Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “My family has a place in the Adirondacks, that has been in the family since 1903, and it is my favorite place on earth. I try to get back there every summer and have been able to stay there anywhere from three weeks to two months at a time. I have been going there all my life and am very familiar with those woods, and have been camping, backpacking, and fishing in both the Adirondacks and all through California, where I live, since I was 12. On top of my outdoor experience, I also double majored in both zoology and botany in college, and worked for the USFS in the Angeles Forest for a year. Needless to say, I am familiar with both animals and plants and very comfortable in the outdoors. Okay, onto the stories.

My first encounter, which I didn’t think about really until after my second one, was at a place called Cat Mountain in the Five Ponds Wilderness just South of Cranberry Lake (I think it was 2016). I had hiked up to the top with my cousin and as we were admiring the view of a sea of green topped trees, we could hear some movement about 400ft. below us (between the cliff face we were on top of and the low area leading to the pond). As we started to talk about it, while up on the cliff face, I think the creature heard us and started to move away faster since we heard more crashing through the forest away from us. We even saw a few trees sway in the area where the sounds were coming from. In that area, there are black bears as well as moose, and we never saw, smelled, or heard anything besides the trees being moved or crashed through. I have never seen or heard a bear move through the forest that way, though I do suppose an agitated moose might, but it would have had to have been a large moose to make those noises and move those trees like that. This was in mid July, so it was not during rut.

The second encounter, which happened a few years later (2018), actually made me rethink about what happened during the first. Since I originally just brushed the first off as a large bear or moose. I went on a 50mile hike (Cranberry Lake 50) with the same cousin and his wife at the time. Our first day we hiked from town to Dog Pond, which is a little over 10 miles or so. We were all tired from the first day of hiking and decided to make camp, eat and then head to bed early. We had started to drift off and nap a bit and woke up as it was starting to get dark. We all finished getting our campsite ready for the night, and put up or food into the trees. I was sleeping alone in a bivy sack close to a large bush (thought it might help protect me if there was rain during the night) and my cousin and his wife had pitched a tent about 15 feet away up the slope we were on. We were about 30 feet away from the edge of the pond along a well walked path. We even found a small little plastic boat with an oar that someone had packed up there to fish the pond with, but the site didn’t look like anyone had been around for a good while. In fact, side note, we only came across 3 people during the whole 50 mile hike. All were near the Cat Mountain area I have mentioned before, as this hike goes through the same area (They all were doing a day hike up to the top of the mountain where I had my first encounter). Around 12:30am or so, I was woken up by a sound I had never heard before or since. Off the top of my head, the only thing I could equate it to was a howler monkey. During that night though, the sound came from up above us on hill, stopped for awhile and then was very close during the second phase. There was a bout a 5 minute delay between phases. It was either very close, along the trail that led to us, or even seemed to be coming from a tree above us. This went on for about a half hour to 45 minutes. I did my best to not move, since I was in a small bivy sack and hoped I was kind of hidden by the bush I was near. During this whole time I could hear my cousins wife snoring, so this creature definitely knew we were there. I was not able to sleep the rest of the night even after the howling stopped. I asked both my cousin and has wife the next morning if they heard anything and found out my cousin sleeps with earplugs in because his wife snored so badly. I also found out his wife has slept through many loud instances, including parties, and even rifle target practice. Both my cousin and his wife were in the military at one point. The whole area was dead quite that whole night though. No loons calling (which is very typical for that area), or smaller animals scrambling around. Nothing else happened on that trip. It was this encounter though, that made me rethink what we heard on the trip to Cat Mountain a few years prior to this.

After the trip I tried to figure out what could have made those sounds. I heard people talk about barred owls and listened to all the calls I could find, and nothing matched. I listened to all the different calls foxes make, with no luck (I already knew all their calls from my time studying zoology but decided to double check), and even though I knew it was not a bear or wolf, or other canine, I listened to everything I could find, still with no success. The closest thing to make the noise I heard was still the howler monkey. That is, until I heard the intro to your show with the vocalizations, and it sounded almost exactly the same. It is almost between a whoop and a howler monkey call, on Les’s channel it is Season 1 episode 3, and in the description it says from episode 715 of your podcast, right after the man says “they don’t make people that big”.

In solo hikes throughout the forest though, both before and after these experiences I have once in a while felt that something was watching me at certain points, even to the point that the hair on my neck and arms will stand up. Again though, I have never seen or smelled anything.”