YEAR: 1986

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: August

STATE: Oregon

COUNTY: Hood River County

OBSERVED: In late Aug, 1986 or possibly '87, I'm not sure which.

I drove four friends up from Portland to the south side of Mt Hood to spend three days
on the trail that goes round the mountain. We were all seventeen or so and there were two other couples and myself. On the second day we had made it only to the east side of the mountain going clockwise, I think it was called Sherwood Camp. We found the campsite late and decided to set up on our own near a creek on the opposite side of the trail from the campground sign a hundred yards or so off the trail in a fairly level open part of the forest. There was a creek nearby, there were huckleberries out and we set up our three tents close together.The next morning I got up about 5:30 but noticed from my tent flap the others had all slept in. Some movement about seventy feet away in the berry bushes and evergreens caught my eye. I saw a large light beige colored creature all covered with hair 7 to eight feet tall, its' back to me, trying to reach something, a branch I guess, about 15 ft. off the ground. Not more than 10 ft away was this other creature the same but small, all covered with hair except for the front of the hands, the bottoms of the feet and around the eyes. The second one was only about 3 ft high and was bending over picking up a stick which it was trying to put in its' mouth. The little one was a bit darker in color, a dark beige. The hair on both was up to four inches long at most. The big one was really thickset, I could not make out any of the front of "her" because she was turned away
from me almost the whole time, about a minute. I thought she was the little one's mother. She gave a kind of grunt at the little one like she didn't want him doing that and he dropped the stick. At that moment I was on all fours leaning out of the tent, trying to see better, and my hand popped on
a twig, and the big one looked right at me, but all she did for a second was grunt again at the little one and she reached down, stepped over and took his hand. It was like she was motioning for him to go with her, and looked in my direction one more time, grunted softly again and they were
gone behind the trees. Their faces were like an ape around the lips and jaws, you know, their jaws jutted out a bit. Their heads weren't pointed but I could see by the bare patches around the eyes and skin on the hands their skin was a kind of brownish gray. My friends never saw anything, but after we hitch-hiked back to the jeep and were on the way out, I slowed down for a ranger and he stopped to make sure we were OK. He was an older guy,I didn't get his name, he had gray hair and a bit of a paunch. He was a nice guy, he said this was his first season doing this, and when I told him what I had seen his eyebrows kind of went up. I didn't report this to anybody else." When I asked for other details K. added, "Well when she walked away she sort of waddled from side to side a bit." When I asked her aboutsmell she replied "nothing that I could tell".. did you look for tracks?.."no, I was a little scared, we just all got up and packed up after breakfast and I didn't even want to go over there."... " All in all it was a kind of scary but really fascinating thing, the whole thing couldn't have taken more than a minute, a minute and a half at most, but it seemed like five.The details really stuck in my mind." K. told me there had been no alcohol or drugs and was sure of what she had seen. She said her friends died some time after that in a car crash but that that ranger might remember."

ALSO NOTICED: light fog, curiously not a lot of other wildlife/birds observed. There ws a good berry crop.

ENVIRONMENT: Is dense mature pacific coastal forest with Douglas fir, western hemlock, pine, spruce, cedar, alder and understory of huckleberry, blueberry, and salmonberry.

Follow-up investigation report:

Credit given to BFRO researcher Rob Alley (kokanee@ptialaska.net)