Footprints in Pierce County, Washington

While stationed at Fort Lewis (15th Engineer Battalion, A Company), I received mountain training at the Huckleberry Creek facility. The final exercise was called the Alpine Scramble, a "Point A to Point B" land navigation problem with problems to solve along the way. While on the exercise, my squad stopped at a stream to rest and eat. There was a sand/gravel bar going out into the stream. We noticed large imprints on the bar, and subsequently found several large footprints in the soft soil by the stream. They were not very long (compared to some reports)-14 inches-but very wide-about 7 1/2 inches. They were also pressed quite deeply into the soil, while we had to really stomp to make any kind of real imprint. There was about a four to four and a half foot stride between footprints (we had a tape measure). As we were on a tight schedule, we did not spend a whole lot of time examining the prints-perhaps ten minutes (our squad leader was convinced they were a joke put on by our instructors). As we made our way down the stream, we saw an occasional print or mark for a short ways, then they stopped. Whether they went into the forest or into the stream-I don't know-I am not a tracker. Nor could I tell you how fresh the prints were. An interesting footnote-when we returned to or base camp and were doing an after-action debriefing, I spoke to our squad's instructor about this (our squad leader objected strongly, but a few of the other members were interested); he strongly advised us to forget about it and not mention anything. So we did. However, it did raise my interest in the matter, and I have been reading and researching Bigfoot since then (the other squad members may have talked about it-I didn't and went ETS not long after).