YEAR: 2009

SEASON: Fall

MONTH: September

DATE: 22nd

STATE: Colorado

COUNTY: Larimer County

LOCATION DETAILS: 8 miles from Red Feather Lakes, Colorado.

NEAREST TOWN: Red Feather Lakes,Colorado

NEAREST ROAD: Crystal lakes Co. all dirt roads

OBSERVED: My name is John, I visited my brother Howard in Boulder Co.Sept. 19 thru Sept 26 He has a cabin at Crystal Lakes , Co. near Red Feather Co. Elevation is above 8500 ft.We were at his cabin on Sunday but could not trout fish because of the snow for 2 1/2 days.Tues morning at about 7:30 I was standing at the front door of the cabin when I could see something black and walking upright heading for the aspen trees .I believe it was startled by a pickup truck comeing down this small dirt road. I ask my brother to look at this with the field glasses and I then look at it for several minutes as well as my brother.It looked to be about 7 to 8 ft tall and I estimated about 350 to 400 lbs. We went with a yard stick which is all we had to try and at least measure the foot print. It measured 17 inches long and 6 1/2 inches wide. We were going to track it for a while but the snow covered the tracks pretty good

ALSO NOTICED: Nothing ,but a light snow fall

OTHER WITNESSES: It was me and my brother and were were having a cup of coffee

OTHER STORIES: No , it was jut the second time I had been there,We were there to trout fish for the week.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: 7:30 AM was a light snow when we seen it or him, later it started to snow pretty hard.

ENVIRONMENT: aspen trees, stream , pine trees .we were looking from a slight hillfrom the cabin to another brush covered hill with aspen trees. It was very visable

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator J. W.:

I called and talked to John and Howard regarding their sighting of a large bipedal animal that they saw near Howard’s cabin in the Crystal Lake Estates on Sept. 22, 2009. Crystal Lakes Estates are located NW of Fort Collins, CO at an elevation of 8,511 feet. At 0730 on Tuesday, John was looking out the front door and saw a large upright black animal walking towards him from the north. It was walking southeast and crossed a dirt road that was on the opposite side of the North Fork of the Cache La Poudre River from the Blackmon cabin. John thought that the animal had come out of the bushes that lined the river. After 30 seconds John called his brother, Howard, over to the window to look at the animal. Just prior to John calling Howard to the window, a propane truck came down the main road and the animal turned its head towards the truck when it heard it. With wider strides it moved away from the truck, and uphill towards a small aspen grove. It continued to look over its shoulder at the truck while it moved away. For almost 2 minutes, Howard watched the large black animal moving across the white snow. Howard had a pair of 12x50 binoculars that he gave to John during the last minute before it disappeared into the aspen grove. Using the binoculars, John saw the animal’s right side as it moved slightly uphill from him. John described the animal as walking like an upright human (bipedal), with short, black hair that wasn’t shaggy or long, 7 to 8 ft tall with a weight at approx. 800 lbs, at least 3 ft wide shoulders that weren’t humped but were bunched with the neck so that it looked like it didn’t have any neck at all, big chested, a narrow 2 ft wide waist and a face like an orangutan. The animal had a big head with a high forehead but it didn’t have a point on the top, “kinda like a gorilla, kinda like the pictures from the website”. Its mouth was wide and it had thin lips that weren’t big or pronounced. Its upper cheeks “were puffed” and it had a wide, flat nose, not pointy like a human nose. Its nostrils pointed down, “kinda like humans”. It had no facial hair, but it did have hair on the bottom of its chin although it was thin. Howard added that the animal had huge arms that hung low, almost to its knees, and the long arms were swinging when it was moving uphill. Howard guessed its weight at 450 to 500 lbs. Howard said that when he first saw it, it was walking with big strides, and they were, “as smooth as they could be. The animal wasn’t in a hurry, it wasn’t running”. Now heavily snowing, Howard and John drove to the area above the aspen grove. Howard and John discussed tracking the animal, but didn’t know what they would do if they caught up to it. “We wouldn’t shoot it, it looked too human”. John walked down the hill, through the aspen grove to the road below. John found one good footprint in the grove. It was 16” to17” long, 6.5” wide and had 5 toes. John said that the stride length increased after it saw the propane truck and were about 6 to 7 ft apart. No pictures were taken.

BFRO investigator Dennis Pfohl and I drove to the area 18 days later and found 6 inches of new snow on the ground. Howard said that the animal was probably 150 yards from the cabin, and John thought it was less than a ¼ mile. My Bushnell rangefinder indicated the distance was approximately 250 yards and my GPS determined the distance was .15 mile (264 yards) from the cabin to the aspen grove. We spent several hours in the aspen grove which was approximately 50 yards wide at the top and very narrow near the lower road. The grove was also interspersed with spruce. We walked through it at different levels. We didn’t find any footprints, hair or obvious signs of an animal passing through that area. We also looked for escape routes above the upper road and checked these areas as well, but found nothing.

About BFRO Investigator J. W.:

Attended CO expeditions in:2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. Attended Michigan expedition of 2015.
Avid hunter and angler.