YEAR: 2000

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: July

DATE: July 2000

STATE: California

COUNTY: Siskiyou County

LOCATION DETAILS: The Sighting Took Place By Marbel Mountain,
In Northern California, Trinity County
(I Think It Is In Trinity County)

NEAREST TOWN: Ft. Jones

NEAREST ROAD: Highway 3

OBSERVED: I Don't Have A Personal Story To Relate, But I Felt Moved To Share A Sighting/Video Encounter
Told By A Friend. Let Me Start By Filling In The Details. Last Weekend, A Group From Our Church,
Went Up Into The Mountains, Near Graeagle, Ca.
For A "Big-Boys" Camp-Out. Sitting Around The
Fire At Night, The Subject Of Bigfoot Came Up.
I Asked A Friend If He Believed In Bigfoot, He
Said "Yeah", Then Told The Group This Story:

He Told Us How His Friend, XXX, Had Gone Up To Marbel, Mountain Ca. With His Family To Camp.
XXX Decited To Hike Around The Area Of His Camp,
And Soon Came Across A "Hut" With A Big Doorway
In Front, And A Smaller Doorway In The Rear.
Upon Closer Examination, He Noticed That The
Branches Used To Make This Hut, Were Way To Big To Be Broken, And Set Into Place By A Human. He
Noticed That The Inside Of The Hut, Was Lined
With Fresh Pine Neddles, And Sunken In The Middle
Where Something Very Heavy Bedded Down.

XXX Then Went Back To His Camp To Get His New
Video Camera, And His Wife And Son. They Went Back Out To The Hut And XXX Began To Film The Hut,
With His Son Going In Through The Doorway, And
Out Through The Back Doorway, When His Son Said,
"Dad, There He Is" XXX Turned Around And Saw A
Tall "Creature" On The Adjacent Ridge, With Arms
That Hung Down By It's Knees, Moving From Side To Side. The Bigfoot Seemed Confused, Wondering How
He Was Going To Handle These Intruders, Checking Out "His" Hut! XXX Leaned Against A Tree, And Filmed About 5 Minutes Worth Of Video. He Offered To Show The Video, At One Of The Gatherings We Often Have. This Sighting Happened Around The First Of July, 2001. I Thought You Might Find This Account Interesting.

OTHER WITNESSES: XXX, His Wife & Son

OTHER STORIES: This Is In The General Area Of The Famous Bluff
Creek Sightings, Isn't It??? Not Too Far Anyhow

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Morning

ENVIRONMENT: Pine Forest

Still Captures from Marble Mountains Footage

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Kevin Withers:

This report was originally submitted by a friend of a friend of the witness. Through these friends I was able to contact the witness and speak to him at length about his sighting, both on the phone and in person. On Friday, October 5, 2001, fellow BFRO Investigator Montra DuMond and I visited the witness, who graciously agreed to transfer his video from camera onto VCR tape for us.

The sighting took place in July 2000, in the 241,744 acre Marble Mountain Wilderness Area, located in the Klamath National Forest roughly twenty miles west of Yreka, California, and twenty miles south of the Oregon border. The Marble Mountain Wilderness Area has rocky peaks, meadows, large streams, and eighty-nine lakes. At least one-third of the Wilderness is wooded, with tanbark oak, madrone, and Douglas fir lower down, and whitebark pine, foxtail pine, and mountain hemlock higher up. Alpine meadows and bare rock are found in the highest elevations. Bear, deer, and many other species of wildlife are plentiful. The Pacific Crest Trail crosses the entire Wilderness for thirty-two miles, north to south.

The witness is a security guard at a high school. He is also involved with the "Campus Life" organization. On a number of occasions he has taken kids, some of them disabled or disadvantaged, on camping trips to the Marble Mountain Wilderness Area. On this occasion there were eighteen people: The witness, his wife, another adult male, and fifteen kids, including the witness' son.

After making camp, the witness left the group and went on a short solo hike. He spotted a flat area at an elevation of 6126 feet that he thought might make a better campsite, so he hiked up to it. Upon reaching it he came across a hut that was built out of long pine boughs three to four inches in diameter that had been snapped off of trees, along with trees up to eight inches in diameter that had been snapped in two. None of these boughs or trees showed clean cuts that would indicate the use of a saw, ax, or other tool. The freshness of the needles on the boughs indicated that the hut had been built very recently. It was obvious that a great deal of effort had gone into constructing the hut, which the witness described as "perfectly built."

The hut was built using a small stand of trees for support. It was approximately six feet high, ten feet wide, and fifteen feet long, and had a floor covered with shredded off pine needles. It had a large front opening, and a smaller opening near the rear. No odor was noticed in or around the hut. About thirty feet away was what appeared to be a fire pit constructed of very large stones; the fire pit looked as though it had never been used.

The witness returned to camp and brought the group up to show them the hut. While there, he used his Sony video camera to make a detailed videotape of the structure, including close-up footage of both the exterior and interior.

The witness had just finished videotaping the structure when his son pointed to a mountain ridge and cried out "He's walking down now! He's walking down right now!"

The witness immediately began videotaping a figure approximately one mile away (witness' estimate), walking down a ridge from a rocky summit 7405 feet in elevation.

In the video footage, the subject is visible for a full three minutes. It's walking from right to left down a distant ridge, but because of the distance the image of the subject is small and not very detailed. At times the image quality deteriorates, becoming pixilated as the witness' camera passes into the "digital zoom" mode when it exceeds the magnification capabilities of the zoom lens. However, the quality of the tape is good enough that a number of important details can be seen.

The subject's arms are long; its hands reach down about to its knees. You can also see that it has a white chest and stomach, contrasting with the dark color of the rest of its body. It appears to be tall and thin - not at all as stocky or robust as you might expect. You can see no facial features at all, although you can see that the head is pointed on top.

The subject's gait shows a bent knee type of motion; however, this would also be the case with a human because of the downhill slope of the ridge. You can see the hunched over posture of the subject which, along with the way that it walked, is somewhat reminiscent of both the Freeman footage and the Patterson footage. At times its movements appear very inhuman.

As the subject slowly picks its way down the ridge, it appears to be distraught at the sight of people examining its hut far down below. It moves back and forth, swinging its arms wildly and, at one point, momentarily puts its hands to its head as if terribly anguished. The subject then continues down the ridge, disappearing from view behind a rocky cliff.

During this sighting, no one in the group felt frightened. That night there were no signs of a visitation to the campsite by this creature. The next day the witness hiked up to the ridge but did not find any tracks because the ground surface was so rocky.

This area is open cattle range, and the day that the witness and his group left for home after the sighting, some cattle had just been released into the area.

One year later (July, 2001) the witness revisited the area and found that the hut was gone. The ground where the hut had been was disturbed, possibly by horses, and there was a twenty-five foot long rock lined fire pit nearby where it appeared that wood had been burned.

To my knowledge, this is by far the longest piece of video ever taken of a bigfoot. At three full minutes, it is much longer than the Patterson film. However, the video is not nearly as detailed as the Patterson film, simply because the subject was so far away. In addition, the camera had trouble adjusting to the lighting conditions. The video was taken late in the day, so the mountain that the subject was on was dark, yet the sky was still very light. The camera tried to compensate for a scene that was dark in the lower half and light in the upper half. The result is that the subject appears pretty much in silhouette form, with not a lot of detail visible. However, the footage does show some detail, and more importantly it provides a rare glimpse into the mind of a bigfoot, showing its reaction to a human intrusion into its domain.

Bigfoot are notoriously camera shy. It is unknown whether bigfoot know what cameras are or what cameras do; it may well be that bigfoot confuse cameras with guns, which they seem to be very familiar with. Regardless, this "bigfoot camera shyness" explains why so few images have been taken of bigfoot over the years. The reason this witness was able to videotape a bigfoot for an extended period of time may be that the bigfoot was unable to see the witness' camera because of the distance involved. The witness stated that, to the naked eye, the bigfoot looked like a "black speck" on the ridge top.

The video footage accompanying this report is currently being analyzed by the BFRO and won't be released to the public until this analysis is complete. However, in the interim we've posted several still shots from the video (see link above).

Part of our analysis of this footage may involve a reconstruction of the sighting, where a human of known height is videotaped up on the same ridge, using the same camera that the original footage was taped on. In comparing the sizes of the two images, we hope to be able to ascertain the height of the subject in the original footage, and if its height is determined to be significantly greater than six feet, then the evidence that it is indeed a bigfoot will be even stronger. At that time, we may release the video footage of both the original sighting and the reconstruction, in a split screen format, so that the differences between the two images are obvious.

Incidentally, this technique was successfully applied to the Patterson footage, resulting in a height estimate of around 6.5 feet for "Patty."

At this moment the reconstruction portion of the analysis has yet to be planned, so the release of the video footage to the public may be some time off. However, this report will continue to be updated as our analysis progresses.

REPORT UPDATE

A thorough reconstruction and analysis of the Marble Mountain footage was done in October 2004, and the data gathered showed a height of between six and seven feet for the figure on the ridge. However, comparative measurements may still show some oddities of limb proportions.

This report is probably going to remain "as is" for the time being, pending any further discoveries regarding limb length and proportions. Since the height of the figure has not been found to be outside normal human range, the video is not absolute proof of the existence of sasquatch.

The entire footage, including an image stabilized version, is available on the 2003 Willow Creek Symposium DVD, which is available at www.bfro.net/news/WCSpic.asp.

• Explanation of the report classification system
• Submit a report for the sightings database
• Please send any comments or inquiries to ContactUs@BFRO.net