Footprints in Skamania County, Washington

My original plans were for a trip to northern California to visit the famous Bluff Creek film site and drop off some casts and pictures to the Willow Creek Museum, arriving on this day, the 35th anniversary of it’s making, October 20th. I had talked with Joe Beelart about this trip, because he had just returned from the area with a party of 10, including Peter Byrne, Todd Neiss, film crew and our own Al Berry and Ron Morehead. Joe talked me out of going there by myself because of the terrain and for safety reasons, so I altered my plans. I decided to divide this trip up into three parts… doing some things and going some places I had been meaning to for a long time. Skookum Meadows revisit, Estacada and the Wynooche river drainage. I usually make trips like this in search of areas to investigate for longer periods of time at later dates. I do these scouting trips mostly alone and try to cram as much as possible into them. Oct 19 – Met with Jeff Lemley and his brother around 10:00PM in the Skookum Meadows area to do some late night call blasting. By the time I got there they had already tried a couple of sets. It was quite foggy, but the sound still carried well, with echoes lasting a few seconds after the source stopped. This is the best time to blast out these sounds, late evening, early morning in the fog since the air is quite dense at this time. Interestingly enough, the primates that do use long type calls for communications between members also choose this time of the day to do so. Jeff and Alan Terry have built themselves quite an impressive sound blasting system. It is modular and has very good output. The sound was clear, I heard no distortion or feedback during the blasts he made. It ran off his car battery. I was quite tired and didn’t last too long sitting outside with Jeff and company in the cold, I crawled back into my truck around 11:30PM and quickly fell asleep. My day job work shift gets me out of bed at 2:30AM and I usually work 10 hour days. I was starting this out all wrong. Jeff woke me around midnight and said that they were going back home and that they had heard nothing while I was sleeping. I thanked them for meeting with me and bringing the equipment. I watched them leave. I quickly went back to sleep. Oct 20 – I woke at my usual time – 2:30AM (great!) and started to drive the back roads, visiting the Skookum Meadows Expedition base camp, hill top and ridge top sites as well as the cast site. I wanted to take some measurements, get another average GPS reading after the military eliminated the scramble signal at the cast site and just have a look at the general area during hunting season. One deer and a lone coyote, evidenced by their tracks had visited the cast site. I collected a soil sample, documented the cast site with pictures, GPS and did some tape measurements. I found some interesting things traveling around the area this trip: · A skid mark, looking very much like a human buttock on a road side bank, complete with what might have been hand prints and three impressions that hinted at being bare footprints – 16.5” long x 6” wide at the ball and with toes. · At the exact spot where, during the expedition, I had been filmed looking at some heat tracks on the road with the thermal imager and where I cut open a melon fruit, I found a bee hive, broken in two. It was a natural hive. I couldn't think of why a bear would carry a hive around like this only to suck on it out in the open on a dirt road. There were more large human shaped tracks leading down the road side embankment nearby. · Along the roads, on the side banks, I found 20’ – 25’ fir trees growing half way up. Large human shaped tracks led up to a spot behind these trees and then back down to the road. Some stomping around behind the trees was evident. This lead me to envision something treking up these small slopes, evading night time drivers, returning to the roadway only after passing. · Someone had been leaving fruit... I photographed these findings and casted a track.