Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:1072 Retired SWAT Officer

Episode Date: July 13, 2024

Mark writes "I thought I would give you some bullet points to a Bigfoot Weekend I was blessed to have experiences. This started on Friday July 21st and ended on July 23. Just so you know how the weekend started I responded to our camp site and picked as spot to pitch my tent. After setting up my area m met some people from outside Houston who were there with their ten year old son, closest to my tent. The ten year old asked to go to a nearby creek and look for some rocks there. He left but returned after about 5 minutes. He had chosen a way that was at the bottom of where two hills met. Add into this that I knew it had rained the night before in this area as I followed the weather in order to pack right for the weekend. The kid stopped about 25 feet from my tent and behind his parent's tent. He said, "I found a foot print." We kind of blew it off and then Jesse Morgan came by to introduce himself. The boy told him what he had found and he went to check. Sure enough there was a larger and smaller print. I took some photos. I attached the smaller one first and the second is the track that was plastered. That is the fourth photo. I found another track about 30 yards away from the other two and it was 15 1/2 inches. The plater cast measures 17 1/2 inches. Part of the foot did not get plastered as it was on a slight slope. That is what was found in my first 20 minutes after setting up my tent. Here are the bullet points for the rest of the weekend, I believe in chronological order. 1) Night hike with small tree breaks and a head seen by Alan Megargle through therm. 2) After that heard some light chatter by a stream. 3) One person in my group saw a shadow running bent over near the ridge. Second day: 1) We did a recon a mountain we had to bushwhack up into. No trail. Found these quartz rock circles set up in the ground. Not sure who did that. 2) We found many trees twisted and broken at about the six foot level. 3) We found a 15 inch track almost near the top with a small one next to it. 4) The mountain was completely quiet Second night: 1) Went back to mountain and bushwhacked up at about 10 pm. except for our start by the road the woods were silent. 2) We ascended (Myself and 6 other guys) to the top. Where I separated from the group. They eventually settled down and were quiet. I then heard something moving around my perimeter. It started around my 9 o'clock and stopped around my 2 o'clock. It stopped and it was dead silent. I then moved my position and it did roughly the same thing again. It stopped. 3) It stayed silent for about 5 or so minutes and then we all heard the howl from down in the valley. 4) It stayed quiet for some time and we decided to head down, getting lost in the process. This was around midnight. 5) As we were walking 2 guys heard something pacing us. 6) One guy saw green eye shine. 7) We stopped to get our bearing and one guy pulled his thermal scope out and saw one. He handed them to me and I clearly saw a head. 8) We started back down and I heard something, in what was like a conversational tone, right in front of me in a thicket, say something like,"HeeeeeeYou", which was just so close to me. It sounded like a twelve year old male. My wife and I did head back to the same mountain in late September and she found a small trackway. Like a bone head I did not photograph those.. Well, that was it, but there are details to fill in."

It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind and it either heard me or smelt me and he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up and that shocked me. They don't make people that big. The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach. I've never seen anything moves like that in my life. They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language and they were chuntering away back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forward.

I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet that what I saw were bears. What happened what are you reporting? Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That's son of a bitch is about six of a six years. Bitch is about six foot nine. I don't know. Do you see a bouncer? Yes, I'm looking right in.

Uh-oh. And you're listening to the best podcast ever, Sasquatch Chronicles. Woo-boom! Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show planned for you. Last night, Tony Merkel from the Confessionals and myself did the After Dark show for members on both of our different shows. And actually had a lot of fun.

It was really cool to bring people on video with us and ask questions. And it was a little nerve-wracking for me because I'd never used a system before. So I was like, okay, what button do I push? What, you know, so I'm trying to talk and think and trying to figure out what buttons to press. Too much going on there. But I'm getting better at it. But I really enjoyed the members who showed up live and the ones who came on task questions. I think the kids had some of the best.

best questions. If you aren't able to view it live, it's up on the website underneath the episodes, and Merkel and I plan on doing more of those for sure. Tonight we'll be chatting with Mark, and Mark comes to us from Colorado. He's a former law enforcement officer. He was actually a SWAT officer, and he describes this experience he had in Bailey last year from July 21st to the 23rd, and I'll kind of let Mark go into what happened to him. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com, and if you get a chance, check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Mark to the show. Mark, thanks for

coming on. glad to be here glad to be here thank you and you had this encounter in bailey colorado and it was the span over a couple days from the 21st of july till the 23rd what made you go into this area and if you would just kind of walk me into what happened long kind of story um my wife and i when we got married back in 2014 uh I know it's going back always, but part of her vows was to support me in my Bigfoot research, or going out there to try and find Bigfoot. She actually said that in her vows.

And it wasn't until last year that she, for my Christmas present, she arranged for me to get this Bigfoot weekend up in Bailey, and that's what got me up there. There's a lot of places around here that I kind of looked into that had had, reports like the backside of Pikes Peak, down kind of near what's called Rye, Colorado, and the San Isabel National Forest and so on. So I've been in those areas just kind of looking around and seeing, but not finding anything. So once she showed me what Bailey was, I started looking it up and found out, you know, that's where the Sasquatch Outpost is located. And I thought,

well, that's kind of weird. So I did some more research and found. that, you know, that's an area that seems to have some activity in it. So it was a perfect weekend setup. And, you know, when I first got it, I didn't think anything too much about, oh, I'm going to see a Bigfoot. I thought I'm going to meet a lot of like-minded people who are open to talking about it. And I'll learn some things like they teach us castings and what to look for, what to listen for, etc. So took off from here. I got up there at one.

Exactly. They said it started at one. And where it is is it's off of Highway 285 kind of headed back side to Brecken Ridge. And it's in Pike, San Isabel National Forest up there. So there's a lot of forest around that area and that part of Colorado. So I got up there. There's a private road that goes back of what's called the Glen Isle Resort. It's one of those historic 100 plus year old places up in Bailey.

And so I get up there and, you know, some people are walking around saying, I just set up your tent and we'll go from there. We'll meet at three or whatever. So I go and I set up my little two-man tent and my wife, she's not with me. She's, you know, doing her own thing at home. And once I got started into it, everything was up. A couple at the same time came in from the Houston area in Texas,

and it was two parents and a child, a 10-year-old. So we got to talking. We both set up and finished our tent setups at the same time. And the boy says, well, I want to go down to the river and get some rocks. Well, there's a creek that's down by the 285. And he was going to go the back way around the mountain on this private property. you can go down there. I don't know how he knew you wanted to go that way,

but apparently you figured it's downhill. So the kid goes and he steps down the hill to where two hills kind of come together, you know, up in the mountains. Two hills come together. And he yells back. He says, I found some footprints. I found some footprints. So we're all like, oh, okay.

Yeah, you know, even the parents. And so he kept walking. He goes down a ways. We don't see him for. about another 10 minutes. He comes back and he goes, I found some footprints. By this time, we're talking to one of the organizers and he comes up and, you know, he kind of gives the old eye roll, okay, I'll go and, you know, humor the kid. He goes down there and he gets to that point where the kid said he saw it and he just yells back up to the kid to one of the other people

or up the hill to one of the other people he knows and says, grab my, my, plaster kit now. And so they go and they make a plaster cast. I sent a photo just literally before you called in case you didn't get the other ones. And it's a plaster cast. It's almost complete from the foot. You can see the toes, the heel, even I think the mid-tarsal break on it. With that, it turned out to be a 17 and a half inch print. And it was literally 25 feet from where I set up my tent. Well, I had checked the night before, and it had rained. And these things were pretty deep into the ground. And for those people who don't know, Colorado, about the only place you're going to get mud up on these mountains is down where like two hills meet where

topsoil will run off until you get further down into valleys where the creeks are and so forth. So it would take some wait to do that. So I go down to see what. what they're talking about. And there was three more tracks going up the hill that were only partial and not as clear as the one that he was going to be casting. So we looked around some more. And then I found another print that was more of an impression. Is it 100% of print?

I don't know. You'd have to make up your own mind. But knowing that it had rained, if a wet foot had stepped there, it would have picked it up And you can see the perfect outline of a 15 and a half inch print in the ground. But it's not deep because it's on that flat part of the hill. So it doesn't have that muddy quality. Anyway, so I took a couple pictures of that. And the organizer, one of the other organizers shows up and he decides to go and try and find a trackway.

He found 26 more separate impressions going around the mountain to our east. going south. And have you ever looked on the map for where we're at, you can see that there's just wilderness back there and mountains and so forth. I mean, there's a few ranches here and there, but it's woods. You know, it's definitely deep there. So we get all that done. Everybody's all hyped up now. Then we started meeting more people as they came in from all over Albuquerque, someplace. I can't remember which sit in California. And so people, were coming in. And some of them had had Bigfoot experiences before some hadn't. So it was kind of a nice mix of people. So we go down, we meet in the hall, people start talking, you know,

what's your experience and so forth, and, you know, what do you do for living, et cetera? And once all that goes down, they said, okay, we're going to have dinner. And then we're going to go up and do basically a preliminary night walk. And so we go back to our camps and we rest. We meet some more people, talks more. And we load up into a few vehicles and then we head back east on 285. We take a left off of whatever road it is. We go all the way down to the end of this road where there's maybe, I don't know, six parking spots.

And then the road breaks off to the right and goes down to the road. to a dead end. One group took two vehicles down to the dead end. I was in one of the two vehicles that stayed where the parking was. So we all exit the vehicles. It's just starting to get dark and we start walking. We have headlamps if you wanted them and most people did. A lot of them though, though, that you could tell they weren't outdoorsy people just because of the way they were and how they walked and all nine yards. So we head up starts getting dark, we stop. And at that point, it's just supposed to be stop and listen.

And Alan was one of the leaders of our group, McGargle. He's known somewhere in the Bigfoot world. He used to do stuff out in Ohio a lot as well. And he's recently done a couple of documentaries. Anyway, he gets the people to stop. So I'm a former counter-sniper with the SWAT team. So I like being separate and away from people. And so I moved up the trail further by myself.

And I could hear them all chattering back behind me and I'm listening and I hear a break. And I was like, okay, that doesn't have to be Bigfoot. Things move in the woods. You know, it's supposed to be active and have critters. And I heard a few more light wood brakes, you know, twig breaks and so forth. And it was moving from my left to my right, which I believe is going basically east or west to east. And so we get everybody up again. I told Alan about it.

And he said, yeah, I thought I heard some stuff breaking over there too. Doesn't have to be big foot. Not everything's big foot. So we move on up the mountain, the trail rather. And as we're going up the trail, it's getting darker and darker, darker, darker. And we come to another point, and some of the city people, you can tell they're starting to breathe heavy. So Alan stops the group again. Once again, I separate from the group.

And there's a fork in the trail where it goes deeper into woods. And you can barely see at this point. It's so dark. So I separated, like I said, from the group. And I'm just standing there and I'm listening. I'm listening. And I didn't really hear anything. As a matter of fact, that was one of the things that was weird is it was very quiet.

So I'm just listening. And then I started thinking and said, if I was a big foot, where would I be? So I looked up the trails, looked around, and I found a spot that if I was a sniper, that's where I'd go. Or a hunter if it was late in height type of stuff. And sure, you know, I looked up there and I just stared at that area. Well, Alan comes up. He's got a thermal in his hand and he goes, I saw a head up here peeking around. a tree. And I go, is it up the trail to the right in that one dark patch? And he goes, yep.

So anyway, he goes, he says, I can't see it anymore. So either it moved or something, aspect changed. I don't know. He went back. A couple of minutes later, he comes back. He says, it was there again, but now it's gone. So anyway, the people behind us, it's dark. Some of them aren't comfortable. And we turn around at that point and go back. Well, as we're going back, one guy goes, I just saw a silhouette up on the ridge to our left and moving and it was hunched over and it was dark. And it was running through, you know, along the ridge. Pretty hard to do at night. But again, don't know if it was a big foot, but it was weird.

And then we've got some chattering noises coming from our right further down ahead of us. So three of us immediately went down to try and see if we could hear anymore. we couldn't, whatever it is, got quiet or moved on and don't know what it was. But it was kind of a good night to just kind of see what, you know, was capable. So we go back, we sit around, we talk, and then we finally hit the, hey, next morning we wake up. That's when they show us how to make casts, you know, after breakfast and all that. And then they talked about this thing called the portal tree, which is supposed to be an American Indian thing. It's at the Glen Isle Resort right as you come in. And it's supposed to be a well-known place

for, you know, if people touch it, they've actually got pictures of where there's a light around them. So I don't know any of that stuff. I'm not much of a portal person, if you will. And so they talked about the history of that along with, you know, all the history that we had had before and all the prints they showed us and so forth. And I actually did after everybody else's. I went up to the tree and I, you know, I said, if you're out there, you know, because they said make the request. And, you know, I did it and not thinking anything really about it, but I did it anyway,

just to kind of do it. So we all load up into the trucks. We go out. And this time it's, I want to say it's probably around two o'clock. We head up into the mountains out towards Lake Wellington, which is south of Bailey. And it's basically a large reservoir and fishing area for people. Once we get down there, we took a Forest Road, 543 or something like that. And we headed over the mountains and down and back and around.

And then along this creek, and my group was just seven people. they seem to be more experienced outdoorsmen, hunters, and that type from, you know, the previous. And so we just pulled off on the side of a road. There's no trails, no trailheads, nothing. We thought we would cross the creek, but the water was too high. We don't want to risk it. So we turned around and we said, let's just bushwhack up this mountain. So we did.

And it was quite the climb at the initial part of it. So we get up there. We found these rocks. We found these little circles of crystal rocks placed with a cactus in them. I don't even know what that was about, but they were kind of set out in a weird pattern on the mountain. So don't know what that was about, but it was something that we saw, so it was worth mention. And then we started blazing the trail that we wanted to use that night again with orange tape. And as we're going up, we're kind of tracking, just make elevation.

basically what we wanted to do. So as we're going up, somebody found another set of prints. One was 15 inches, and another one was much smaller. Right next to it, it was down in a hill between two hills. And so that was interesting to see. We blazed some more and put it on up there. And then a couple of us had some things like I had a fluorescent orange whistle, emergency whistle, and I put it on a tree that was snapped right around five and a half six feet. I don't know if it was a Bigfoot did it or went. Again, not everything's Bigfoot. And I put it on there just to see if it would be taken sort of as a gifting thing

or if they were curious if they would mess with it. And we went, we finished doing the trail, and we came back down following the trail that we had blazed out. went back to the camp, had our dinner. Once that was done, we prepared to go out for our night height. So I loaded up with a bunch of flashlights and my headlamp with a red light on it and so forth. No firearms were allowed, so that was a good thing probably because people freak out and they think they're going to shoot a bit foot and then to shoot me. I don't want that.

And we get going. We're up the mountain cruising along. It's probably around 10, 1030 already, so it's dark. It was about 65 degrees, so it actually was perfect for hiking. There was only a sliver moon out, no real clouds, and no breeze. And again, well, it was dead silent. Couldn't hear anything going on in the woods at all, nothing. We get back up, we follow our trail back up to the top, and then we go a little bit

further. The other gentleman, they all hunkered down around this tree. I separated myself from the group and I went out away, where I could still look back and see them. And if they had the right stuff, they could see me. And I'm just standing out there. And I believe I was facing roughly southwest. And the closest lights to us were way off in the distance, because we were kind of of at a peak on that mountain. And they were way, way off in the distance. And so I figured, okay, we're out here away, and there's been no trail, so that's a good thing. Don't see or hear anybody else, and it's dead silent.

And that's when I heard something moving. And it was like it was brushing against stuff. I've been in the mountains a lot since I was a kid, and I've probably solo camped as much as I've camped with other people. And I've not heard that kind of just, it was like intentionally trying to move quietly, but just missing, being perfectly quiet,

just at the edge of hearing type of thing. And it was kind of weird. And it started at about my, I want to say, nine o'clock, and then it just kind of moved, moved, moved. And it was slow, it was purposeful.

And I didn't move. And at about my two o'clock, I didn't hear it anymore. I waited a little longer to see if it would move some more. It didn't. So I shifted over to my right to where the 2 o'clock was to make it my 9 o'clock again, just to see why the 9 o'clock. I don't know.

It just, it was that. I figured let's give it a chance to do that. And again, I heard that real quiet brushing movement. And it just moved, move, move, moved. And then it stopped at my 2 o'clock again. So I'm standing there. I'm trying to control my breathing so that my hearing and everything is fully open and unobstructed, didn't hear anything else.

And that's when a howl came from down in the valley. And it was a long howl, similar to the Ohio howl. And it just was like a, you know, I'm not going to obviously do it, but it was loud, loud, loud, and it was long. and then it stopped. So listened again, and then back from behind me, one of the guys, they tried to fake the howl back, and I was like, don't do that, you know, but I didn't say it, but I was thinking, don't do that.

So he did, and it wasn't even close to what we heard coming up from the valley. And so we waited, waited, waited, and they finally decided to get up behind me and start moving again. And so I rejoined the group. and we started heading back down the mountain the way we thought we came. And whoever was leading, I can't remember his name, he missed where the markers were. So now we're heading down this mountain in a direction we're not sure of. And as we're heading down, we keep trying to find where something is.

And now I have to go back and note something that we did find on the way up. up, not sure if it means anything, found a baby deer carcass up there that was all bone at this time that had a weirdly snapped leg and not sure what it was, but the bones were kind of, I mean, they were picked clean and they were broken, like something was trying to get at the marrow. It was weird, but we don't know what it was. It could have been the animal suffered an injury, et cetera. So going back, we're lost, we're going down this mountain. And we passed where those bones were that we had found.

And so we knew that somewhere around there, there had to be our markers. We found them. We started moving again, got lost again. We keep going for a while and knowing that we're supposed to have found those markers by now. And when we didn't find the markers, we stopped. And I was saying we came in from the west. We need to go out to the west, but I didn't bring my dagum compass with me. and I wasn't sure if the cell phones would work.

One guy pulled his out and says, I think mine is working. And so at least the compass part, I don't even know how that all works. But he seemed to know what it was. And so we were making plans, but given the guy's arrest. And as they were doing that, the one gentleman who was from Albuquerque, he reaches into his pack, pulls out his flare, and just starts scanning back the way we had come. when he did he stopped and he was just looking looking looking he says i found one and i said yeah he

says yep it's right at that mountain back from the from the direction we came from and that's when one of the guys go you know what i saw green eye blow off to our right as we were coming down and another guy said i heard noises like we were being shadowed on our left so again we don't know what it is but Green eye glow is a little weird at night. And so he says, you want to see it? I said, well, yeah. So I took it. I searched around real quick and bam, there was a head just bright as day.

Clearly the brightest thing out in this field by a long shot. And it was near an area of rock that I knew we had passed further up the mountain. So I watched it and watched it, watched it. It didn't move at all. but it had that conical shape to it, the head, and it went down almost like a triangle to where the jaws would be, kind of. And you could clearly see it was behind the rock. And so I thought that's pretty good.

And I don't know what's kind of Zoom factory had on it, but it was clear that it was ahead, and it was up on that mountain where we were just at, which kind of goes along with what. the one guy said with the green eye glow and the other guy saying he heard something plus the fact that I thought I heard something. So we went back up to Hill to see if we could, well, three of us did. We went back up the hill to see if we could find anything that was up there, you know, with other people behind us. And I should also mention that two other guys pulled out their fleers and saw the same thing that I saw and that the first guy from Albuquerque saw.

So there's four people who said, that's it right up the hill. So we go back up some of us and we, of course, didn't find it because that's their home. If they want to go away, they go away. But found the exact same rock with the striations on it that you could see through the Fleer or the, you know, the Iowa's Fleer. And we went, rejoined the group. We started walking out again. I separated myself a little bit and started pulling lead away from the group. And based on how the topography.

was, I was kind of going down the ridge and to the left, and everybody was still behind me, probably 20, 30 yards, at least 30, yeah, I'd say around 30 yards to my rear, and I'd call that my 4 o'clock, and then out of nowhere something goes to my left, right at about my 10 o'clock, goes e-you, but not like sing-song, it just e-you. and it sounded like a juvenile. There was no gruffness to it. It sounded almost like what we would consider to be like a 12-year-old juvenile talking. I immediately snapped my head over there.

I had my red light on and I saw nothing. That's when the first time that whole night that I got goosebumps. Because something should have been there, Wes, I'm telling you something should have been right there. And it wasn't that freaking. you out, that's the one that got me. And I turned around and said, did anybody else here or see anything? And they said, no, because they were back there and they were walking and tromping on the down hill, I guess. It was right there west. And that got me. Everything else, I, you know, I could live with and I had no problem with. And that's that close. And then it

wasn't there. That was something. So anyway, I started here. peering water. That's where the creek was. So I knew that as long as we followed sound to the water, we would finish up. And that's how my weekend ended with that Bigfoot experience. And that last one was the one that got me the most. It was something else. The last part's really creepy. And I've experienced something like that, too, where I had a flare and something screamed at us. And it should have been right there, but it wasn't. And I'll post some of the, tracks that you got, Mark, underneath this episode. I wanted to ask you, was this your only Sasquatch experience? Yeah, but until that point, and I didn't have anything like, you know,

actual physical. However, this happened in July. I took my wife up at the end of September, I think, or October, first week of October, a time frame. I know it was before we went hunting, which was at the end of October. And I took her up there to the same place. We hiked in the same basic way. We're the only people on that road. Here's the freaky part again. So we get out of the car. I go to the back of my Jeep and I'm starting to put on my gear. This time I did bring a firearm because they're still bare out and they're starting trying to fatten up for winter. So this time I had a firearm with me and I put on my pack and my wife is standing over by the front corner of the Jeep and she goes, do you smell that? And I go,

smell what? And she goes, smells like something's dead over here. I didn't smell it. So I go over to where she is and I started smelling it. I was thinking, okay, well, things, you know, happen up in the mountains and so forth. And I've been around dead things, both human and animal a lot. So it did have that kind of death smell to it. So I tried to find out where it came from. I went a stretch down the road, both sides, everything. And at one point, there was no more smell. And then went back towards the vehicle. There was a smell, almost like you get one.

You know, people say, well, it's like a wall of smell. Okay? I don't know. We go up the mountain. As we're going up, I could as were. I saw a good track. But I don't know. And my wife goes up ahead of me.

She's ahead of me. And she starts finding tracks of deer. She finds track of elk. And so we're walking up. And then she finds one singular footprint track. And I looked at it and it was probably, it was around 11 inches. And I thought, that's kind of small. But why would somebody have a barefoot up on the mountains off trail in the middle of nowhere?

And this is near Pine Mountain and Green Mountain up off of that area if anybody wanted to look it up. and so we keep going up the hill and eventually my wife, because she's ahead of me, she looks down and she's walking along, and she goes, I found a bunch of tracks. I'll go, what do you mean a bunch of tracks? It was the same size of that one we found further down the mountain, except it was a trackway of about eight prints coming down the mountain in the same direction as that one footprint was. So I thought that was kind of odd.

Of course, now, like an idiot, I didn't take pictures of that one, and I didn't do the measurements on it, even though I had stuff, because we were kind of just moving. That one I can't excuse myself for. I'm a retired cop. I should know better. So we're going up the mountain, and as we're going up, she starts seeing more tracks of deer and everything else. So there's a large food supply up there. And then she finds an actual Puma print. I thought that was pretty cool.

You don't usually run into Puma Prince. And we headed up to this one area where there are some rocks. And here's another weird thing. The temperature when we got around those rocks instantly dropped. And there was a mist. And this wasn't on the top of the mountain. It wasn't in a valley. It was on the side of the mountain kind of, in its own.

There was a mist around these rocks. It was the weirdest thing. I looked up in the sky. No clouds. It's warm. probably a 75 degree day, I can figure it out. The wife said she got an uneasy feeling about it, and that's when we turn around,

and we went back down the hill. Immediately, once we passed this point where we noticed the decrease in temperature, the temperature returned to normal. And that's when we both remembered thinking about it. There's no sounds up here. It's the middle of the day. There's no sounds here at all, nothing. So we keep going and we go down the mountain.

and when we get back to the Jeep, not even a hint of a smell anywhere. I even walked up and down just to see if I could find that smell again. No smell. It was weird. Very weird. So that's the closest thing I had to one after that. Now, I've got tales from people who never reported it to an agency.

I met 20 people who've had experiences in Colorado, and some had a little bit more happen to them, some less, even my daughter. So there's stuff going on in Colorado, definitely. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree with you. A lot comes out of Colorado, especially Bailey. And, you know, I was telling you earlier, Mark, I experienced kind of like what you experienced when that thing was like

A, you or hey, you, when it was wording it to you and you look over and there's nothing there. When I was at the Browns, I've told this many times, but we had something scream at us. and the thing couldn't have been more than 20 feet away. And we had a thermal. And there was nothing there. I mean, nothing there. It made zero sense.

And I've always said in the past that chasing Bigfoot sometimes feels like you're chasing a ghost. Not that I think Sasquatch is a ghost, but it's kind of that same feeling of having a hard time ever catching up with it. Because you would think with the size of them, they would be easy to find. but that's not really the case. You know, you have this experience, your former law enforcement, you're looking through a thermal. What was kind of going through your mind when you see that head pop up? Yeah, you know, they all, you know, and I agree with other, all people have different reactions to it when they first see something like that. Now, if I'd seen one probably up close in the day and it's standing there, you know, 10 yards from

me, I probably would have pooped my pants and, you know, if I didn't faint, I would have ran out of there really quickly. But seeing it there, especially after the other stuff built up to it, with the noises and the howl and then the guy saying they saw stuff, if they had wanted to hurt us, they could have, but they didn't. It's, you know, that's their domain. And so I wasn't afraid at that point. So, you know, when you kind of look at that, you're like, and I've done stuff. When I was a cop, I did stuff that, you know, I didn't care about my own personal safety. And what I was trying to do is have the experience.

I know it's hard to say, and I'm not braver than anybody and everything else. And the other guys, they weren't, like, afraid either as far as that goes. It's not like we had that kind of, I don't know, energy around us that, you know, we need to be afraid. It was almost like they were just saying, okay, now move along, move along. We're going to let you know we're here, but just keep, just keep. moving and it almost felt like that. And I don't know if they've been habituated enough in that area to know if you harm the humans, you're going to have trouble, but you can scare them or, you know, get them out of there. I don't know how that works with them. Again, like you always say,

we don't have one in our garage to study. So and, but just the fact that, you know, you're, you're sitting there and you're living that and you're seeing it, it's amazing. And, you know, when I saw the head, it was like instant validation of like all these years, even before you started with your podcast and I've been listening to you since pretty much day one. Even before that, I had super interest in it and I never knew why. And then when you see it, it was like, yes, it's like meeting your boyhood hero. You know, it's like, there it is. It's there.

It exists. It's real. I know it. I know it, know it, know it, know it now. I'm not just a believer. And then with all the other stuff with the prince and the forest going dead silent, like I've never experienced that before where it was just dead silent. And, you know, in Colorado, because there's always wildlife and stuff moving around and there was nothing. And so, you know, you throw all that stuff together.

And it was until the EU thing. That was a little spooky. I have to admit that. I was like, oh, my gosh. But, yeah, seeing the head was awesome. Awesome. It was an amazing thing to me. But again, have the circumstance been different, me alone and, you know, 10 yards away, who knows, probably would put my pants. When you and your wife went back and you guys are, you know, she's finding these tracks. And I realize they kind of look like the same size, but she's finding multiple tracks. Do you think it was just one individual that made those tracks? Yeah, it looked like they were all the same size.

The spread probably was in the – this is why I really kicked myself in the butt. It looked around 30 inches between each one, and it was right, left, right, left. You could clearly see that one was right, one was left. There's no doubt about that. And just like other people report, it was almost a single file type of thing with just slight offset from center. So whatever it was, that's what it was doing, going down the mountain. And as they said, there was plenty of food sources around there. Down by the creek, there was berries and water and everything else.

So it's a good place for them to live if they wanted to. And then they could hide in those rocks up at the top without any problem. Yeah, the other thing that I wanted to ask you about, when you and your wife went back, you described that weird mist. Was it like a fog? It was not quite a fog, but it was mist. It's like you could just see the mist coming in, you know, the humidity of it. So it wasn't a real fog like, you know, or it's coming in and, you know, how did the Baskervilles type of thing.

It was just, it was almost like you were in a cloud, you know, if you've been hiking and you'd go into the clouds. So you could clearly see that there was mist there and there was vapor, water vapor. etc. So it was clearly there. And it was from us stepping in from nothing into it. And like I said, the immediate temperature drop. And I checked to verify that, you know, there were no clouds around. There were nothing. There was no real wind to speak of. So I checked. I'm, you know, part of me is still skeptical that, you know, you have to put out, you know, you have to kind of make logical choices. And I, you know, I, I couldn't explain it. I don't know why it was there. I don't know if it had anything to do with

Bigfoot. I don't know if it had something to do with this area. It was just, it didn't belong. It shouldn't be there. And it's not like when you hike one of the 14ers and you get up above 12 and now you're, and it's cold. And then you are literally walking into a cloud. You know, it was like starting to walk into a cloud, but it shouldn't have been there at that altitude and it shouldn't have been there in those trees and among those rocks. It was just weird. Yeah, that is weird. You know, I know with Colorado being at such a high altitude, I'm sure things like that could happen. It's kind of weird, though. There was no clouds out and you just kind of ran into it. You know, and all the other things going on around there, you know, you guys feel like you're being

watched and you're finding tracks and the forest is dead quiet. It makes me think maybe something more was going on, but it's hard to say. Do you guys have any plans on going back? Yeah, I'll definitely hit the Bailey area again. I've got to say in the summer, we're busy with our garden. We have meatbirds are going to be harvesting next weekend, and, you know, that's the kind of stuff we do. Well, that's going to be down in Walsenburg, not up here. And so we stay real busy and come around September, I'm going to be up in those mountains as much as humanly possible. Then when spring comes around, I'm going to be up there. This was a bad winter for trying to go in the mountains because we had snow pretty much through until May.

And it was deep. So we couldn't really go and forage into the mountains very well. But I do know that this area is, like you say, there's lots reports there. and if you follow the actual green belt of all of that area, it goes hundreds of miles. So they've got plenty of room to run around and play. They've just got to cross a road here and there and plenty of resources. Yeah, Colorado is a hot spot for sure. You know, after these experiences, especially after this weekend of everything that you saw and experienced.

And being a former law enforcement officer, you know, being a true. trained observer. If someone were to ask you what do you think Sasquatch is, what would you say? And there's no wrong answer, of course. If you just went by my personal experience, it would be a physical creature. However, with some oddities to it, the whole fact that it wasn't there when it should have been, that's weird. That makes me kind of, and here comes the word, woo, makes me think a little bit woo.

plus the fact that each person in our pod at party went up to that tree and asked for some kind of thing, you know, some kind of experience. Now, does it have anything to do with it? I don't know. The Indians who were in that area who lived there, that's a tree that they described as being a spiritual connection for, you know, whatever in the area. So I don't know if that had anything to do with it. So where am I on it? I'm to the point where there's this old saying from Hamlet that there are far stranger, far stranger things on heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

They can't just be a critter. Based on everything that we've seen, heard over the years, the people I've talked to, and, you know, there's just no way it can be just a critter. critter. I'm starting to think it's got to be something else. What it is, I don't know. You know, I'm Christian. I've read the Bible. When I told my story to my pastor, I go, hey, remember, there's nothing that said that they weren't on the ark too. You know, are they Nephilim? I don't know. But you know what I mean? There was just so much that we don't know going back. So they could be a part of the plan. It's, to me, they're just more than a little physical,

because that creature should have been there, West. It should have been. It wasn't. I've done stuff my whole law enforcement career, and before I was in the Air Force, I saw stuff. And, you know, I was always able to figure it out, and it was always more or less the way it should be.

You know, if I looked that direction, that's where something's supposed to be. And it wasn't. That was freaky. And, I mean, I've had a couple of weird experiences in my life, but nothing like that. That was weird. Yeah, that is weird.

I mean, it should have been right there. You should have seen it. But, you know, when you're out there looking for these creatures, you'll find that a lot of weird things happen. Like you're talking about the forest going quiet. And I can't think of an, you know, the forest doesn't go quiet like that. It's such a bizarre experience, but you'll have a lot of weird things happen to you when you're looking for these creatures. And I agree with you. It has to be something more than just, you know,

non-human primate we haven't caught up with. That's what I like it to be. And that's what I want it to be. But I don't think it is. You'll have to let me know if you end up going back up there, Mark. I would love to know if anything else happens. Will you keep me up to date? Let me know if anything else happens.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I'm going to try a couple of other areas where people have told, me about even my daughter. She was over near Montrose, Colorado when she had her howling at the middle of the night experience. And so, I mean, I'm going to check that area too. It's kind of, Montrose is kind of not too far from Telluride at that area. There's a large mountain expanse there. I'm definitely going to hit that area, definitely 100%. And I definitely will go back to Bailey and definitely bound by Rye again. So, yeah, there, there's, there's a lot of,

There's going to be several more foragings out there. And I have a brother who's up in Walla Walla, and we're going to hit the Blue Mountains one of these days. Yeah, the Blue Mountains for sure is a good place to go to look for these things. A lot of encounters come out of there. And Colorado in general is kind of notorious for sightings. I can probably name off five places that are absolutely notorious for sightings. And Bailey is one of them.

But be safe when you're looking for this. these things. I mean, your former law enforcement, I don't have to say that to you, but, you know, be safe when you're looking for them. And I wish you luck, you know, in your search. And I would love to stay in touch with you if anything else happens. And I really appreciate you coming on and sharing what happened to you over these series of days that you were out there in Bailey. I really enjoyed chatting with you, Mark. Well, I thank you for the opportunity. I think people need to hear more about this and you know your normal run-of-the-mill people telling a good tail is what's going to open up others to maybe also looking because you can't do it from your couch. You just can't.

So I do appreciate it, Wes. I really do. Thanks again, Mark. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out Sasquatch Chronicles. com you can become a member and get additional shows i know merkle and i are working on the next after dark show uh for those who didn't make the live show it should be underneath the episode section on saskwatch chronicles dot com until next time everyone