YEAR: 1979

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: August

DATE: 14

PROVINCE: Alberta

COUNTRY: Canada

LOCATION DETAILS: Probably,go up Cascade fire road 12 miles then head East through the bush for about 4 miles.

NEAREST TOWN: Banf

NEAREST ROAD: Cascade fire road

OBSERVED: Myself and three others traveled from Seattle to do some serious backpacking in the Canadian wilderness.We chose the Dormer Pass trail outside of Banf.The second day on the trail we took a fork in the trail.We hiked all day on this crummy trail until it petered out in the middle of nowhere about 4pm.Must have been a wild game trail.We ate some grub and talked.My older brother and a friend oppted to backtrack and find the main trail.Dave and I chose to head due west through the bush to the Cascade fire road which ran North - South.We said our goodbyes and went on our way at about 5pm.Dave and I hiked west blazing our own trail.Just before 10pm we came upon a meadow lit up by the after glow of sunset when we heard a strange wistle sound come from my left, ahead.A stream was paralel on the left but a bunch of bushes blocked the view where the wistle came from.We stopped.Now came the sound of something walking through and out of the stream in a left - right direction.I expected to see an elk emerge from the bushes and the tree that was to the right of them.Instead what walked out was a dark creature walking on two legs.It was 6-7ft tall and 40ft away.The head came from its chest,no neck, with top of head barely any higher than the top of the shoulders.It kept its right profile to me as it walked across the meadow.Arms kept at its side hanging past the knee.It seemed a slender creature with long legs.There was a lighter patch on one ankle.No bad smell.Unknown to me at the time Dave was all the while watching a second creature off to the right.This one was dirty white colored,quite heafty,in Dave's opinion exceeding 7ft.He saw mostly its back side as it walked out from a tree that was behind me to the right.It aparently headed for the same grove of trees to the far right as the dark one did.The dark one walked with purpous like it wanted out of there.Even Dave said the dirty white one walked "like he knew where he was going,man".We had all we could stand of this so we continued out of that meadow with great haste.An hour later we made it to the fire road at 12 mi. post.Yep,still 12 miles back to the car but we made it.

OTHER WITNESSES: Me,14 yrs old
Dave, 25 yrs

OTHER STORIES: Not until reading BFRO data base

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Aproximately 10pm
parly cloudy, afterglow of sunset

ENVIRONMENT: Meadow with low grass,spruce trees dotting the landscape,ravine with creek on left

Follow-up investigation report:

I interviewed both the author of this report, Raymond, and Dave, the friend he shared the sighting with. The group began their hike about 6 miles north of Banff at Lake Minnewanka (http://www.planetware.com/photos/CDN/AB602.HTM). The attached map, provided by Raymond, (figure 1A) shows the location of the trails taken by the hikers, and where Raymond’s and Dave’s sightings occurred. The figures included below are sketches made by Raymond.

Raymond said the whistling associated with the sighting stopped them in their tracks. And it came directly from the place where the animal he saw emerged. It was a whistle he’d never heard before or has heard since. He described it as a high note followed by a lower note which he mimicked for me. The high and low notes were one to two seconds in duration each and the low note flowed directly from the high note without a stop separating them. Dave said that when he heard the whistle he expected to see a miner come out leading a donkey. He said the whistle sounded sort of human and that it had a demanding quality to it – as though a miner were whistling a command at his donkey.

Instead the men saw upright walking animals, and apparently each saw a different animal from what the other was looking at. The animal Raymond saw was about forty feet away and, though it was beginning to get dark (Dave said it had just become too dark to take a photograph), he saw it quite well as it crossed about a thirty foot gap between two pines. The animal was a uniform dark color except that it had a light patch on one of its ankles. His impression was that the animal was covered with hair but he couldn’t see that for sure. Its arms hung down to about its knees and they did not swing as the animal walked. The head was very striking to Raymond in that it sat very forward and low on the shoulders, almost as though it were coming out of the animal’s chest, he said. It had no neck (figure 1).

Raymond further described the animal as bulky, especially its upper body, and said the legs were more slender and very long. He estimated its height to be 6’2” and said he thought its crotch was a good foot higher than a man’s of that height would be. The animal was lean and, like the legs, the arms were on the slender side. Raymond could not guess at the animal’s gender. The animal’s face was darkened so its features were not discernable. No unusual odor was noticed. Raymond said what he saw could not have been a bear, that no such confusion was possible. And it could not have been a man either, he said. When I asked him what he thought it was he wouldn’t say. At least three times I asked him what he thinks it was that he saw and he always remained silent (figure 2).

Dave described the landscape leading up to the sighting in detail – of being in a box canyon and climbing out between two spires, of climbing a ridge, coming down the other side then up a loose shale slope. Then they found themselves in meandering high, hilly terrain near the tree line, and they heard the whistle. Dave and Raymond were standing together but apparently Dave saw a different animal from what Raymond saw, and he told me, “A large bigfoot walked out. It took three or four or five steps and disappeared behind some pine trees.” The two men had to go to the left of where the animal disappeared to go where they wanted to go and upon doing that they found that behind the pines where the animal had gone was a very steep slope – too steep for a man to walk down.

Dave described the animal he saw as gray or dirty white, and said it was definitely covered in hair which he said was long. The animal walked on two legs like a man, with arms swinging. Since it quartered away from him, though, he did not see its face. When I asked about the animal’s height, Dave said that was the strange thing, that he watched it walk “head and shoulders” above the tallest of three pines when it walked off behind the trees, down the slope. And when he and Raymond came to those trees Dave estimated that tallest tree’s height to be 20 to 25 feet. So with the animal on lower ground behind the tree and still appearing taller than it… he thought the animal must be 25 to 30 feet tall. When I asked whether he had come up with any way he might have misjudged that height estimate, maybe by misidentifying the tree he saw the animal walk behind, he said no, that he thinks he got it right.

I asked Raymond what he made of Dave’s height estimate and he sent me a sketch of the scene (figure 3) to illustrate how Dave might have misjudged the animal’s height. Raymond suggests that when Dave saw the gray animal as apparently taller than the trees, it was because it was actually walking along a rise behind the trees, a rise that did drop abruptly off then just to the left of the trees in the direction the animal was headed. In a note accompanying the illustrations he sent me, Raymond said this:

“Dave stood immediately to my right blocking this area. After the creatures passed out of view Dave proceeded over to the central tree in the drawing. This allowed me to briefly view that area, previously blocked, and I noted what appeared to be a steep rise behind those trees. If Dave was unable to discern that rise during the sighting, he might get the impression the creature was as tall as the trees.”

Raymond added, “I likewise probably blocked Dave’s view of the extreme left of the scene where the dark creature walked. The tree it emerged from would be beyond the left border of this sketch (figure 3) and the ravine with the stream would be further left still. It was that central tree that Dave went behind to get a look at yet another ravine. I wanted nothing to do with that area so I gravitated to the area beyond the left border of this drawing. Then we left.”

Both hikers had stared silently as the sighting unfolded, each assuming the other was seeing what he saw. The incident was frightening, and it was getting dark and they were far from where they needed to be. They hit the trail hard and spoke little about what they had seen until they reached the cascade fire road about an hour later. Then they talked about what had happened and realized they had seen separate creatures. Raymond’s dark animal came from the left and walked right, and Dave’s gray animal came from the right and went away and to the left. The animals had closed the distance separating them before going out of sight down the slope behind the pines.

Raymond and Dave lost track of one another shortly after their hiking trip and, at my request, Raymond located and got in touch with Dave so that I could interview him. Raymond was reminded by Dave’s comments (as related to him by me) of how strong the whistling sound was. And he learned details of Dave’s impressions about the incident he had not heard before. Raymond told me in a follow up phone interview that he doesn’t know what it was that he saw but he does know what it wasn’t – bear, man, elk… Dave was not so coy, he flat out said what he saw was a bigfoot. Both men described the sighting to me in the same way and it was clear that both were being truthful. The two hikers heard the whistle, the unusual quality of which caused them to stop. Then, each saw separate bipedal creatures that were much the same yet significantly different – both in appearance and with regard to their position and direction of movement. They did not discuss their independent observations until they had gotten out of there, about an hour later, and then it was revealed that 1) they each saw something like a bigfoot, and 2) what each saw and thought to be like a bigfoot was not the same animal as the other had seen.

Dave’s height estimate, based upon how the animal compared to a tree it walked behind, is troubling. It does not seem possible for a sasquatch to be even half as tall as his estimate. It is one incongruity in a complex story told by two people who shared an extraordinary experience and yet saw separate aspects of it. All else revealed through my investigation of this report, including my sense of the witness’s sanity and truthfulness, supports the conclusion that the sighting was real. And with both witnesses reporting essentially the same experience – a very unusual experience – the story is strengthened. So, I’m inclined to assume either that Raymond’s explanation for Dave’s height estimate is right – that the ground the animal walked upon was actually elevated relative to the tree Dave thought the animal was taller than - or that some other misperception is responsible.

The fairly big difference in the physical descriptions for the two animals does not bother me. Any two humans could easily differ more, even two of the same gender. Raymond’s observation of the very low and forward head position on the animal he saw is reminiscent of that of the great apes. If what the two hikers say they saw was real, the remarkable whistling they heard just before seeing the creatures converge and move away seems likely to have been one communicating with the other.