Squatching Expedition Led by Seven-Year-Old on Bluff Creek Road, Blue Lake, Onion Mountain

This last weekend, seven-year-old Denali Brown led a squatching expedition up off Bluff Creek Road, near Fish Lake. Her dad tagged along for the adventure. Many recent reports of Sasquatch activity in this area have been lodged here at Bigfoot Books (see our previous post).

Just a little ways past the Fish Lake turnoff on Forest Road 13 (13N01) one will see a small turnout with a wooden fence. This is BLUE LAKE, a pretty little body of water partially covered in lily pads, and surrounded by some very squatchy, dense forest. Here the pinacle tree species is the Port Orford Cedar, which has a fine redwood-like bark and fronds, and here towers above the visitor in an old-growth state.

Unfortunately, many of the trees here are blighted with a fungal disease that causes root rot and die-off. Many of these trees towering above are dead, others have fallen down into the hillsides and the lake itself. The understory is mostly tan oaks and smaller shrubs. It is a peaceful, dramatic spot that would provide ample interest, food and habitat for a Bigfoot.

There is a trail that leads around the lake to the west from the gate, under a mile all told, that reveals many different subtle aspects of this type of mountain lake environment. Watch out for the trail at the end of the loop, as it peters off into a cool boggy marsh full of reeds and rhododendrons. The trail sticks to the right a bit
to head around this, then back to the road. Denali demonstrated Bigfoot Hunting techniques along the way. See below....

To get to Blue Lake turn west from Highway 96 onto Bluff Creek/Fish Lake Road. Continue on just about seven miles up (go past the turnoff to Fish Lake) and it's on your left.

(Image, looking up the Bluff Creek valley with Onion Mountain to the leftward west, toward Louse Camp.)

If you continue on this road you will enter some classic Squatch territory, Onion Mountain and Blue Creek Mountain, where footprints were found back in the sixties, predating the Patterson-Gimlin film. Stopping along the way about six miles from the lake, just above Big Foot Creek, we caught a fine glimpse of the Bluff Creek drainage to the north. One can see out to Louse Camp area, and then the bend in the creek to the east where the film was shot.

SQUATCHING TECHNIQUES (Use at Your Own Risk):

Get out and EXPLORE the environs. Though many sightings are along roads, that is just because that is where people most often are. Where Sasquatch most often is is in the deep, thick woods.

RECONNOITER. Use technological enhancements, binoculars by day, night vision or thermal imagers by night. That brown thing beside a tree on the hill could be a Sasquatch trying to blend in. Come prepared! Bring a camera, too.
CALL BLASTING. Use your best Bigfoot howl or scream, or a recording such as the Sierra Sounds, to draw Bigfoot's attention and attract them. This is how the creatures communicate with each other over distances, that or...
...WOOD KNOCKING. This is another way to make sounds carry over large spaces. It is said that Bigfoot creatures let each other know they're there, or send warnings, by banging on wood. No other animal could hold a stick to do this, save for a human--you need hands. But don't let the woodpeckers fool you.
Check for FOOD SOURCES. If there are edible things (like these berries) around you can probably assume a Sasquatch will be there. This is one way to know if you are in the right spot or not to find them.

Check around for FOOT PRINTS. Any ordinary depression, like this one made in boggy mud, could have been made by Bigfoot. Look closely. Do you see any foot-like features? Or maybe it was made by a bear, or another cool animal. Bring plaster or other material to make a cast of the prints you may find.
THINK LIKE A SASQUATCH. Dwell in the environ-ment, try to see how a Bigfoot would live. Could it hide in here?
LISTEN AND LOOK, and WATCH OUT. Here, "Dada! What was that! I heard something over there! ... I'm scared. Let's go home!!!


When you're done head back down to the Bluff Creek Company and Resort, at the bottom of the hill, then head just a mile or so north to the bridge where Bluff Creek flows into the Klamath River. Here you'll find a fine place to take a dip. The place is simply crawling with little baby toads, though, so WATCH OUT!

If you're so inclined, you can explore the higher peaks to the west and north by simply continuing on up the dirt-and-gravel Bluff Creek Road. Eventually the road leads down to the creek at Louse Camp, where famously the Pacific Northwest Expedition set up their base. Watch out for rock slides, however. The road up to the P-G Film Site is blocked just up from Louse, so you'll have to take another way out. Sightings have recently been reported in the area of this camp, too.

In the Spirit of Rugaru: Bigfoot As Prophetic Representative of the Earth; Texas Bigfoot Conference, Willow Creek Werewolf Comic

As I was visited recently by Craig Woolheater of the TEXAS BIGFOOT RESEARCH CONSERVANCY, and at the upcoming TEXAS BIGFOOT CONFERENCE, Peter Matthiessen is finally coming out in full public view with the Bigfoot beliefs I always suspected he held, I got to thinking about a book I read over a decade ago, and a certain mysterious creature in it: RUGARU!

[NOTE: The 2009 Texas Bigfoot Conference will be held in Tyler, Texas, September 26, 2009, 8:30 A.M. to 6:30 P.M."]

Back in the mid-to-late 90s I was on a jag of reading "bad history" (the horror, the horror!), absorbing all I could of the nightmare of humanity's past (trying to awaken). During this time I read Peter Matthiessen's IN THE SPIRIT OF CRAZY HORSE, right after "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" and "American Holocaust." As I read along I began to sense something strange about this book. Mostly it is a legalistic recounting of the horrid injustices done to the Lakota, the American Indian Movement, and in particular, Leonard Peltier. But it is also an attempt to tell the history of the People through the aspects of the culture still living and viable in the modern world. A recurrent theme, popping up over and over again, to the point I had to stop, go to the index, and re-read the segments where RUGARU, or THE BIG HAIRY MAN, was discussed. What was Bigfoot-- as the author and his interviewees clearly meant to say this spirit/creature was--doing in this book? Rugaru, just as the Bigfoot we know more familiarly, creeps on the margins, or at the heart of things in this book, as a sub-text that emerges as the main message: Humanity is out of touch, out of balance, crimes against nature and people must be righted, and our ways of life changed to their proper states.

See, Bigfoot (or Sasquatch, or Rugaru, or...) isn't some phenomenon originating in 1950s or 1960s popular culture; it has been here for thousands of years, most likely brought over by (or preceding) the Native Americans as they crossed from Asia during the prior Ice Ages. Personally, I learned about Bigfoot in the usual way of my generation, through Leonard Nimoy on "In Search Of," and then through John Green's books in the paranormal section of the public library. I was obsessed, at around the age of nine or ten, with such things, be they ghosts, ESP, cryptid creatures or monsters, UFOs or demons--I was down with it. But in the years interceding my mental use of Bigfoot became increasingly of a humorous nature. It was just simply funny, seen on the cover of The Weekly World News. Bigfoot had the air of something rebellious in it, too: it lived outside of human parameters and society, stank to high heaven, and loved to mess with logging equipment. Bigfoot was the first Earth First-er! Sasquatch was a Rebel. Bigfoot began to appeal to my associates in the ARMCHAIR ANARCHISTS SOCIETY, to the degree that we formed a splinter group, THE CHURCH OF BIGFOOT SCIENTIST. Even as we laughed, joked and chanted "Rugaru, Rugaru!!!" around the campfires, something was slowly changing in me, I was beginning to suspect there WERE perhaps eyes looking back at me from the dark forests, wondering about our absurd behavior and myriad empty beer bottles. And then we encountered something brown and tall, moving through heavy forest brush several miles in to old logging company land way back in the hills above Blue Lake, CA. We only really saw it's head moving quickly through the branches, its body obscured. It could, perhaps, have been an elk; but I've never seen the dogs we had with us respond this way to anything, and they were used to bear, deer, cougars and foxes. They positively freaked out. The thing quickly disappeared down into the deep thickets, but we could hear its treads retreating. There was something strange about it, an unexplainable feeling in the experience.

I referred back to Matthiessen's book again, haunted by his evocation of the BIG MAN, the spirit of the woods, of earth's justice, of something beyond current culture and the hegemonic dominance of cheezoid and crass corporate consumerism. As I began reading the books about Sasquatch, eventually consuming about 50 of them, the myth and legend began to become a plausible reality. No, it wasn't just a joke: this thing has been leaving tracks, making appearances, and maybe abducting human females and children, for centuries. The reported characteristics are so consistent that eventually one has to take out Occam's Razor and admit it: the simplest explanation, simpler by far than "myth" and "hoaxing," is that THERE IS SUCH A CREATURE, and it is alive and well out there in the world beyond our imaginations as well as within them.

Here are quotes from the book, mysteriously hidden within the massive 686 page narrative of historical oppression and heroic survival:

"My travels with Indians began some years ago with the discovery that most traditional communities in North America know of a messenger who appears in evil times as a warning from the Creator that man's disrespect for His sacred instructions has upset the harmony and balance of existence; some say that the messenger comes in sign of a great destroying fire that will purify the world of the disruption and pollution of earth, air, water, and all living things. He has strong spirit powers and sometimes takes the form of a huge hairy man; in recent years this primordial being has appeared near Indian communities from the northern Plains states to far northern Alberta and throughout the Pacific Northwest." (pg. xxiii)

"Along the way I learned a little of the Indians' identity with land and life (very different from our 'environmental' understanding) and shared a little of their long sadness about the theft and ruin of ancestral lands--one reason, they felt, why That-One-You-Are-Speaking-About had reappeared." (pg. xxiii)

"'There's a lot going on up in that country now,' said Archie Fire, referring not only to the threat to the Great Plains from widespread mining but to recent appearances of the big hairy man at Little Eagle, on the Standing Rock Reservation, who came in sign, some people said, of those days at the world's end 'when the moon will turn red and the sun will turn blue' and the Lakota people will resume their place at the center of existence." (pg. xxvi)

"Turtle Mountain was among the many Indian communities that had been visited in recent years by the "rugaru," as the Ojibwa call the hairy man who appears in symptom of danger or psychic disruption in the community. Mary's son Richard talked a little about the appearance of these beings in recent years to Lakota people at Little Eagle, South Dakota. 'There were just too many sightings down there to ignore. I mean, a lot of people saw it. Around here, we didn't have very many reports; most of them were right here where we live now.' He waved his hand to indicate the woods outside, where I camped that night along the lake edge." (pg. xxvii)

"A few weeks before, the big, hairy man had appeared in Little Eagle for the third straight year, and more than forty people had seen him. 'I think that the Big Man is kind of the husband of Unk-ksa, the Earth, who is wise in the way of anything with its own natural wisdom. Sometimes we say that this One is kind of a big reptile from the ancient times, who can take a big, hairy form; I also think he can change into a coyote. He is very powerful. Some of the people who saw him did not respect what they were seeing, they did not honor him, and they are already gone." (xxix-xxx)

"Her family paid no attention. 'They're all Christians up there now,' Lame Deer had told me. And Joe Flying By, asked how the old people of Little Eagle accounted for the Big Man, had said shortly, 'There are no more old people.'" (pg. xxxi)

"Sidney Keith said that the Big Man seen at Little Eagle might be Unk-cegi, which means literally 'Earth Brown' or "Brown Shit'--the filth of Creation. Unk-cegi lived long, long ago, in the time of the great animals, but he had been covered up in the Great Flood, with all the other giants. 'He was down there too deep to be saved by Noah,' Sidney Keith observed dryly. But all the mining, all these underground explosions of the white man's bombs, had made fissures in the earth and released not Unk-cegi but his spirit. 'His bones are still down there. That's why Indians get so upset when burial grounds are disturbed, when the whole burying ceremony is interfered with; it isn't just a matter of disrespect. Disturbing the burial grounds the way the white man does releases those spirits. Unk-cegi was here when Indian man first came here. He seeks out Indian communities because he knew Indians in the Old Days, and he sought out Little Eagle because that is the worst place for drinking in Standing Rock, and maybe Cheyenne River, too. We drink too much in Eagle Butte, but not like that; even their old people are all drunk over there. Unk-cegi appeared to kids who smoke grass, and drunks and hotheads... nice people, some of 'em, but they do bad things. He won't appear to the good people; that's why Joe Flying By didn't see him. And he won't appear at the sun dance--that's a good circle.'" (pg. xxxiii)

"'Maybe it's a good thing that Nature would come along and change everything, clear all that away, and start again.' Of the Big Man, Joe Eagle Elk said, 'It seems maybe he has got a good heart. He has never hurt nobody. A lot of people over there at Little Eagle, they been shooting at him instead of trying to exchange words and ask why he is coming around. Maybe he is trying to tell us what he wants and where he comes from; maybe he is bringing news for us, a warning.'"

"'This nation--I can't say my nation, because they stole it away from me. ...They cheated and lied, and broke every treaty, even the sacred treaty that protected the Black Hills.' The medicine man subsided suddenly and became silent, composing himself. 'We've come to an age when we should know better than we are doing,' Pete Catches resumed softly, in a silence that followed some meditations on the Big Man, who was trying to save mankind, he said, from the great cataclysm the Indian people knew was coming. 'We must now try to understand what is wrong with us, why we have to tamper with and change the forests and the land. We have done this too long--not us, but the white man. Let's not walk on the moon, then fail to understand what this Creation is all about. This is life, this is beautiful, everything is the way it should be. (pg. xxxviii)

"'Maybe around three or four o'clock, ...not long before the sun, we heard something very big walking in the creek. It wasn't any animal, either, and it wasn't somebody tossing in big rocks; it was plunk-plunk-plunk, like that, big steady steps. Zimmerman was so scared he just ran off, he wanted to wake up Joe, because him and Joe was living in one tent. Norman Brown said it was the Big Man, and that his people over in Arizona knew all about it, but we were all too scared to go down there and look.' In the evening of that day, huge dark thunderheads gathered over the Black Hills, followed by wild angry winds and lashing rain that caused property damage all over the western part of South Dakota." (pg. 149)

"I told Sam about the footsteps in the creek heard on the night before the shoot-out by Jean Bordeaux and Jimmy Zimmerman and Norman Brown, and he nodded, saying, 'That was a sign, a warning.' 'There is your Big Man standing there, ever waiting, ever present, like the coming of a new day,' Pete Catches had told me two years earlier, here on Pine Ridge. "He is both spirit AND real being'--he had slapped the iron of his cot for emphasis--'but he can also glide through the forest, like a moose with big antlers, as if the trees weren't there. At Little Eagle, all those people came, and they went out with rifles and long scopes, and they couldn't see him, but all those other people at the bonfire, he came up close to them, they smelled him, heard him breathing; and when they tried to get too close, he went away. He didn't harm no one; I know him as my brother. I wanted to live over there at Little Eagle, go out by myself where he was last seen, and come in contact with him. I want him to touch me, just a touch, a blessing, something I could bring home to my sons and grandchildren, that I was there, that I approached him, and he touched me. It doesn't matter what you call him; he has many names. I call him Brother, Ci-e, and that's what the Old People would call him, too. We know that he was here with us for a long time; and we are fortunate to see him in our generation. We may not see him again for many, many generations. But he will come back, just when the next Ice Age comes into being.'" (pg. 559)

So, we should all consider our humanity, humaneness, and the value to be found in the life that surrounds us. That life IS us. Rugaru seems to be here, if not perhaps to warn us in our stupidity, then at least to remind us in our ignorance of the real, wild and largely unknown world that we are a part of, despite many centuries of deluded actions and insane culture.

If you want to study this subject further, here is a great article we found in researching this blog entry: "Attitudes Toward Bigfoot in Many Native American Cultures," by Gayle Highpine.

"Our people don't call themselves Sioux or Dakota. That's white man talk. We call ourselves Ikce Wicasa--THE NATURAL HUMANS, THE FREE, THE WILD, COMMON PEOPLE. I am pleased to be called that." --John Fire Lame Deer

"Rugaru," as a neologism or pidgin term is certainly derived from Native interactions with French frontiersmen and traders. The root terms would be "loup" and "garou," meaning basically "wolf-man," "werewolf," or a lycanthropic shapeshifter. It would seem that this was the French folks' interpretation of the Native's "big hairy man."

Recently a comic book/graphic novel was produced by Zenoscope Entertainment, called (of all things) WILLOW CREEK, and set here in our area. It involves Bigfoot and a werewolf beast being mixed up between Native and modern culture. A whole group of Bigfoot hunters is slaughtered. The blood and gore flies. Mysteries are revealed. Sadly, production on this cool horror project was suspended indefinitely when the artist contracted spinal cancer. Let's hope he recovers and the series continues. The two back issues are still available at Bigfoot Books, however, while supplies last.

Leonard Peltier was recently denied parole, AGAIN. It would seem he is the scapegoat the FBI and government require. Matthiessen's book proves pretty damn conclusively that he is NOT guilty of shooting those federal agents. To take action start with the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.

Coming soon to this blog:

"SEVEN-YEAR-OLD GOES SQUATCHING"!

Dad and daughter will be going up to Bluff Creek, Fish Lake, Onion Lake and Onion Mountain Road this weekend. Bigfoot will be found!!!

PS--the more I work and live out here the more I hear, from locals and people from the various Native American tribes, about Bigfoot as a shape-shifter, a spiritual, interdimensional being. Before, I'd thought this stuff was kind of nutso. But now I am starting to wonder.... Watch the right side of the blog for a new POLL TOPIC on this matter.

Patterson-Gimlin Bluff Creek Film Site & Believe It Tour UPDATES, BF Site of the Day, Tribal Bigfoot Reading Group, Blog Links

See below for more Patterson-Gimlin Film Site goodies, analysis and photos. Meanwhile, some Bigfoot News....

You can sign up to receive emailed blog posts and the helpful "Bigfoot Site of the Day" from bigfootsightings.org, run by Linda Martin of Happy Camp. If your Bigfoot bookmarks folder is as ridiculously vast and unorganized as mine, you'll probably love having these mails filed away for future reference. As elusive as the Creature is out in the real world woods, Bigfoot has proliferated wildly and monstrously on the world wide web. Let BF Sightings find the way through the woods for you, or at least provide some stimulating surprises you might not have seen for all the trees.

Linda has also organized a September 2009 reading group for Dave Paulides' TRIBAL BIGFOOT, so check it! The book is fascinating in its content and full of certain interesting peculiarities that make it unique. Basically a sequel to his Cryptozoological Book of the Year winning THE HOOPA PROJECT, this one expands its range to cover areas such as Willow Creek, Del Norte, Siskiyou and Trinity Counties, as well as Oklahoma and Minnesota. Dave's controversial in some quarters, but this just ads strength and distinction to these books where many other Bigfoot books seem to repeat the same stories and cover similar, familiar ground. Dave has told me he has some "earth-shaking" revelations coming regarding the Patterson-Gimlin Film, but we'll remain mum on that issue for now... IS BIGFOOT HUMAN? Wait and see.
Now to continue from our previous post.... THE BELIEVE IT TOUR needed a guide up to the Bluff Creek film site, and as Bobo was previously engaged, we were quite happy to oblige. Here is a further update on their visit at their blog: Willow Creek and the Start of the Bigfoot Scenic Byway. Here's the tale told from Bigfoot Sightings: The Believe It Tour’s Willow Creek Adventure.

The Believe It Camp was set up right at the bottom of 12N13H, the "K" spur that takes one down to the film site area. Note: there are some nice swimming holes in the creek right at this area, if you look for them.

To get there: Look on your topo map: from "Eye See"/G-O Road take the Cedar Camp Road (12N12) left hand turn at about 16 miles up, then a couple of miles to the the sneaky right onto 12N13 at the green metal gate. From there it is about five miles down; just watch for the overgrown forest road spurs, three on right, one steep one on the left, and then you'll come to a big log landing on the left, and the 2.1 mile film site spur down (and I do mean DOWN) to Bluff Creek is to the right. Leave ALL low-clearance vehicles behind, and preferably take only 4WD ones in.

After less than a quarter mile's bushwhacky hike east from the park/camp area (keep to the right along the hill's bottom--you are now on the old Bluff Creek road!--rather than the treacherous wood-filled creek to the left) you'll come out at a big "bend in the crick" (Bob Gimlin's words), fully jammed up with log debris and giant root balls.
In the image are Brad, Craig Woolheater, Diana and SharonLee emerging onto the western side of the film site. Wounded legs and twisted ankles are common here as one navigates the woody mess. Be careful. We lost a couple of soldiers here.
Once you hit the gravel below you're just before the area where Roger and Bob first spotted the creature (in our humble opinion). Just past the roots is a curved area of open gravel bar backed by a mess of young alder trees and scrubby shrubs. Judging from the recorded distances by those who were on the ground after the film was made (see Krantz, Perez, etc.), this should be right about where the Creature was squatting by the creekside, hidden from previous view by the large wood chunks.
In this aerial photo of the area one can see the camp/park spot as a lighter clearing to the lower left. The creek flows under the dark shadows of trees one sees squiggling diagonally across the image. Now switch to the comparable topo image. At the spot where it says (oops, my bad!) "click to pan image" you are at that big bend. This is where a little creeklet flows (um, trickles, seeps) in from the south. Down on the creek bed and wading through the water briefly you will come around that slight rightward protuberance. Now, I believe, you are at the start, the first glimpse, before the film was rolling. But you can't really tell this from the creekside perspective. Because of the massive vegetal changes, not to mention some certain topological alterations (there was more sand in dem dar days), to get a feeling for the film site layout you'll need to venture up into the woods to the north of the creek.
Moving upstream, around the leftward protuberance you can see here, you are now in the zone where the film has started. Just at the start of the film (often edited out in television documentaries) one can see a damp area in the sand in front of the creature, which we believe is from this leftward jut of the creek. (We can't say for certain what the exact lay of the land was back then, but we're looking for older aerial images.) However, looking at old topos and these old sky shots, the structure of the creek and the streambed's geology seems pretty darn consistent with on-the-ground observations we made just last week.
At this leftward point of the creek is almost certainly where Patterson started his camera, running across the creek, up the slight bank. He passes, in a brief glimpse at the true start of the film, this wet spot we associate with this bump. From there the creek bellies out eastward before hitting an area called "the bowling alley" by some, where the creek makes a very marked and noticable straight and direct run northward. The white part in the above topo, just within this belly, is the film site, we attest. In the last frame of the film one may see a dark forest beyond the tiny, retreating creature. This is the start of the bowling alley area, which is shaded and relatively dark in the afternoon, as the sun at that time has fallen beyond the steep canyon walls to the southwest. Look, here it is:
So, to get a real sense of the actual terrain of the film site, do as we did: just head all the way upstream until you see the straightaway heading north. Here you will see how deeply the creek has sunk since the film was made in 1967, where large banks descend down to the creek about seven feet or so. From this point look west, climb the lower bank area and enter the woods. Head northwest a bit, staying back off the creek a little, and you'll start to see the background canyon wall and comparable Douglas Fir trees, as in the film, as all about you are the same kind of alders as the film's creature passes through. (Check our previous post to see the Believe It folks documenting this area.) But now, there are just tons more trees. Back then they were nearly all washed out by a flood. These alders are young, a fast-growing variety of tree, and certainly are not the same ones as in the film. But they are growing in the same places, obviously due to water and soil conditions. IF you can call it "soil"--just scrape away an inch or so of forest loam and you'll see... SAND. This is the same kind of sand upon which Patty walked--deposited heavily back then by the huge flood of 1964--or at least the remants of the sandbar. The alder trees that have toppled over reveal an incredibly shallow root system. There are old, dead and decaying firs set in the ground that could very well be from the time of the film (does anyone know fir decay rates?). It still is a sandbar, just covered by scrappy, tough vegetation trying to take back the land. From here proceed all the way back to where you came down into the creek at the big bend, keeping eyes out for fine and subtle details. Try to erase all the maze-like wandering between the trees, fallen debris, and boggy fern-shrouded pits, and you'll really start to get a sense that this is the film locale. The perspecives are all RIGHT on. The distance from one end to the other, if looked at as the more or less straight and easy walk that the creature takes, is much shorter than it seems when navigating through the density of it, and the site as a whole really much smaller: maybe only a couple of football fields' lengths within the area the creature walked. The distances correspond neatly with the diagrams of Titmus, Dahinden, Green, Perez and Krantz.
Imagine the creature at the end of the film, at the start of the bowling alley. Shortly after the filming, Bob Titmus tracked the creature's trail back up into the hills on the south side of the creek, up and to the west, so that it would have had a vantage point on what those strange hu-mans were doing down on the gravel bar. Look up from where you stand toward the cut of the rough road you drove in on, and this is where Patty sits, watching YOU.

Watch the PGF on You Tube HERE, with cool narration from Bob Gimlin, and for a more full view of the start of the film see the X-Creatures episode HERE, starting to watch with John Green at seven minutes into the segment. Before going to the film site you must watch this footage at least a hundred times, and it helps to look at it frame-by-frame. Etch the details in your mind, then go.

Thanks be to Cliff Barackman for helpful perspective on the site's location in today's world, to Tom Yamarone, Bobo and Scott McClean for getting me started at the film site, and always to the assiduous Daniel Perez for his fine documentary research and groundbreaking BIGFOOT AT BLUFF CREEK (it was Daniel's arrow and "X" on the map that first showed me the way forward). See links to their sites in our Outside Links section, to the right of this blog.

A bonus feature:
Murray Field, outside of Eureka, where Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin surely sent off their famous Bigfoot film of 1967--after all, the post offices were closed by the time they got back to civilization.

Appearing in the Times-Standard the Sunday the Believe It Tour were visiting was an article on the Lockheed Fire burning in the Santa Cruz/Bonny Doon/Davenport area. Some compassionate folks put up a sign of concern for Bigfoot. Or perhaps, is it that Bigfoot is WARNING US???

RUGARU!!! I challenge you: go look at Peter Matthiessen's IN THE SPIRIT OF CRAZY HORSE, find it in the Index, and ponder....

Believe It Tour on the Road to Bluff Creek, We Almost Lost Woolheater, Squatching Brush Mountain; Bigfoot's bLog Is BIGFOOT SITE OF THE DAY!

We've had a rich week out here in Willow Creek, with the incursion of The Believe It Tour

(see their awesome photo collection on Flikr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/believeit/, with more set links below covering their visit to Bigfoot Books, some fine dining, and the venture out to Bluff Creek), along with Texan Craig Woolheater, Sharonlee Lormuno of Bigfoot Field Reporter (blog at: http://www.bigfootlives.blogspot.com/, show at: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/59501), Linda Martin of Happy Camp's Bigfoot Sightings (http://bigfootsightings.org//), and James Bobo Fay with his friend, Jimi "Slash" Frizzell.

Bigfoot wasn't "proven," but Squatching always proves to be an adventure! See our previous post for information on the Believe Its,
represented on this California 2009 leg by Mike Esordi of Connecticut, Diana Smith of Grand-View-on-Hudson New York, and Brad Pennock (wait, where does he come from?). The Believe Its came on up from San Diego, seeking ghosts out in the desert, and finding Paul Bunyan on the Humboldt/Del Norte coast, and then came on inland to visit us. We looked for bigfoot both in the wild and in history while they were here, and they went on north along the BIGFOOT SCENIC BYWAY (see rare signed poster to left) on their way up to find Lemurians and possibly Extraterrestrials up on Mount Shasta. Read their blog on this part here: http://we-believe-it.blogspot.com/2009/08/bigfoot-country-is-off-grid.html.

But first, let us toot our own horn again and get it over with. Today Bigfoot's bLog was named THE BIGFOOT SITE OF THE DAY by Linda's Bigfoot Sightings website (http://bigfootsightings.org/2009/08/20/the-bigfoot-books-blog-bigfoot-site-of-the-day/)!!!

Well, we are surely humbled by statements such as this, but we do TRY: "I was deeply impressed by the quality of Steven’s writing.... With word skill like that I have the impression that this man will be writing a lot more in the months and years to come." OK, a book is in the mental pipes, but we're not exactly taking orders yet, and the more we look the stranger the possibilities become.

The first night involved dinner at CINNABAR SAM's. I have to say, Bigfooters are often an outdoorsy form of nerd. I have never been so photographed, videoed, documented, recorded and questioned in all my life, and moments later it is Tweeted, then blogged, Flikred, then immortalized on their web site. Documentarians at heart, Bigfoot people will prove each others' existence if they cannot get the Big Hairy One on film. They do love their tech gear! Everyone is instantly famous.

That night we went out Squatching on Friday Ridge Road and up to Brush Mountain Lookout where recent BF activity has been reported

(see our previous post HERE). We had a third-gen night scope and a very cool new thermal imager so refined that it presented clear as day images in a moonless pitch dark. No Squatches made themselves known, but we did encounter some raccoons, acorns falling from trees (and one bigger thing, potentially a tossed rock), and some amazing views of straggler Perseid meteors and the Milky Way (which is astonishing through night vision binoculars!).

The next day was a trip out, as is said, "On the Road to Bluff Creek." Think of "on the road to Loch Ness," a British expression, and translate: CRAZY! Nutso? Off the deep end? Well, maybe we are?

On the way the expedition stopped in at the BLUFF CREEK COMPANY. The store building was standing still. We were shortly visited by owner Phil Smith Sr., though, and found out that he plans to tear the store down by October. And this: the asking price is actually around $600K. But still, what a deal!

One can see how the building is deteriorating, but the owner assured us that it could be restored--it just isn't in his plans to do so. Apparently, the BC Company has no phone, and the property is not on the public market yet, so anyone wanting to save the place must act more or less NOW, and will have to go to the site to inquire.

After lunch at the Orleans Mining Company Diner, where we saw many hundreds of iron skittles (and painted saw blades) on the walls, and a two-headed calf, we headed out on the G-O Road (EyeSee on the sign) up to 12N12/Cedar Camp Road.

Below, the turnoff to the Film Site, and... the Believe It folks get their first baptism in the sacred waters of the film site area of Bluff Creek.

Round the "big bend of the creek" spoken of by Bob Gimlin is the FILM SITE, at the bottom of the now-signed 12N13H. More on this in our next post.

Here Diana and Mike investigate the film site itself, just upstream from the big bend and huge root balls of Douglas Firs.

NEAR DISASTER! GORY DEATH AVOIDED!

For those who might be thinking of going to the Film Site, TAKE HEED! BEWARE! A four-wheel drive vehicle is highly recommended! Not kidding: Craig Woolheater and Crew nearly ended up as Bigfoot and Salamander food, with their truck hanging precariously over the creek below. The rock slide at the bottom of the hill can be treacherous, and on top of that, there is nearly no way to turn around once heading down the road. So, be careful! Read the story HERE and HERE, and see the images HERE.

And at the start of the Bigfoot Byway, two more icons....

In Willow Creek everything is "Squatchy." Here we have famous bigfoot godfather Al Hodgson immortalized by a recently revamped municipal water system drawing water from Willow Creek aquifers just before the creek reaches the Trinity River. He's still living, and will always be a Legend.

Here are Denali and her Dad having some fun "messin' with Sasquatch."
OK, well, all for now. We will have to put the P-G FILM SITE UPDATE in a separate post. For now I will say: WE WALKED IN PATTY'S FOOTSTEPS!

Here are the relevant FLIKR PHOTO SETS taken by the Believe It Tour folks. Check them out, they're grrrreaaat! Links: WILLOW CREEK AND BIGFOOT BOOKS, BLUFF CREEK JOURNEY, and THE FILM SITE.

Oh, and I almost forgot. THE CHURCH OF BIGFOOT also visited this weekend. A fun night celebrating beer in Bigfoot's riverside domain was had by all.

Image here, from The Believe it Tour.