Washington
Expedition Journal
June 22-28, 2015
Skye Evans
*Disclaimer:
What’s written is from my own experiences. Roughly 35 people attended and their
stories are their own. This is mine.
Since becoming an
investigator for the BFRO in October, many opportunities have been made
available to me; one being the ability to attend any and all expeditions that I
want. Washington has been on my bucket list for quite awhile so I signed up
when the date was posted for the expedition. The expedition was hosted by
Barbara Olvera and Cindy Caddell from June 25th-28th,
2015.
I loaded up on drinks and snacks for the road
and left Reno on Monday at 3am after getting a mere 2-3 hours of sleep
post-Father’s Day activities. While driving through the Lassen County National
Forest, a small bird was flying across the road and as I was passing it, the
bird doubled back and kamikaze’d into my tire. When I got close to the Modoc
National Forest, a big black and white bird (name unknown) hit the top of my
windshield. I don’t know if I’d call it natural selection but this was a sign
of things to come.
On trips like
these where I drive nonstop, I find myself never having to stop for restroom
breaks but it seemed like every hour, at least ten times, I had to pull over.
Distractions like this made my 10-hour drive two hours longer.
On my way up to
basecamp, I drove past a deer carcass that had been placed over a tree. It was
on my left as the road curved right and I had to double back to get a picture.
I hadn’t seen anything like that. Bigfoot? Totally.
I drove past a live deer
further down that just stood on the side of the road checking things out. Not
even a few minutes later, I came around another turn and on the right side of
the road, out pops a family of four coyotes. The adults stood in the road and
two little ones ran across the road and up the steep side of the road. I think
I managed to get a couple quick pictures while I stopped for them.
(They're kind of hard to see)
I had been
following Google Maps and it led me 12 miles through gravelly back forest roads
and upon further inspection of Barbara and Cindy’s directions, I could’ve spent
those 12 miles on nice paved roads leading to the same place. I finally arrived
at 3:20pm and was the first one there. I parked in the rock quarry that I
thought was basecamp and poked around for a few minutes before deciding that I
needed a nap. I saved my tent with the intention of using it as a dummy camp
later that week (which never panned out) so I tried sleeping in my car. It was
way too hot.
I sat outside
reading The Lion, the Witch, and the
Wardrobe while harvest ants were pillaging my feet. Now these ants weren’t
just walking all over me, they were full on crawling into my flip-flops and
biting me all over. Fellow attendees Ken and George showed up at about 6pm and
set up camp ¼-mile down the road in a nice enclosed area. I went to sleep as
soon as the sun had set behind the row of trees and shade finally reached my
car.
I was startled
awake at 7am when I heard something walking around my car. I hadn’t heard a car
pull in and something bipedal was moving nearby. My heart was racing and I
looked out and saw... Kourtnie exploring. When she saw me look out, she threw
her hands in the air like, “Don’t shoot!” and I finally calmed down and went
back to sleep for another hour.
I sat in my mom’s
famous fuzzy blue chair and finished by book at 9am. I wore a cutoff shirt to
try and get rid of my farmer’s tan but ended up with a wicked bad sunburn that
lasted a few days. I went to go talk to George about Bigfoot and his rock n’
roll drumming career.
I found a
Restoration Project trail that led to a small meadow with a creek nearby
afterwards when I was out exploring. I later walked down the road and a deer
with its fawn came out of the forest 20 yards ahead of me. They stopped and
looked at me for a minute then walked around the corner and left. All this
wildlife coupled with the thick forest convinced me that this was prime habitat
for predators like Bigfoot. My hopes for seeing one increased after the coyotes
and deer.
The sun in that
rock quarry was killer and I knew I wouldn’t get any sleep if I couldn’t get
any shade so I decided to bite the bullet and drove an hour back to Hood River,
OR and went to a very small Walmart to buy a canopy along with other supplies.
I ate at a Subway while in town that really hit the spot. My final stop before
returning to basecamp was Rite Aid and I picked up some candy and expensive
sunscreen. It wasn’t quality sunscreen either; it was their generic brand for
$10.99. It was my own fault for not thinking about it.
Hood River, Oregon
is extremely beautiful along the shoreline. It’s a big river with picturesque
views of people wave boarding, paragliding, swimming, and kayaking. I wanted to
go swim so badly but wanted to return to basecamp before it got dark so I drove
across the $1 toll bridge and headed back. The bridge is a death trap. I’m
convinced that they built it to test people’s driving skills of looking at the
scenery while also driving 25mph in a compact lane where car paint streaked
across the railing and every passing car spelled “side swipe.”
I made it back to
basecamp at 6:10pm. Just as I turned my radio on, Chris had called in to say he
was pulling in too. I decided to move my camp from the rock quarry to the next
area over and set up next to Cindy. Setting the canopy up was easy but staking
it down was impossible. The entire area was so rocky that I bent three stakes
and had to use two of Cindy’s because they were so heavy-duty but even those
only went in about half way. That night, I sat around the campfire until
midnight with Cindy, Top (from Texas), Chris, and Kourtnie. Everyone told
really good ghost stories, which is something I’ve been dying to discuss for a
long time. I tried to watch a movie on my tablet when I snuggled into my
sleeping bag but I fell asleep really quickly. My terrible sunburn made
sleeping on my side impossible and I tossed and turned all night.
I woke up
Wednesday morning with sunburn pains and helped Cindy get her canopy up with
the same stake trouble that I had with mine. At 11am, I went on a short hike
with Cindy, Jim, and Kourtnie to a small meadow (what I call Kourtnie Meadow)
down the road where Kourtnie had a Class A sighting the year before. The road
hadn’t been used in a long time because trees were growing over it and plants
grew in abundance in the middle of it. The dense forest alleviated the
90-degree heat a bit and the humidity was just below the level of discomfort.
Kourtnie set up
her trail camera in the forest opposite the road and meadow into the tree line
where she had her sighting and I set mine up to look out across the meadow. The
only videos I captured were of a bee that has hovering in the middle of the
frame looking directly into the camera lens. It was funny because it would come
in and out of the frame like, “What is this doing here? Oh! Here it is!” and
taunted it. I should adjust the settings to have it trigger for better heat
sources but this was just funny.
Barbara arrived
late at 7:30pm after people had been getting worried since she said she would
arrive on Tuesday. During the day, 16 out of about 40 people had shown up. The
expeditions always formally begin on Thursdays and few people ever arrive the
day before so 16 early people was pretty interesting.
Kourtnie and I had
wanted to return to the smaller meadow nearby Kourtnie Meadow that evening and
I thought we would be the only ones who wanted to go on a night hike but I was
wrong. What was supposed to be two of us turned into 13, so we left for the
meadow at 10pm. We followed the road to a dead end where it looked like people
had been cooking up meth or doing something other than camping.
I used my baseball bat and made a wood knock
at 10:23pm and three minutes later, I heard something like a “bwaaahh.” Cindy
and some other people heard sticks breaking nearby. I did another knock a
couple minutes later and we immediately heard a bear and what sounded like a
woman talking between our position and the road. It was the weirdest thing
because it was distinctly voices but we couldn’t make out any words. Turns out,
Cathleen and her son Iain had been walking down the road trying to catch up
with us but eventually turned back. Kourtnie made two calls 10 minutes apart
with no response.
We then decided to
walk back up the road to spread out and sit in the smaller meadow. We were
there for about 45 minutes and Cindy and Kourtnie decided to walk around and
sing a little bit. It was pretty funny hearing them far off trying to get a
“setlist” together. Cindy asked, “Do you know Cher?” and Kourtnie replied,
“Fuck yeah I know Cher!” They didn’t seem to stir up any sort of response. Bigfoot must not be a Cher fan.
About the time
they were walking back, I thought that I had seen the controversial eye glow
everyone talks about but this was white. My night vision is bad enough so I
wasn’t sure if it was my eyes and brain trying to connect the dots. Greg walked
out to where I had seen it and there wasn’t anything there so that validates my
skepticism in my own ability to differentiate between true eye glow and bad
vision. Without having seen the “real thing,” it’s tough to know what you’re
really seeing. Midnight rolled around and we decided to call it a night and I
went to bed at 1:10am.
I woke up Thursday
morning wanting to explore and set up another trail camera. I was browsing the
area on my GPS and found two small ponds that were a little further down the
road and set that as my destination. I asked the people who were awake if
they’d like to come with me to scout out the area and Jim, Meighan, and Greg
with his son Nathaniel decided to come along. The first pond was small and
inaccessible from the road so we walked another 50 yards and came to the bigger
one and followed one of the many game trails to reach it. The trails had bear,
deer, coyote, and many other tracks.
There wasn’t any
shore to walk on so we stayed on the side by a marsh. Opposite where we were
was a big game trail that lead upwards to the road but it was too steep to lead
a group in. I had an internal debate about whether to leave a camera or not and
ended up deciding against it because I don’t think the trigger range was long
enough to capture something and finding a spot to place the camera was
difficult.
We bushwhacked our
way out and back onto the main road to walk down a bit further. When we got to
the next crossroad, Ken and George drove by in their car and told us that Little
Fish Lake was up ahead. That had been one of the areas I wanted to find but my
GPS looked like the only road nearby was about a mile from where we started so
I didn’t mention that to anyone earlier and we tried to see if a creek was
accessible enough to follow but it was too dense. When Ken told us it wasn’t
very far ahead, we decided to go for it and hike up the road.
When we reached
the turnout, we found a big log tent structure around a fire pit. Bigfoot stick
structure? Of course. We found the trail and walked down into Little Fish Lake.
It was the perfect spot to hang out, listen, and set up a trail camera so I put
one up in front of some very fresh bear scat and overlooked the shore. The
muddy shore at the entrance had some bare footprints where someone had gone in
to swim.
The only videos I got were of Scott looking around the next day and
John Hammer picking his nose. What was supposed to be a short and easy trip
turned into a 3.5-mile hike and everyone was hot and exhausted so we hiked back
to basecamp.
Everyone met at
7pm for our first meeting around the big fire pit. We went around in a circle
introducing ourselves with fun facts and I was able to remember everyone’s
name, something that is difficult for me to even remember one person’s name.
Barbara asked me to help lead a night hike with her and I told her I’d like to
go to Little Fish Lake and she wanted to play music so that was where we went
for the evening. I was glad that Barbara had taken my suggestions and asked me
to help lead for some of the hikes.
Barbara let me
borrow her guitar and Top had just picked up playing the guitar so I borrowed
his tuner and capo for the evening. While I was tuning, Top brought his guitar
out to show me his progress on his favorite Vivaldi piece. Lou heard the music
and came over while I was messing around with Arlo Guthrie’s “Ring Around A
Rosy Rag” and joined in playing lead. It was a fun little jam session. Cindy
came out of her trailer and told us about her past as a singer in bands so we
tried to find something we could all play. I followed Lou and we played a bit
of some Eagles song and Cindy sang. She promised that she’d bring her songbook
to the Oregon trip and we could really play.
At 10:30pm,
Barbara grabbed her bodhran signed by Bob Gimlin and we drove up to Little Fish
Lake. We carried in our chairs, sat down, and the Little Fish Band was formed with
Cindy, Cathleen, Brian, and Eric and his daughter Kaitlyn. I played “I Hope You
Come Around” and a butchered version of Tom Yamarone’s “Bigfoot – The Living
Legend.” Kaitlyn played the bodhran and the echo across the lake was so
thundering and cool. Later on, I just played a chord progression and everyone
clapped to make noise. We couldn’t hear the calls or knocks from other groups
and no one could hear us so we were pretty isolated. At 12:45am, we decided to
pack it in and call it a night. I eventually went to bed at 2am. I did have my
recorder set up nearby so I expect the Little Fish Band album to go triple
platinum this year.
I woke up sweaty
and tired, as with every morning since the sun rose where I had no shade, and
went to Barbara and Su Sikora’s talk at 9am Friday morning. There wasn’t any
shade at the fire pit until the evening so we had the talk and subsequent morning
meetings down the road in the shade. Su brought these neat evidence envelopes
with all the info people needed to consider when collecting evidence and
Barbara talked about the importance of science and going about Bigfoot in a
professional manner. I think it was good for the first-timers to learn just how
much goes into research and how to go about it the right way.
At the 11am
meeting where everyone goes over what happened during the last night’s hikes,
no one seemed to have any action except Top. Barbara had attained a $12K
“R2-D2” FLIR unit from the BFRO that could be mounted on the hood of a truck
and remote controlled inside to have a 360-degree thermal image. Top had
volunteered to be the driver and take groups out at night in groups of four. On
one of the drives where there were some road construction dividers, a rock had
been thrown from the woods to the right that scratched his paint and left a
dent on the lower right-hand side of Top’s rear bumper by the taillight. It
wasn’t him breaking a branch by driving over it, a rock getting kicked up, or
anything like that. Jerry had heard the *Whack!* and they stopped and therm’d
around but couldn’t see anything. That was the only interesting thing to happen
to anyone from the previous evening.
I needed some ice
so luckily Cathleen was going into town and I hitched a ride with her. At the
store, I grabbed a bunch of drinks and snacks and almost paid when Cathleen
said, “Skye, don’t you need some ice for all of that?” and I’m so glad she
spoke up because I would’ve left without having the one thing I really needed.
The 30-minute drive back to basecamp was nice because we talked about
traveling, careers, and the car was so cold with air conditioning that I almost
fell asleep.
At 3:15pm, after
drinking some SoBe, I agreed to go along with some people that were going to a
creek to look for footprints. I was extremely tired at that point but it’s not
every day that you can do things like this with strangers so I went along. There
were four vehicles going to the creek and I rode with Cindy and others. We were
quite the caravan parking on the side of the road to go explore and we all got
out en masse and headed for the creek.
Cindy’s daughter Megan decided to come
on the trip so I hiked with her and Iain ahead of the group and bushwhacked
around in exploration. There were three spots where something had walked
through the creek but there wasn’t a chance of foot definition for reasons that
will become apparent below.
We were crossing
logs when Megan fell in the creek. I had to cross a log and the sand looked
sturdy enough to hold me jumping across so I took the plunge and the sand gave
out. I sunk down to my knees and everyone laughed. When you fall in that deep,
you think you can just lift your legs out but I was stuck for a second so I
threw my arms up and laughed. It was in that moment of losing control that my
tired mood shifted 180-degrees and I was suddenly having the absolute best time
of my life. It’s when you stop caring so much and give in to the fact that you
can’t control everything that letting it all go means you’re really free. My
legs were covered in mud, my boots were soaked, and I couldn’t change any of it
so I went with it and was bouncing all over the place happier than I’ve been in
a long time.
Iain, Megan, and I
continued on ahead of the group and went far off across a frog-filled meadow
into the forest where there were a ton of deer and elk tracks everywhere. There
were so many trails around that we could’ve explored forever but Cindy was
calling out for Megan thinking she had been alone so we turned back to join the
group. Following Iain out of the woods, we came across a patch where something
had hunkered down and depressed the grass around it. It couldn’t have been a
herd of something because this was the only spot like it so I took a photo and
we moved on back to the cars where everyone was waiting for us. I took my boots
off and smacked a lot of the dirt off and walked around the road in my wet socks.
Cindy drove us back and I immediately threw those socks in the trash, put on my
flip-flops, and set those boots out to dry.
That evening, Su
and I led a small hike to try and find this elk meadow with David and Jim. We
had walked almost a mile and my GPS showed what looked like the meadow but we
never found it. People had said we’d know it when we saw it but we learned that
we didn’t walk far enough and we were only about half way. While walking on the
road, we heard what sounded like a knock but was actually an elk scratching its
antlers on a tree.
Cutting our
losses, Jim and I decided to check out the area my GPS had pointed out and Su
and David walked ahead on the road. We bushwhacked through the thick trees and
bushes and found a small restoration area that had some small open areas. Jim
wanted to follow the path but I thought that it wouldn’t lead anywhere and we
were pretty far in so we made our way back to the road. It was like walking
through a crowded concert, that’s how dense the trees were. It was a blast.
Barbara was
conducting research on eye shine and if humans could do it so when our group
reconvened at 12:10am, we tried it. One person stood still, another 10ft and
20ft away shining a flashlight into the others’ eyes, and 1-2 people stood
behind the flashlight to see if the eyes shined. None of us reflected the
flashlight shine.
David did a knock
at 12:02am with no response. I heard definite steps 30 yards away in the woods
for 3 minutes but couldn’t see the source of the movement. We walked down the
road to where Brian Herzog (Zog) was camped and laid on the road listening for
sounds. David did a wicked cougar call, Su made great coyote calls, and I did a
Bigfoot call. No responses were made. The group had been talking and I, being
comfortable lying on the warm road with my sweatshirt as a pillow, fell asleep.
Su, who has a very soft voice, was repeating my name trying to wake me up and I
had no idea I had fallen asleep. Jim told me I was out for about 20 minutes.
That was the best catnap.
We eventually made
it back to basecamp, somehow I made in back in my slumbering stupor, and we sat
around the campfire. Theresa and Kelly’s daughters were making s’mores and it
was hilarious to watch their fighting and explanations for bizarre techniques.
I took another catnap and Top woke me up to ask if I wanted to go for an R2
ride but I was too tired and decided to go to bed at 2:30am.
Saturday morning,
I woke up after everyone else at 9:30am and lounged around eating bagels and
listening to Cindy and Meighan talk about anthropology since Cindy had her
degree and Meighan is in school for it. At the 11am meeting on last night’s
events, Cathleen heard a distressed deer and Zog and Megan heard a couple
unannounced calls. Su and I didn’t take any notes and Barbara was disappointed
when it came around to us to describe events but we didn’t have anything to
report other than our eye shine experiment so there were no notes to take.
At noon, Brian
tagged along and we went to go collect my two trail cameras at Little Fish Lake
and Kourtnie Meadow. We talked the whole way and it was nice talking to a
stranger but having similar interests. Brian is big into fly-fishing and I have
a friend Jeff who also is so I think Brian is Jeff’s future self. It was
quite a hike to go to both spots and on the sign out sheet at basecamp, I
approximated our return as 3pm and we made it back at 2:56pm so it was perfect
and just in time for Chris’s foot casting class.
Chris had a great handout
with formulas and techniques and his class was extremely thorough. He had three
methods (bucket, bag, and bottle) and enough supplies for a few groups to go
out and try to cast various tracks around the camp. The bottle method is like a
Shake Weight and we all had a great time watching Greg and Nathaniel from Texas
shaking the stuff together. I helped Jerry find a couple bear tracks so we
casted those and he let me keep one of them. It was nice of Chris to prepare
all of that and give people something tangible to take home as a memento of the
expedition because you can’t really bring Bigfoot home.
We had a potluck
at 7pm and I made the mistake of having already eaten a cup of ramen and
spaghetti & meatballs so I wasn’t particularly hungry. I ate some of my
Chips Ahoy and chips & dip though. I did have a turkey slider though
because, well, turkey slider. Cindy’s “The Human Past” anthropology discussion
followed right after and her handout was fascinating. George asked some great
questions and the discussion went quite well.
I decided that my
final evening would be pretty low-key so I sat up on the rock quarry for a
little while and then rode with Top to try out the R2 unit. I was the only one
for that since everyone else was out at other places so I got the whole cab to
myself to control and watch the 19” TV screen for thermal sightings. I got to
ride around for the longest, an hour and a half, and saw two deer at separate
times and places. Out of all of Top’s previous groups prior to me, they had
only seen one deer so I doubled that. Ha! We both got pretty tired, I’m sure I
catnapped in classic Skye fashion, and we drove back to basecamp to hang out
with Megan and Kourtnie.
We all sat around
the fire discussing the finer things in life, Unsolved Mysteries and X-Files,
when out of nowhere, the three of them heard three calls that weren’t announced
and occurred around 1:15am before Greg called in his three calls from far away
so they decided to go sit at the rock quarry, everyone else having gone to bed,
and listen for more calls. Jim was at Steamboat Rock and had been announcing
that he was making calls but we never heard them. I hung back around the fire
and couldn’t hear any of Greg’s aggressive calls. At 1:31am, I heard a definite
knock to the left of basecamp. No one else was awake and Mark had already
returned from the group that went to a meadow in that direction. That was
pretty cool.
The Blue Team,
which Greg was a part of, returned at 2:30am. Ken and George were the original
people who went to Steamboat Rock and they had come back around 1am and at the
time, we had no idea that it was Jim who was alone up there. Jim followed them
up there and then hung back to listen. When Blue Team returned and we finally
figured out that it was Jim up there and we could barely hear his radio
transmissions at basecamp, Greg and Nathaniel drove up as a rescue team and Jim
had already been on his way back. He wasn’t responding to any of our messages
and I could only hear bits and pieces when he would call in like, “Call. Alone.
Scared.”
Jim finally pulled
in and the first thing he did was put a dip of tobacco in his mouth, light a
cigar, and take sips of rye. It was comical for the rest of us but he had some
interesting experiences and it was his first expedition AND he was all alone
and out of radio contact for the most part. He heard branches breaking, big
thumps, and a whoop in response to one of his own nearby. Jim said that at one
point, he raised is arms in surrender and that’s when he’d hear movement and
when he put his arms down, the movement stopped. This happened a few times and
he started talking to whatever was out there with him. After a while, it
stopped and he decided to come back to basecamp. I don’t know if he heard any
of our transmissions to him.
After Jim was
finally settled down back by the fire, we were hearing movement behind Chris’s
camp and it moved along across the path where we walked to cast stuff. It ended
up around Kourtnie’s camp and Top, Cindy, Greg, Nathaniel, and I decided to go
follow it.
We anxiously
walked in and it was brought up that in our fervor, we forgot bear spray so I
ran and got some from Jerry. Back on track, we followed it and it sounded so
close that we all turned on our white lights and found nothing. Greg grabbed a
branch and made a couple of small knocks and I figured basecamp would know it
was us but I radioed to them that it was us and after I spoke, my walkie-talkie
beeped. Low battery. It died. I told everyone it just died and said, “Uh oh.
This is how it all starts…” and we all broke out laughing and walked back to
the fire full of glee.
At the fire, Iain
mentioned that a lot of the bear growls we heard around camp, and there were a
ton of them every evening for a few hours, that they were most likely the tail
feathers of a nighthawk. The sun comes out at 4:30am and I went to bed at
4:15am. That’s the latest I stayed up during the entire trip and it was a great
way to end the expedition.
Sunday morning, I
woke up at 8am and packed up my car ready and anxious to return home to a nice
bed. The 9am meeting went well and none of the groups had any action other than
what’s already been noted. The goodbyes were bittersweet since we all became
great friends during the trip and it was all coming to a close. I left basecamp
at 10am and arrived home at 9:08pm. I stopped for gas once and food once; no
restroom nonsense like before. It will take awhile for me to review all of my
audio and that will be posted at a later time.
I’ll never forget
this trip and all the funny memories like John Ray’s trivia where he’d give out
Bigfoot trinkets, “Arkansas Bill’s” funny stories, and the in-depth discussions
with various people. The expedition was top-notch and the purpose of expeditions
is to not only get evidence of Bigfoot but to also teach people how to go about
it and apply it to their own personal research. The best part that I get out of
it is the networking and building friendships with complete strangers and
bonding through a shared interest of Bigfoot. It doesn’t matter who you are or
your stance on the subject; we’re brought together for a common cause and we’d
never experience anything like this in any other outlet in life.
Seeing Bigfoot is
never guaranteed but sometimes it’s more about the journey than the
destination. What I take away from these trips is so much more than the unusual
sounds and stories. Finding words for these expedition journals is difficult
but finding Bigfoot is a whole other story.
If you read this entire
16-page tome, thank you. If you read any of it, thank you too.
I will post any good audio after I review it. All photos are posted on the Facebook page.
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