Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:132 A Gold Miner's Encounter

Episode Date: August 2, 2015

I was talking to Bob Garrett today on the phone for a few hours. Bob spent years living off of the land and in the mountains as a gold miner. We were chatting about a lot of things Sasquatch related, we were discussing past guests, I have had on the show to get his opinion on the creatures behavior. I told Bob "it would be great to do a show talking about encounters you had in the beginning, when you were mining and living off of the land, before you really knew about these creatures and behaviors you witnessed." Bob shared with me some of the best encounters I have ever heard. Bob also shared with me encounters that other miners had in the area. Bob talked about how the Sasquatches in Colorado are different then the ones in Texas. We discussed not only the physical characteristics but also the behaviors between the two. I am still thinking about some of the stuff he shared with me. Some of the encounters might surprise you. Sometimes it is important to go back and discuss why you got into this field before the days of the online Bigfoot world. Join me this Sunday as I sit down and chat with Bob, you will not be disappointed.

Five, five, four, four, three, three, two, one, one. When I had come down this hill, I had seen this creature cross the road. They would have ripped my locked door from my truck, extracted me from my vehicle, and no one of that damn thing I could have done about it. This thing I got to notice in its eyes. Its eyes was real, real evil, real sinister looking. The look it was given. Here, please.

Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about 60 foot. Sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. Saskwatrauncle, a place where people share their accounts. Let's start the show. Welcome to the show, my one.

Thanks for being here tonight. Hope your weekend's going well on this Sunday evening. Got a great show planned for you. If you get a chance, please visit saskwatraunicles.com for additional shows and for interviews like the one you're about to hear. Tonight my guest is Bob Garrett, and Bob's going to be talking about his days as a minor, and some of the different things that he ran into. We'll be talking a little bit more than just Sasquatch tonight, but there's going to be a lot of Sasquatch-related encounters. Before we get to that, if you've had an encounter, email me.

My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Thanks again, everyone for being here. Bob, welcome to the show, and thank you for being here. Hey, I appreciate it. Glad you asked me. Bob, I know you spent many, many years out there living off the land, living as a mountain man, up in the mountains, panning for gold, and you'd run into other miners when you were up there. Did the other miners ever talk about Sasquatch or running into these creatures?

Yes, some of the men that I knew when around the campfire and in the little cafes, you know, we would meet up and we all kind of knew each other. And I was new and the man who taught me pretty much out of pan and, you know, hunt for gold and everything, when everybody got together, you know, they would speak about it now and then. They would, you know, tell a story or two. and basically what it came down to, you know, advice from these older guys. Some of them were quite old, you know, up in their 70s, actually, they were still prospecting. You just leave them alone and they leave you alone.

They might rob your camp a little bit, you know, take something, you know, from you or whatever. But on a whole, if you left them alone, if you didn't shoot at, them or shoot them, they normally just left you alone. You know, it's just kind of live and let live. And I know you had an encounter, Bob, when you were 16, but as you were talking with the miners, did they ever give you their impressions on what they thought these things were, what they thought Sasquatch was? Oh, many times I heard the term as ape, manate, and, uh, my own.

But the term I heard more often than not was man ape. Yeah, that's interesting that they would use the term man ape or ape man. And I want to get into some of your own observations when you were out there in the field, Bob, when you're out mining and living out there. Tell us about the first time that you actually ran into one of these things. Well, my first real encounter was basically, basically uneventful really I was coming back to camp I was up on the Spanish peaks and I was coming back to camp I had a little flame up there I smelled what smelled like rotten potatoes and I had a little I had a little split trench that I was

living in at the time you know I know it doesn't sound like much but you know I had a stove in there, you know, it's kind of in the ground. I was walking back to where I was staying. I just happened to hear boulders falling, rock falling, and I looked up, and it was probably about 600 feet above me, and I could see this large, dark thing making its way up above timber line. and I watched it for a while. I don't think you never saw me. That put butterflies in my stomach, of course, you know, and it brought back memories of when I did have the encounter when I was 16.

But this was much bigger than what I had seen when I was a teenager. I really couldn't make out features and things like that other than it had a hand, and it was bipedal, and it was going up above Timberline. Like I said, it was pretty much Uninventful, except I couldn't sleep that night. I bet.

I kept my rifle loaded, and I kept watching the door. Yeah, I don't blame you. Now, you were out in Colorado mining, weren't you? In Colorado, yeah, that's where the Spanish speaks are. It's in southern Colorado. And before we jump into the next encounter, let me ask you,

what were some of the differences that you noticed from the Sasquatch in Colorado as opposed to what you're seeing out there in Texas. Well, you know, really and truly, I didn't discern any difference in the early days because the ones I saw in the Big Ficket where I had stayed for two years were pretty much... I don't know how to describe them.

I didn't know what they were back in. I guess now I would describe them as, you know, pretty much, pretty close to the Patty film, you know, what that looks like. Now, the one I saw when I was a boy, now it had a rounder head, so it was different than these. But these were the big black, brown, normal, you know, what people talk about. I didn't really discern a lot of difference in them until I moved back to Texas and begin to do actual research here. Was it a difference in look or was it a difference in behavior or both? Well, they were very different in some aspects. many types were very streamlined

the ones that I had seen down here and they were almost chimp-like in some ways some of them were kind of a reddish color and some were dark brown some were black the facial features were different

some weren't even very big you know six feet five feet six feet tall and some were just huge and bulky but the thing that I that stands out to me the most is that the round head the only time I had ever seen the round head I was the very first one I saw you know its facial features were different the eye color was different the hair was different but on a whole up north when I was up there, they were all pretty much the same, except for possible color.

You know, color was a little different sometimes. Let me ask you, did you ever see the roundhead while you were in Colorado? No, I never saw the roundhead in Colorado. I never did, and they were huge, they were bulky. They were tall, you know, many of them were within access of a good eight feet. in Colorado. But on a whole, well, on a whole,

they were all pretty much the same, what I saw. So the ones in Texas, you described kind of chimp-like. How would you describe the ones in Colorado? It's simply put in simple terms that man-like, ape-like, ape-like,

something you would see, on one of these shows that they put on nowadays. Oh, it's just, I'm trying to keep the word human out of it, if you understand. They just looked like wild people. The only thing is they were just so much bigger than I was. And I get that. You know, I can completely understand that.

You know, as I talked to more and more and more witnesses, especially, I would say mainly on the East Coast is where I get a lot of this. Although I won't say I've had too many reports out of Colorado. I've had some, but not too many. Especially on the East Coast, people will say it looks, and I'll use the term human. They'll say it looks more human-like. It doesn't really, they'll say it was a wild animal, but it looked very human-like in the face. It didn't have the apish type appearance.

They'll say it looked, people will say Neanderth, some people will say human, but there was something different about it. But to look in the face, you would think human-like when you saw it in the face. Now, you talked to someone in Louisiana or, let's say, Texas, or even here in Washington State, they'll never say that. They'll say it looked very much like a wild animal, primate, either ape. You know, human in the sense that it has a hooded nose, but not really. human in the face. So you get these different descriptions from different parts of the country,

depending on where you're at. Did you notice a behavior difference between what you ran into in Colorado and what you ran into in Texas? And can you talk about the differences that you saw in behavior, if you saw any? Yes. The difference is kind of subtle with some of them. Well, let me explain that. You know, we have the big blacks here that look very much paddy-like, but a little different. You know, they're all a little different. What I saw up there, and I was able to actually observe them for a few days, I was up on a hill, and the wind was usually good at my, you know, coming from. from them instead of coming from me.

What I saw was the females and the younger females, they were, they're very good to their young, it seems like. And they would put the young up into trees. You know, they would stay up there. And I presume later on, I presumed that it had to do with keeping them safe. And then the females, they would, you know, the moms, I guess you might want to say, they would have the younger ones, you know, the babies,

and they would, you know, lay out with them, and they would coo to them, and, you know, they would pet them, and they would put out the smell. That was kind of like a spiced honey, but stronger, if you understand what I mean. And I presumed that that was a soothing, scent to these young ones.

I'm no scientist, and I can't tell you that that's what it was, but I presume that that's what the smell was. And yes, they do put out these scents. They just seem to be very good with their young, and the older ones, the males would come, or you would hear a holler off in the distance, And then they would all get up and they would all, you know, move away.

I guess they were being called back. But that's some of the things that I saw, some of the things I was able to witness firsthand. And the little ones looked very much like chimps playing in the tree. They were very good in those trees. Now, as you're sitting out there and you're out in the middle of nowhere, you're literally living off the land, you're watching this. what's going through your mind as you're watching this? Are you thinking, wow, I'm losing my mind,

or are you thinking this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen? Well, in my mind, this really wasn't supposed to exist, and I wondered why I had never heard of this before, why people weren't knowing this. because I met hunters from time to time up as high as I was and in a lonely country. I'd seen airplanes come in and land in the meadows are on some of the big high lakes and hunters get out.

It seemed to me like they should at least know about it. And I never could understand why we didn't know about it, never knew about it in school. Why we never, why no one ever described it to us? Yeah, I wondered what they were. You looked down at them and despite the fact that they're huge, mongous creatures, it's almost watching, if you think back in time, you would think maybe this is what it was like, you know, for ancient, not man, but, you know, know, man hates or whatever. Did you understand what I'm trying to say?

I'm not a scientist. I don't know these words. I don't know. My feeling was, I don't know what they are. Why don't we know anything about them? They're obviously out here. Why don't we know? Do you understand what I'm saying?

Yeah. Why didn't, why weren't these in school? Why weren't these in the books? Yeah, no, I completely understand that. You know, everything in life is perspective. You know, there are a lot of people talk about these things as being the friendly forest people, and they won't hurt you. And I could see as you're looking down watching them play with their young,

I could see that having that mindset of not really seeing them so much as monsters, but seeing, you know, some sort of humanity in them when you're watching them, I think most listeners think that I think that these, things are godless killing machines. And that's not really true. I think that these things can be very unpredictable and can be very dangerous. And they need to be treated as such. Right. I know on the show, we talk about mainly the darker side of Sasquatch and some of the bad

things that happen to people that come in contact with these creatures. Not every encounter is a bad encounter. I remember I was listening to this guy one time and he was telling his encounter about when he was a kid. And I want to say he was six or seven at the time. He had left his camp. He was out camping with his parents, and he went out exploring, got turned around, and got lost. And so he sat down on a rock and started crying.

And while he's sitting on this rock and he's crying, he describes, at the time, he describes, curious George with press walking up to him and picking him up and he didn't really know what was going on at the time he thought it was maybe it was a bear I mean you know kids mind he had no idea what the same was but he describes it as curious George with breast

this creature picks him up and carries him back and drops him off on the edge of the camp and his parents had asked you know they've been worried sick they've been looking for this kid and we're asking him, where have you been? How did you get back to camp? We've been searching the area. We couldn't find you.

And he told his dad, hey, I was out exploring. I got turned around. I got lost and know where I was at. And I started crying on a rock. And Curious Storage brought me back. And his dad blew it off as nothing. And he was grounded, had to go sit in the tent the rest of the night. And there was an old Indian friend that they had that,

that kind of perked up the moment he said that curious George with breast or I'm back to camp. But you kind of had a similar type encounter when you're out there gold mining. Not so much a violent encounter, but I, you know, I would consider it a positive encounter. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Oh, oh, you know, I've never told that story. And when I have told it, I've never told it fully. Yes, they can be compassionate. They can be monsters. They, to give you an example of where I was going a while ago, and I'll answer your question, just, you know, I'll tell the story. But remember when the young child fell into the eighth enclosure, I think of Japan, and the female ape came out and held the child,

and consulted and kept the others, especially the males, or whatever, away from it. Yeah, I remember that, definitely. Well, you know, that's showing some compassion. You know, this ape is showing compassion. Okay. Well, I think it's the same thing. They can show compassion or they can totally beat you down and eat you. You know, I think that they're very unique.

I think that they walk primarily on the wild side of nature. But what humanity they might have in them is, you know, wild. But they're not beyond compassion, is what I'm trying to say. And, yes, to get to the story, I was... outside of Durango up into Tbil Inland, up along the river, I was just inside the San Juan National Forest. And I was up, I had made a temp in an overhang. I was about 140, 150 feet above this canyon where I had come up, walked up.

Now, you have to envision that, you know, this was a fairly tall overhaul. with a large, I guess you could say, lack for a better word, patio, or, you know, lift. I was up underneath the overhang. You had to kind of, you know, crawl in and crawl out. And above that, above the overhang, you could, you know, push yourself up and, you know, get up on the very top up there.

It was a big table of rock, just for miles and miles. It's a big table of rock. And there were Kenyans, Tinian pines, and scrub oak, and stuff like that. You know, all through there, and then that gave way to the forest. Well, I had noticed that there were trout in the stream that run along the wall down inside the canyon. it run right along the wall of the canyon. I built some traps, fish traps

when it ran across it. I got back up to where I was at and I heard those fish traps just snapping and breaking them. They must have had

some fish in them. I looked down and there's this hairy creature, this large as we call them now a Sasquatch. and he's just, you know, breaking up my traps and taking the fish out of them. There was just a few fish in them, and they were small.

But I screamed down at him, and I threw a rock at him. I was mad. That was my fish. And I was running low. I was about two weeks out of Durango just about. So he picked up a rock. And I looked down,

And I hollered down and I said, yeah, go ahead, throw that rock. I'm about 150 feet up. Let's see you get that rock up here. And it was a good chunk of rock. And you know what? He got it up there. It hit the back end of that shelf that, you know, that I was sleeping under. I picked up a rock.

He picked up a rock. And I dropped my rock. He dropped his. And then he went on about his business base. I went down there and I remade those traps and I made one bigger trap, one that his hands could get into just to see what would happen. And after that, he would use that trap. He would take whatever fish was in that trap. But he always left mine alone.

And so, you know, it went on that I would watch him. I never got close to him. He would at night come up, and I could hear his, you know, feet slap, flap, slap on the rock. And he would look down at my overhang, and I had my fire outside the overhang. And one night, I love my sweets. And I would make camp bread on a stick. A lot of you campers out there in survival of us. probably know what I'm talking about.

But I used to like to put honey in for the liquid. If I didn't have honey, I would use cinnamon sugar, you know, and things of that sort. But it smelled nice. It smelled sweet and everything. And there's a big old hand come down off of that overhang. And he went to pick yourself up. the stick of that camp bread. After that,

I, when I made it, I would throw it up. I would throw a loaf up there, take it off the stick, toss it up there. And, you know,

he would get it because he was almost always up there at night, you know, watching down and everything. But he never bothered me. He just watched me, watched what I was doing, watched everything I did. And,

I would go down and, you know, I would get my fish, and he would go down and he would get his fish. I ate watercress down along the edges of the creek there. He would go down and he ate watercress too. He was eating up pretty much everything I ate. And we never met up, so to speak. I would go on past and then he would come. You know, it was like he was waiting for me to go on out of the area. It wasn't like he wanted to have any kind of rapport with me.

But I would take in, I had a little AR7 that I kept in my backpack, if you don't know what that is, a little 22. And it's a survival gun, and it loads in the butt. You know, everything is taken apart and it goes into the butt of the gun, and you can put it in your backpack. Well, I would hunt small deer with that. I would shoot them in the head because that would down them. And I never had any crumbull, you know, doing that.

And I would take the strap and I would take the hams, you know, off of it. And I would usually take the fur, you know, the pelt because I tan that a lot. And I would come back and it would be gone. And large footprints would be in the soil. or, you know, or in the grass. Well, one day I did that and I waited

and sure enough it was him that was picking up the rest of that deer when I would shoot it or a small elk. I followed him to see where he went

because I want to know where he was going because he would go up the mountain. He didn't want to have anything to do with that. You know, he let me know right fast. You know, he screamed

that and stuff like that. And so, you know, I said, well, that's not going to happen. So I just didn't want to get into his, I didn't want to step on his toes. He wasn't stepping on mine anymore. And we weren't going to, we were just going to live and let live, apparently. I'd been up there a couple of months, two, three months. And I had worked, you know, some places. I didn't find any, you know, gold, some pools go, pyrite, you know, and stuff like that.

anyway I got stuck in I guess it was around the first of May or so I got stuck in an ice storm and if anybody knows

about the mountains out there well May June you know you can get a big snowstorm well this was an ice storm ice storms are where

you know there's so much moisture in the air that it forms ice on everything on all the trees if you're out there on you, the animals, you know, it just gets loaded with ice.

And, you know, tree limbs break because they have so much ice on them, trees go down and stuff. Well, by the time I got to my overhang and was trying to dry out and get the ice off of me, I was nothing but an ice sheet myself. And at that time, I had long hair and a beard, you know. It wasn't because I was a hippie. It was because, you know, I didn't get to a barber. Anyway, I dried out, but I got a sore throat. I went on about my business.

I didn't worry about sore throat so much, you know. I started getting a little sicker, sore throat started getting worse. It started getting a little hard to, you know, swallow food and everything. I noticed that I was coughing real bad. You know, I had a lot of bad cough. a lot of drainage wake up in the morning couldn't

you know had trouble breathing you know had to cough up a lot of stuff pardon me people but I got so sick

Wes that I was passing out I didn't know it then but I had bronchial pneumonia real bad I had a real bad case of pneumonia I just could not

I was so sick I just knew that somebody one day was going to look under that overhang and find my bones in my sleeping bag, you know? Yeah, you're lucky to be alive. Oh, yeah, I was in bad shape, buddy. And I was in such bad shape that I couldn't even crawl out there and start my fire up. And I had plenty of firewood there because I always made sure of that. But I just could not go out there in light of match. and, you know, put some tender out there.

I just couldn't do it. And, you know, of course, I was just, just couldn't breathe, you know, a lot of coughing, terrible coughing. And, well, I heard something up there on the overhang. And I guess because I didn't have my fire going, I guess it made him curious whether I was still there or not. Actually, I think he knew I was there. I think he knew I was sick. Well, this big old face looks down underneath the overhang at me, and I'm looking at him.

And I guess that seemed to satisfy him. Yeah, the hairless one's sick, you know. I realize you're sick at this point, but when you see this face look down, what did the face look like? He looked like a, well, I'll tell you what, I'll describe it completely. He had kind of black-brown eyes, from what I could understand, from what I could remember. He had fur on his jaws up to the eyes. He had a huge jaw mass, big, big, huge, you know, jaw mass, or jawbone. Close-cropped ears.

He was black. He had a nose similar to ours, except. It was huge. And a little squat. Had kind of a close in the nostrils, if you understand what I'm saying. And when he looked at me, it was kind of like, you know, he had a realization that, yeah, you know, the hell of a careless one is thick. Okay. So that seemed to satisfy him.

And he got, you know, I heard him walk away. well, you know, after another day or two, I hadn't been eaten anything. But I had water. I had water in two canteens. I always carried two canteens with me. And I always had this large coffee pot, you know, camping pot that you make coffee in. But I didn't drink coffee. I never acquired a taste for coffee.

I always drank tea. So I always had licked in tea or something like that with me. I also used it for stew, and I've dug with it and everything else. I think it was a multi-tool to me. Yeah, right, like an all-in-one. But I heard this sickie slap down on the rocks right outside the overhane. Okay, this is the part I never tell for obvious reasons, I hope. I looked out, opened my eyes, and I looked, and there's this chunk of meat.

You know, it's not a big chunk of meat, but it's a parasite chunk of meat. And I figured, you know, it looked like elk meat. And I crawled out to it, and I passed out. Well, I was able to put that in the coffee pot, put some water in it. and I passed out. I was sick now, Wes. I mean, when I finally got to the hospital, they told me I was running a 106 degree temperature,

and that's big. Yeah, that's huge. I mean, people die at that kind of a temperature. I mean, you really are lucky to be alive in that situation, Bob. Yes, actually, I am. And I got the water going, you know, it was boiling, and actually I was hungry, you know, and it smelled good, and I was letting it cook down. I was just going to, you know, boil the meat, drink the broth and, you know, chew on the meat.

I didn't know what I could keep down because I really wasn't keeping anything down, even though I wasn't eating anything. I passed out. Well, it was the next day before, and it was cold that I actually got to, you know, eat or drink any of it, and I drank the broth. I drank some of the broth. I ate some of the meat. Basically, when that was pretty much done in,

you know, gone, I heard another slap a few days later. And I looked out and there's this rabbit. It didn't have a head, but there was this rabbit there. And I was able to clean that rabbit. I put it in the pot. Or, you know, I put it in that coffee pot. And I was able to boil some of that up.

And, you know, in between times, I would actually pass out. I was hallucinating, man. I didn't know what was going on. But I got these greens, these herbs that were down there on my overhang that had been tossed down there. And I chewed some of them, you know. And, you know, I knew that these were medicinal. I know about herbs, and these were sweet and some were bitter. And I put them in to make a tea.

I just put them in with that rabbit, and I boiled the whole thing up. And I was able to drink some of that tea. Well, I was beginning to get a little better. I wasn't out of the woods, but I was beginning to get a little better. And I thought, okay, you know, the nights have been pretty cold, but I'm going to try to, and I'm almost two weeks out of Durango, but I'm going to try to make it down the canyon, you know, and get out of the canyon, at least, and, you know, closer to town.

And so I drug myself up, and I packed up, you know, a few things, and actually I left my sleeping bag in there. I wasn't taken straight. I had packed up my backpack, and I was dragging that on the stone, actually. It was so hard to, it was almost like pulling a big old boulder with me, as sick as I was. And I got down finally into that canyon, and, lo and behold, man, I passed out. I was sick. I was so sick.

And I just knew that I was going to die here, you know. know, like so many other people have done, you know, and nobody will ever know where I'm at until they find my body. And, you know, it was kind of sad to me, you know, I was feeling kind of, you know, sad about it and everything. But, you know, it's the best place to die if you had to die, the way I, you know, the way I saw it, too. And anyway, I was able to drag myself up.

There were times when I was actually crawling. I was actually crawling I felt myself suspended up in the air all of a sudden and I'm seeing the canyon is moving

sometimes I kind of go up because the canyon's moving but it wasn't the canyon it was me I was moving but remember you know, I've been hallucinating. I've got a hundred and six degree fever. I'm horribly sick.

I'm dying, basically. But the canyon is moving, or I'm moving, and I can feel myself moving. And this went on for hours and hours in possibly a couple of days. And remember, though, this is what I try to tell myself. remember you were how sick you know I was remember I was hallucinating and everything I woke up

there's this little hippie chick and we're in a school bus and I'm in their bed and she's trying to free me you know Campbell's suit broth and you know she's telling me that I'll be okay you'll be okay we're going to get you down down the canyon. Because, you know, a lot of people would come into the entrance of the canyon, come up, you know, go up a mile or so. And, you know, as far as they could go, they were in a school bus that they had turned into a camper or an RV. The man, the young guy, he'd come up and he says to me, he says, man, he said, I don't know

where you got to string to jerk my bus around like that, but he said, I thought something was going to haul it off. And he said, if you hadn't done that, he said, I'd never found you. He said, I might have run over you. And he said, oh, yeah, and here's your backpack. He said, I found that just now. So, you know,

he put the backpack down there. And I remember this. And then later on, I was in the hospital. They got me down to Durango. And I was, they put they got me in the hospital. And, you know, they put tubes in my lungs.

They did all kinds of stuff and, you know, dripping antibiotics in me. It was several days before I really knew where I was at and what was going on. And that's when, you know, the doctor came in and said, you know, you're very lucky boy, or son. he said that, you know, when you came in here, you were running 106. And, you know, I kind of told them, you know, where I'd been and, you know, what had happened and everything. And basically, you know, they just kind of shook their head and stuff. But, you know, I got better and everything, of course.

But the thing about it is, and I know what you're trying to get me to tell everybody is that the squatch, that metal squatch picked me up. It took me down the mountain, took me down the canyon for two days. I don't even know if it was two days. It could have been longer. It could have been, you know, whatever. You know, I don't know how I got there. I remember that I wasn't walking.

And my only explanation is that, and this is why I tell people, I have felt, I have been on the receiving end of that compassion. I believe he did. I really do believe that he did that for me. Because, I mean, we didn't have really a rapport. I guess we had a mutual respect. You know, he didn't want me to go up the mountain where, you know, he was that.

He didn't want to live with me. He didn't, you know. he was curious about me. I watched him hunt from up there where I was at. You know, we saw each other many times. And, yeah, gee, I think that's what happened. I think that's what saved my life

was that he brought me down the canyon to where people were camping, and he dropped me off to those people. I tend to agree with you on that, Bob. I mean, you know, with Sasquatch, let's say it's an undiscovered primate, just for the case of argument right now. Let's just say it's an undiscovered non-human primate. You know, Jane Goodall, when she went to study the chimps,

she would talk about there would be crazy ones in her mind that would attack her. In fact, one almost killed her. When she very first got to the island, one almost killed her. They basically beat her almost unconscious. It thought she was dead, or she assumed it thought she was dead. And she started to get back up. It came back to finish a job and kick her over the cliff.

There was other chimps that she would run into that had completely different personalities that were very much more compassionate, more not so apt to want a confrontation. They would either leave the area or they would. But the more and more time that she spent with them, she would see different. personality. I mean, I can see that. You know, a lot of people hear the fishing story and think you're looking at this freak of nature down there, stealing your fish,

well, why not run off and why not leave? And people don't understand there's nowhere you can go. You're living in the middle of nowhere. You know what I mean? You're kind of in bed with it at that point. You know, that particular Sasquatch, you said it had more of a human-like appearance. It's hard to say that it looked human, but it looked human.

Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah, very human-like. Not human, but kind of human-ish in appearance, you know. Yeah, right. And that's a very fascinating story, you know, with the Sasquatch. It's almost kind of a mutual understanding that you guys had. You know, like you said, the Sasquatch must have known you were sick. for it to throw up a rabbit with its head popped off.

You know, we hear that story all the time. I've had guests on that say that something got into their rabbit pin and popped all the heads off of them, you know, and they've seen Sasquatch on their properties. I mean, it's a very, very, very fascinating account. When you got out of the hospital, did you head back to that area? I went back there about the next spring. I went back in there

No, after I got out of the hospital, I went home for a while because, you know, I still had to I still had to be careful. I got pneumonia again after that, several months after that. And there for a little while,

you know, I was kind of puny. So, or, you know, my, I guess you could say my resistance is rather low. And, you know, so I recuperated, you know, at home for a while. And then when I did go back, you know, it had been, it was the next year. And I did go back up there. I did not see the Sasquatch.

That's what you're, you know, I think you're going to ask me. But however, all my stuff was still on that overhang. I did pick up my backpack. I mean, not my backpack, I did pick up my sleeping bag. That's a good sleeping bag. It's an Arctic bag. And, you know, I took that with me. And the wood was still there.

Nothing had been touched or messed with anything like that. You know, my fire ring was still there. You know, I walked back out of the canyon and, you know, went on to another place. I kind of like to think that, you know, he... knew I was there, and the fish traps had been taken out of the water and set to the side. Some of them was kind of torn up because, you know, the way they were pulled up. And I don't know, it was just kind of emotional a little bit, you know. And I really wanted to see him.

I really hope to, I really wish or I really hope that he knew. I had cut back and got, you know, my stuff. But I never saw him, though. That never did. Yeah, I would imagine from that experience, you would have one mindset looking at these creatures as opposed to stuff you've seen in Texas.

Well, that's what, honestly, West, I really, they had watched me, you know, Warsh goal before. They, you know, they come and went. I've tracked them some. They shared the same

stream I did. You know, I could be out there, you know, getting my water and they're down about 100 yards from where I'm at, you know, and they're drinking their water. And it was kind of a live and let live. And that's what I was taught in the first place by, you know, the old guy

who taught me how to how to prospect. basically is that when you're up there, they just let them live, you know, and they let you live. Don't shoot at them, don't scream at them, don't throw rocks at them, and, you know, things like that.

And that's the way it always was. And besides, you know, there were years, I never saw one. There were years I saw no sign of them or anything. And then I would go into a place and, you know, outside of Denver, you know, up in the mountains, up and there. And, lo and behold, you know, here's a whole track line of, you know, big feet, big feet, little feet, you know, medium-sized feet. You know, there's a whole group coming up, you know, in and out of this area.

And, you know, that's just the way it was. One thing I want to ask you, when you're talking about the rock throwing and you're watching it throw a rock at you, how did that one throw a rock at you? I mean, was it overhanded? Was it underhanded? Well, you know, it's kind of funny. He looks like he was kind of stiff-armed, but he would throw it kind of side overhand.

Do you understand what I'm saying? Kind of a side overhand. And he could throw up good, too. But I figured out through the years that if they want to hurt you with a right, rock, they'll throw it that way. If they don't really trying to hurt you with a rock, they're going to throw it underhanded. So you think there's a difference when they're throwing rocks?

I think there's a difference, yes. That's been my observations in the past years, is that you get hit with a rock, they mean it, especially if it's coming in, you know, like that. Because they can throw it hard. if you get hit with a rock underhanded, you know, it's not really going to hurt you, you know, it's not really going to hurt you. You know, it's just a sting or whatever, you know.

Most of the time, they don't even try to hit you. So, it's just a warning. I wanted to ask you, so when they were coming around your camp and you, the one minor had warned you about them, and you made mention earlier about them taking stuff from your camp, do you want to talk a little bit about that? What did you notice that was taken from your camp? Or what was gone through?

Well, they would go through my backpack. I usually had honey and also had peppermints. You know, I'm a big peppermint eater. I'd give me a big bag of peppermint and I kept peppermints in there and they always took the peppermints and they always took the honey. Sometimes they would leave me some peppermints. I don't know about their sense of chivalry or whatever you want to call it, you know. yeah, they're camp robbers all right.

You get up in there and the young ones will come in and rob you blind. My backpack had been filtered through on this one occasion and it actually my backpack was an old canvas military

backpack and it had buckles instead of zippers and they were able to manipulate those buckles, you know, and open them up. It's kind of like, you know, a belt. And, you know, they were able to open that stuff up without any problems.

They were able to open up my jars and pretty much anything without no problem. And I knew it was them because their hands are dirty. And they would leave dirty fingerprints on, you know, like my clean T-shirts or my sock, my white socks. you know because I you know always kept my clothes clean I mean just because you're out there living off the land I mean you can't stay clean you know you always want you know your feet to be you know good clean and and your socks to be good clean I had a mirror it was a survival mirror they would get that out and play with it and look at it and everything and they would leave big fingerprints on that too

And so, and also when I would be smoking meat, you know, I'd be worried about bears and flies and things like that. And here, you know, I fall asleep and I wake up, and there's three quarters of the meter that's gone. And, you know, things like that would happen. And I've had pine, fine tones thrown at me, you know, pelted at me and everything. and I think those were the younger ones that was doing that. Do you think the pine cone throwing was just to get your attention, or do you think it was more of a get out of here? No, I think the pine cones were shut the hell up.

Because you were loud? Yeah, because I was loud. It only happened at night. You know, it's interesting. I would imagine if I had an encounter like the one that you had, my mindset on these things would be completely different than I do now. You know, if I had that experience, I would think these things really aren't that bad. You know, those things saved my life.

And people might think that sounds crazy, but it actually kind of makes sense being that these are a non-human primate. I mean, I could see them having that type of behavior. What changed in your mind? What changed to the point where you thought, maybe I shouldn't trust these things? Well, after what happened in the canyon is when I got a little more interested in finding out what they were and looking to see what I could find out about them, you know, looking to observe them. And I just wanted to understand what they were, I guess you might say. And at that time, you know, when that happened, I still really did.

I didn't know what they were. I don't know how to explain it, Wes. I just wanted to know more about them. And that's when I started, I guess you might say, the so-called research and everything, and actually looking for them. And then I had recounted that story to my brother, my oldest brother, he's passed away now, but he was a logger. He had had, you know, run-ins with him up in Oregon in Washington and places like that where he had worked.

He was much older than me. As a matter of fact, just to give you a little history, he was already in the Navy when I was born. My mother had me when she was kind of old. Yeah. Surprise. Surprise. But anyway, I don't think my dad was too happy about the surprise. But anyway, I recounted that with him, and he'd worked himself through school and everything, and he'd been in the service. He was a doctor, and he was basically retiring at that time.

He got very interested in what happened to me, and we spent a lot of time out in the wilderness together, you know, doing a lot of research and everything. and he was already looking and, you know, knew we could find footprints and things like that. And so, you know, I did a little work with him also. What did your brother run into? Oh, man, some of his stories were crazy. He had, he was, he topped out the trees. In other words, he was the one that climbed way up the, you know, the big, big tree. and he would take the tops out of him.

He had just got through topping this one tree out, the tree, you know, of course they sway and everything. He got up and sat down on the tree, you know, sit down on the tree top where he had cut it off, and it was smooth and he'd sit down up there. And he had a safety rope on, and he had a rope, you know, that his helper had, you know, he would send material up, you know, or tie it on it, he'd pull them up, stuff like that.

His helper was God, and he's looking down, and there's this maniac beating on the tree, and pushing on the tree and everything, and got a hold of his rope, and the maniac had a full set of hair all over its body. And it's just screaming at him and screaming at him, and he got a, it got a hold of his rope, and the maniac, It got a hole in the rope, and the slack was being taken up in that rope, and my brother just had time to cut it off, and it snapped, and it nearly pulled him down off the top of that tree. And that was one of the stories that he had, the one that he told a lot.

You know, that's what happened to him, basically. But he set up in that tree on top of that tree, and that thing beaten, and carried on all around that tree for practically half the night. And that's when people finally came and helped him get out of the tree. When the people came, you know, his fellow lumberjacks came, he was able to get out of the tree, and, you know, it had run off. And he said that they used to stand up on the... rim of where they were at

and kept saying it was the rim. They would scream bloody murder down at the camps and sometimes they would throw big rocks down in the camp. So I guess they didn't like their trees being cut. I told my story and he told me some of his and

he was already looking and we got out there together for a while and we looked mostly on the Spanish Bates up around the the Greenhorn and places like that, Cadova Pass and, you know, areas like that. We came down here to Texas, too, and we looked around a little bit, and mostly it was kind of more of two brothers getting acquainted that really didn't know each other.

Yeah. But it was fun. Let me ask you this. When you were out mining and you were basically hiking all over Colorado, I know you've hiked over a lot of states and you know a lot of states pretty well. And it could be Sasquatch related. It could be non-sasquatch related. What's one of the most interesting things that you came across when you're out in the

middle of nowhere? The most interesting as far as something happening or just the most interesting site, I'd think. I would say the most interesting site that you saw. in California I was down in the southern California and Arizona and I had I had walked into the mountains up there and I think I may be I may have been in Arizona at the time are just just on the border of the state a lot of times I didn't know exactly where I was that I know that sounds terrible but you know I came into a valley that it was beautiful back but there was stone altars here and there in that valley. I guess, you know, stone buildings and things like that, that was one of the things that was very amazing to me was to come across these stone houses and to find these altars.

and I never really do what the altars were, you know, were I presumed they were some kind of sacrifice or sacrificial altars or whatever. Bob, do you think that they were Native American? Oh, I'm positive they were Native American of some type. I don't know what type of Native Americans. It's funny because I never usually get lost. and I was kind of turned around in this

little canyon that it was in it was a beautiful spot but I didn't get out I couldn't get out of there for about three days anyway I did a lot of looking around and everything and I don't know what

I don't know what tribe it was or whatever but there was petroglyphs there was some this stuff was really really really old and you know when you find a arrowhead

and you can tell this is really really really historic this is really really really old yeah absolutely I found you know some artifacts like that in there too but it took me about three days you know mostly I really wasn't worried about it

But it took me about three days to get back out of there. And what I did, I just happened to get picked up by a park ranger when I got on to the main park road. And he asked me what I was doing. I told him, I said, well, I said, I'm just walking. And he said, well, how did you get up here? And I said, well, I came through the desert. He said, well, you came through the desert.

I said, yeah, you know, I came from California out there, and I came across the desert, which I did. And I said, then, you know, I come up into the mountains, and he said, well, you're lucky to be alive, and I said, I guess so. But I told him, I said, you know, I want to ask you something. I said, I came into this canyon. And about that, you know, when I said that, he, his, he got real interested.

And I said, you know, I had all these altars here and there, and it had these, like, stone villages that were, you know, crumbled in and everything. Some of them were, you know, the walls were still really high on, and some of them they weren't. You know, a lot of them were full of soil, you know, plants were growing in them and everything. But, you know, it was like a large village and been in there. And he said, where? And he said, show me on the map.

So we stopped to drop. He took his, you know, a map out. And I showed him, well, it's about right here. He said he'd been looking for that canyon for 40 years, almost, well, you know, about 30 years. And I said, well, it's, you know, it's right here. He said, well, did you have any trouble in it? And I said, what do you mean? He said, did you have any trouble in it?

And I said, well, I got lost for about. three days. I said, which is something I never do. Very rarely do get lost. And he just shook his head and he said, well, he said, congratulations because you just walked out of a canyon that people call a phantom canyon. I said, oh, great. He said, people go in there. You know, I mean, hikers go up in there into these areas, and they get lost, and they talk about seeing, you know, the altars and seeing carvings into rock and seeing the dwellings like, you know, I was talking about and everything, but they never can get back in there.

And it said sometimes, you know, that they get lost, and they can't come out and then they come out. He said some of them are never seen again or heard of again. He said, I've looked for that damn canyon, pardon my language. I have looked for that canyon for almost 30 years. And he said, I can't find it. That's really interesting.

I wonder what you found. It doesn't really sound Native American, especially with the altars. Hmm. I would have loved to have seen that. Well, I want to thank everyone for joining me tonight. Bob and I wrap it up tomorrow. night. If you are a member on

Sasquatch Chronicles.com check it out. It will be posted tomorrow night. Bob and I will talk about more encounters that he had when he was out mining along with some of the stranger things that he ran into while out there. Bob, thank you again for being here tonight.

And I want to thank everyone out there who's listening. If you're not listening on the site, thank you so much for listening to the show. If you're on Sasquatch Chronicles.com, I will see everyone tomorrow night. If not, thank you again for listening, and I will see you everyone next week. Have a great weekend, everyone.

Being across the country faster than the coronavirus and wagering week is your antidote. I'm Tom Martin, and I'm a veteran sports analyst and respected sports handicapper who will help build ESPN's brand. I've been recognized and awarded by Pro Football Weekly and Gaming Today magazine as the honest handicapper. Let the other guys give you the same old boring sports talk with the same tired storylines. We'll give it to you. straight here every Friday on wagering week. Don't gamble with other podcasts. Let SportsGarten Network's wagering week help your bottom line.