Experiences 1: Above Blue Lake
My first personal experience occurred in about 1979. A life-long friend and I were hiking along a ridge about 80 miles north of Boise. The elevation ranges from 7,900 to about 8,100 feet. At that time, the ridge we were hiking along had no trails; however there are some foot trails there now. The soil at this elevation is decomposed granite and very coarse. We came across an opening in the vegetation about 15 feet in diameter. Right in the middle was a single barefoot human-like footprint. It was 2" longer than my size 12 mountaineering boots. The footprint we found was sunk into the soil about 1/2". I weighed about 220# at the time, and my boots barely made an impression. We found only the one track.
I neglected to take any photographs.
Experiences 2: Blue Lake
Below the above ridge is Blue Lake, located in a small glacial basin. It is the nearest alpine lake to Boise and is at 7,300 foot elevation. When I was a Boy Scout Scoutmaster, our troop hiked into this lake and spent the night. Throughout the night, I felt like something was wrong with me. I felt a pressing sensation in my kidneys and had feelings of extreme dread. I thought I might be having a heart attack. I did not sleep that night. Come morning, I informed the Assistant Scoutmasters that I had to leave, even though I was the troop's Scoutmaster. My son and I hiked back up to the truck and departed. Once back to the truck this feeling went away, and I felt fine.
Experiences 3: Snowbank Mountain
One of the Assistant Scoutmasters told me that his father had what he thought was a bigfoot encounter about 5 miles north of Blue Lake, just north of Snowbank Mountain. He had the same physical feelings I did and he encountered something which smelled awful, but he did not see anything.
Experiences 4: Above Blue Lake
I was sharing the above stories with a customer in Iowa over dinner. An engineer at our company turned white as a sheet when he heard these and said he had to talk to me. He shared with me that he had been called up to Snowbank Mountain to pick-up a friend who had been spring snowboarding on top of the mountain. His friend had an open field, full daytime sighting of a Bigfoot as it walked across the snowfield in front of him at close range. It scared the snowboarder so much that he hid and would not return to his truck. My engineer friend drove approximately 100 miles each way to "rescue" his friend.
Experiences 5: Blue Lake
Blue Lake has a small island. There is a Geocache on that island and in the Geocache description, the owners of the cache stated that they chased Bigfoot around the island. I contacted them and asked them why they said that. The guy I wrote to said that he would check into it since he did not remember the details. He wrote me back that when he was a Boy Scout, they were headed to Blue Lake when their Scoutmaster saw a Bigfoot cross the road in front of them. I found this encounter documented on a Bigfoot sighting website.
These are 5 independent events which happened within a 5 mile diameter circle. Coincidence?
Experience 6:
My wife and I had just ridden our ATV up Kleinschmidt Grade out of Hell's Canyon. I was going up a side jeep trail over Lynes Saddle with the planned destination of a radio tower on the hill’s summit. Suddenly I had this feeling that I could not / should not go any further. I stopped the ATV and turned it around. We then tried hiking up the trail and I could not do that either. It felt like there was a physical wall preventing me from going any further. I have never had that feeling since.
Experience 7:
In northern California, just east of Mt. Shasta, we found a number of pine trees with trunks in the 4”-6” diameter range, which had been snapped-off and bent over about 6’-12' off the ground. The fact that the surrounding trees did not have any damage is confusing. A close friend of mine was visiting a snowmobile parking area near where some of these trees were found and heard either wood knocks or rock clacking.
Experience 8:
I found one broken tree outside of Garden Valley, Idaho.
Experience 9:
I saw something intriguing in the movie "Letters from the Big Man". It is a story about a young woman experiencing Bigfoot; it is a pretty good movie. Towards the end of the movie, the "Big Man" left her simple gifts of artwork that Joan Ocean called Medicine Wheels. Two of these were circles of stones with crossed-stick arrangements in them.
What is odd is that I saw one of these formations about 40 years ago. I was at a place called Goat Lake at the south end of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in Idaho (43 degrees 43 minutes north, 115 degrees west). The elevation of the lake is 8,739 ft. The route into the lake is about 50 miles of general-purpose dirt road starting about 100 miles northeast of Boise, about 6 miles of good jeep trail, about 2 miles of really bad jeep trial, and 1 mile of hiking / dirt bike trail. Needless to say, this is a very remote, rugged location which receives very few visitors each year.
I have tried to reach the lake multiple times via dirt bike but usually was stopped by snow. The one time I made it to the lake, a friend of mine and I explored the area above the lake. The access trails ended at the lake so everywhere we were exploring was off trail. We were maybe 300 feet above the lake in very rugged terrain. On a rock ledge about 15 feet in diameter overlooking the lake, we found a circle made up of cantaloupe-sized rocks about 10 feet in diameter. Inside that circle was a square of sticks, inside that was a triangle of sticks, inside that was a cross of sticks. It was very similar to what was shown in the movie. This makes me wonder more about our find.
I neglected to take any photographs.
Experience 10:
In northern Idaho, one early spring day I was driving along the old US95 north of the current White Bird Hill summit. I found a trackway in the snow. It came up a draw on the north side of the road, crossed over the ridge, and dropped down into White Bird Canyon.
I neglected to take any photographs.
Experience 11:
Along highway US 21 between Lucky Peak Dam and Diversion Dam in Ada County, Idaho I found a clutch of broken eggshells. There were shells from about a dozen eggs in the location. Some of the eggshells were stacked one inside of the other.
A bird or a racoon or other critters could have left one set of eggshells. However, it seemed to me that to have that many eggshells at that location and to have them stacked together required something with fingers to manipulate the shells. Of course it could have been a person having breakfast, but this was a very odd location for someone to stop and cook a bunch of eggs.
I neglected to take any photographs.
Experience 12:
In Nov 2023, I was driving from Garden Valley, Idaho to Placerville, Idaho using the back roads. I was driving slow with my driver’s window down enjoying a very nice day. Several miles north of Placerville, driving along a series of beaver ponds, I heard a loud “whoop”. I am almost deaf, yet I clearly heard it. I stopped and listened but heard nothing else. I have visited the location two times since then to look for prints, but I found none. I will be returning.
Experience 13:
I was driving along highway US 21 north-east of Boise, Idaho travelling down the north side of Highland Valley Summit. About 150 yards away I saw a figure climbing up the road-cut going arm-over-arm similar to someone free style swimming. I could not see the figure clearly, but I could tell that from top of its head to its feet, it was a uniform black color. Size-wise, it was within a normal human range and lean; and it was at a location where there were routinely people. However, two aspects haunt me. First, if it was a person, the uniform black color seems highly unusual to me. Even the face was the same color of black. Second, I have no idea why a person would be climbing up the road cut. There was snow on the ground, and it was not an easy climb and if you slip, there is the risk of falling into the highway.
At the time, I neglected to stop and return to the location to investigate it. I have returned many times since then to relive the experience and to try and understand what it was that I saw.