Media Article # 137
Article submitted by Richard Noll

Wednesday, October 16, 1974

Bigfoot Leaves trail - 161 steps

Seattle Times

Cougar, Cowlitz County - (AP) -

During the summer, loggers in Lewis River basin said they heard strange, chirping and whistling noises.

Twice the night fire watch reported hearing cattle nearby leap to their feet in the middle of the night and crash off through the brush.

In July, a boatyard owner said he saw a Sasquatch near one of the boats. And in August, a logger's wife said she saw the legendary Bigfoot of the Pacific Northwest cross a road.

Now the leader of a group of scientists who spent the summer searching for a Sasquatch near this Cowlitz County logging community has studied a sequence of 161 large, man-like tracks found by loggers on October 7.

"It's the longest string of tracks ever examined by scientists to my knowledge," said Robert W. Morgan, head of the American Yeti Expedition.

He said the footprints were 18 inches long, 7 inches across at the ball of the foot and 5 1/2 inches across at the heel, with an average stride of more than 50 inches.

"It is overwhelmingly probable that they are real," said Grover Krantz, a physical anthropologist from Washington State University. "I've seen some pretty sophisticated fakes," Krantz said. "I don't think these could have been done with fake feet."

Krantz estimated that the creature that made the footprints stood more than 8 feet tall and weighed about 800 pounds.

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