’s handful of sightings reflect a strange paucity for such a vast geographical area: Is Sasquatch taken so seriously there that few feel compelled to report sightings?

Selected books: Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us,

by John Green; Bigfoot Sasquatch Evidence, by Dr. Grover S. Krantz; In Search of Giants: Bigfoot Sasquatch Encounters, by Thomas Steenberg; My Quest for the Yeti, by Reinhold Messner (yes, it’s that Reinhold Messner)

bfro.net: The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization is the only “scientific” organization probing the phenomenon, as shown by the site’s extremely professional content: an extensive geographic database including maps, theories, research projects, detailed reports and follow-up analysis, plus tips on collecting evidence and a standardized sightings report form.

bigfootmuseum.com: A collaboration of the cryptozoology community (which studies weird, legendary and mythical animals) and the Bigfoot Society, this is an open forum for sharing research, information, stories, and art. Despite a recent and historic bibliography database, the photos of souvenirs and an online store with plaster casts, videos and books suggests this site is less professional than bfro.net, a tenet proven by a listing of events like the “3rd Annual Oklahoma Monkeychasers BBQ.”

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