RIP (In Pursuit of Bigfoot) – The Weird Side of the Internet

RIP (In Pursuit of Bigfoot) – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

The search for Sasquatch, or “Bigfoot” isn’t always white label Dewars and branches snapping in the woods (my experience, as reported in a previous story.) Sometimes, it’s a hard trek, and sometimes it is met with death. The two men on this adventure were not named, as the family may have thought it was embarrassing outing men that died in search of Bigfoot, but this much is true; They were from Oregon, they went to Skamania County, Washington to search for Bigfoot, promising to be home on Christmas Eve. They were reported missing on Christmas Day. Three days and 60 searchers later, they were found dead from exposure in a heavily wooded area in Skamania County.

The moral of this story really is that they weren’t prepared to be out in rough winter weather. My good friend and hunter, Les Bristol, God rest his soul, spent years warning me of the price paid for going out in the woods ill-prepared. “Cotton kills” was an oft-heard refrain. And I’m betting these guys were sporting cotton socks and undershirts. It was rugged, 30s, rain and snow and dips below.

And a thing to know is that in Skamania County, it is illegal to kill or harm a Bigfoot. It’s a $1000 fine and possible jail time. This could be because of the county’s love of the giant cryptid, or a way to keep men in the woods with huge, thick beards from accidentally getting shot.

Despite having a pseudo-Bigfoot experience myself, I don’t for the life of me understand why we haven’t already had some National Geographic wildlife photographer get a shot of one. I mean, they’re in Tibet catching shots of snow leopards. As far as everyday people seeing Bigfoot, it’s eventually going to lose its habitat to human development and not only will we see them, we’ll have to find ways to keep them out of our garbage cans.

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