Bigfoot sightings in the Uintas Tales of the "unusual" in the woods

What I want to know is why Bigfoot always crosses the road in exactly three strides. Always.
No matter how wide or narrow the road is. Thump thump thump.

Is it a culturally learned thing or genetic or a superstition they have or what?
 
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Stumbled upon this gem today. Not only did he meet Bigfoot,
he met his wife and child (little foot) . . . who happens to ride a horse.

 
Ya see I want the real thing man. There's far too much BS online about it. I want clear footage and creepy vocals (there some of those). I want to smell the stink and feel the fear. Alas I don't think I will.
 
If you think about it, the more Bigfoot reports and sightings that come out, the less likely it is to exist. In other words, if more and more people are seeing it, why is it we still don't have any real evidence? Bigfoot exists only in the realm of folklore and people's imaginations.
 
I think a lot of people confuse wild animal noises and encounters with bigfoot. I was reading a thread on here where two members here were at one of the Cuberant Lakes and saw some eyes in the woods. I will post my bear encounter I had in the bear encounter thread sometime soon, but can easily relate to the spooky eyes off in the trees that will not go away.

For us it was a black bear and it was a rather big one that liked to stand on its hinds. He had come into our camp at night and tore into an empty tent, then refused to leave our group alone that consisted of 5 people. All night long he would circle our camp and stare at us, coming closer if we didn't periodically yell at him, which only got him to back off about 25 yards where he would stay and stare. Bear eyes reflect very easily and believe me, they are extremely creepy. We only knew it was a bear because it was in our camp when it woke us up and we peeked our heads out of the tent.

I was also charged earlier in the day by this bear and the way it looked at me while it was running towards me was the most terrifying look I have ever experienced. A black bears eyes are capable of emoting much like a human, and that is what was terrifying as I knew at that moment, this bear wanted me dead.

So I can see how at night it would be easy to think that the actions of a mysterious creature would not be classified as typical bear behavior and chalked up as something else. I can tell you right now, bears can behave in really odd ways. Unfortunately, not all black bears will go away when you yell at them and being in a big group of guys will not always deter them.

Another thing I want to mention is that when we went backpacking again to this location in the Winds, we brought our dog with us and that was a huge mistake. That dog was growling and running off into the bushes every 5 minutes. There is so much animal activity at night, I had no idea until we brought that dog, but every growl brought me back to that bear encounter I had, which is something that scares me when I am camping at night in the mountains to this day.
 
I wonder about the glowing eyes people claim to see. Humans and other primates eyes do not shine when in the dark, we lack the tapetum lucidum layer behind the retina. Why would a Bigfoot be any different?
 
I think a lot of people confuse wild animal noises and encounters with bigfoot. I was reading a thread on here where two members here were at one of the Cuberant Lakes and saw some eyes in the woods. I will post my bear encounter I had in the bear encounter thread sometime soon, but can easily relate to the spooky eyes off in the trees that will not go away.

I am one of those members you are talking about, and it sounds like I need to clarify again that I do not believe that we saw a sasquatch. All I know is that I don't know what we saw and it was super weird. I do not however believe it was an ~8 foot tall black bear with a cub. I believe we would have been able to make out some part of it's body at some point, like when it was standing right next to our campfire. We also had a dog present who's dominant breed was bred to hunt black bears (Akita). She's tried to take down a moose before and she was not even considering going after whatever it was. Anyway, we saw some glowing eyes that appeared to be floating in space in a pretty well lit area, we followed them, it was weird. Another short set appeared. I don't believe in bigfoot. Period.
 
And just to reiterate from my first post in this thread.

The second incident wasn't necessarily a possible Sasquatch, it was just weird and unexplained. It happened in Cuberant Basin in the Uintas. If there was such a thing as a Bigfoot 'hot spot' in Utah, that would be it. Lots of sightings up around there, several by entire groups of people. All I saw were strange eyes doing strange things, no clue what it was, but it was... really really strange. Full write up of that strange experience in my trip report from that trip here:

http://backcountrypost.com/threads/cuberant-lakes-basin-uintas.460/

With that said, I still can't convince myself that such a creature exists. I just can't accept that there wouldn't be solid proof of it. It just seems totally impossible to me. But I still would probably never solo camp in Cuberant Basin. :cautious:
 
I am one of those members you are talking about, and it sounds like I need to clarify again that I do not believe that we saw a sasquatch. All I know is that I don't know what we saw and it was super weird. I do not however believe it was an ~8 foot tall black bear with a cub. I believe we would have been able to make out some part of it's body at some point, like when it was standing right next to our campfire. We also had a dog present who's dominant breed was bred to hunt black bears (Akita). She's tried to take down a moose before and she was not even considering going after whatever it was. Anyway, we saw some glowing eyes that appeared to be floating in space in a pretty well lit area, we followed them, it was weird. Another short set appeared. I don't believe in bigfoot. Period.

Your post prompted me to register here to post my thoughts because to me it sounds exactly like what I experienced with that bear. Had we not seen it feet away from us when we unzipped the tent door, it would have been nothing but eyes reflecting back at us. When he was in our camp he would stand on his hinds and he was scary tall when he did that. So off in the bushes, we would see eyes really high in the air sometimes, and I know why that is. When we were running out of firewood during the night as we took turns keeping watch, the fire provided barely any light and yet those eyes were still reflecting, which I guess must be just the star/moonlight. The fur is so black, that the body is basically impossible to make out.

Kind of crazy to add, when we tried to scavenge more firewood at night, one of us tried to climb a tree with dead branches up higher on the perimeter of our camp with another person below keeping lookout. The bear tried to move on them when he was up in the tree. Everyone that backpacks will say that black bears are skittish and easy to spook. Ours was quite aggressive.
 
Your post prompted me to register here to post my thoughts because to me it sounds exactly like what I experienced with that bear. Had we not seen it feet away from us when we unzipped the tent door, it would have been nothing but eyes reflecting back at us. When he was in our camp he would stand on his hinds and he was scary tall when he did that. So off in the bushes, we would see eyes really high in the air sometimes, and I know why that is. When we were running out of firewood during the night as we took turns keeping watch, the fire provided barely any light and yet those eyes were still reflecting, which I guess must be just the star/moonlight. The fur is so black, that the body is basically impossible to make out.

Kind of crazy to add, when we tried to scavenge more firewood at night, one of us tried to climb a tree with dead branches up higher on the perimeter of our camp with another person below keeping lookout. The bear tried to move on them when he was up in the tree. Everyone that backpacks will say that black bears are skittish and easy to spook. Ours was quite aggressive.
Very interesting encounter! I love the stories this thread brings out. And I'm glad I haven't had any experiences of my own so far.
 
I wonder about the glowing eyes people claim to see. Humans and other primates eyes do not shine when in the dark, we lack the tapetum lucidum layer behind the retina. Why would a Bigfoot be any different?
What's really interesting is that Bigfoot eyes glow in the dark even when there's no light source. It's like they have an inner flashlight. If someone could patent that, I'd buy it. Sure would make night hiking a lot easier.
 
I wonder about the glowing eyes people claim to see. Humans and other primates eyes do not shine when in the dark, we lack the tapetum lucidum layer behind the retina. Why would a Bigfoot be any different?
I think we can all agree that bigfoot, although an entertaining myth, is just that. Now if they did exist, I would expect them to have a tapetum lucidum, based on the nocturnal behavior that I "saw" while watching a few of the bigfoot "reality" shows. This light-reflecting surface reflects light back onto a photoreceptor attached to the brain to enhance night vision. If sasquatch was real, and it exhibited nocturnal behavior, the tapetum lucidum (which causes eye shine) would be of evolutionary value and likely present.
 
I think we can all agree that bigfoot, although an entertaining myth, is just that. Now if they did exist, I would expect them to have a tapetum lucidum, based on the nocturnal behavior that I "saw" while watching a few of the bigfoot "reality" shows. This light-reflecting surface reflects light back onto a photoreceptor attached to the brain to enhance night vision. If sasquatch was real, and it exhibited nocturnal behavior, the tapetum lucidum (which causes eye shine) would be of evolutionary value and likely present.
I love those shows but have to laugh when they spout off scientific facts of Bigfoot behavior. They seem to know an awful lot about something still unproven. Gotta admit I like the shows and the thought of something non-methhead wondering around in the woods.
 
Wild. Where was your experience, @ParochialNimrod? I guess it could have been a bear, although they are quite uncommon at that elevation in the Uintas. Oh, and welcome to BCP. :)

Yeah I've never even seen a bear in the Uintas, but figure they have to be there. I've seen them around Timp and even at Deer Valley.

Our experience was on the Indian Reservation side of the Wind Rivers. It was at an unnamed lake on our way to Heebeecheeche.
 
I think a lot of people confuse wild animal noises and encounters with bigfoot. I was reading a thread on here where two members here were at one of the Cuberant Lakes and saw some eyes in the woods. I will post my bear encounter I had in the bear encounter thread sometime soon, but can easily relate to the spooky eyes off in the trees that will not go away.

I was the second member on that trip in Cuberant, and I can tell you for goddamn sure that was no bear. It was right in our camp next to a decent size fire we had lit. It was still light enough that you should have been able to see a body but there were only the eyes. I have backpacked the Cascades, Alaska, all over Utah and Arizona. I have seen plenty of bears from Grizzly to huge Black Bears. Bears do not move like these eyes did. They way they were trying to draw us away from our camp. I've often tried to explain through imagery what we saw and I can only say that this image from the movie Predator below is as close of an example as I can find to illustrate how there was no body attached to these eyes. You could see the trees and area in our camp behind them. If there was a body, it would have blocked us from being able to see right through it. But there was not. I have plenty of experience with big animals in the wild at night and this was not like any of them. I am not saying I saw Bigfoot. I am saying is what I saw I cannot explain. Add that to the rest of the weird stuff that has happened to me or I have seen in this basin over the last decade and you'd be saying WTF too. I listed most of it a few pages back in this thread. The history of this basin consists of many reported sightings of a grey haired creature, 9-10 feet tall, including a party of 8 scouts and their scout leader Jay Barker in 1977 who all reported seeing it. The DWR has a file on that report. Also, Garret Bardsley, a kid who vanished in this basin in 2004 and was never found.

Its really easy to write off what we experience as something we can explain, that is a mechanism in the brain that we use to cope with fear.

I stand by what I saw and have seen. I am not claiming that I saw Bigfoot. But what I did see you cannot just rationally explain it away.

And I really don't care if anyone believes me. I was there, I know what I saw. I'm not changing my story.

Here is the Predator image I mentioned to give you some kind of idea how there were only eyes, not a body with them.
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I've camped in Cuberant a few times, never did experience anything out of the ordinary, luckily! I personally believe Garrett walked really far away and probably had a cat prematurely end his life. Mountain lions are way more prevalent than most people realize. I used to work for the rail road as an engineer and believe it or not, trains are sneaky coming around corners. Wildlife never hears us coming until we are on them. We would spook mountain lions all the time in Colorado and Utah and the highest concentration of them is near where there were people camping! It was a real eye opener for me. Also, as a scout, we were camping at Notch Lake one time and a friends family did the short hike in to visit for the day. His mom got lost on the way back and basically walked all the way to Kamas overnight through the woods. She was not a hiker and still put down serious miles over rough terrain. I wouldn't be surprised if Garrett made it 20 miles away within 24 hours.

As for the eyes, I try not to sound rude, but I think seeing a bear do atypical things has permanently ruined my mind at night when it comes to camping. I have really missed out on backpacking due to how afraid I am at night now. I won't backpack deep into the wilderness unless there are at least a few more people in my group than just me and my wife. I personally think I would have a more super natural story my mind would be convinced of had I not seen the bear up close to know what it is. Also, when my Dad was religious, he tended to see things that no one else did when camping that made for good testimony building stories on Sunday. That all stopped when he stopped being religious. I just think minds tend to fill in blanks in odd ways. I hope I am not offending you. The last thing I need to worry about when backpacking is some mystery animal when I already get to stress out over bears doing weird shit.
 
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