Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

It was the winter of 1811, and the snow lay thick across the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. David Thompson, the renowned explorer and mapmaker, trudged through the frozen forest with his small party of men. The wind howled through the pines, carrying the sharp, biting chill that only a Canadian winter can deliver.

Every step crunched in the deep snow, and the men kept close, wary of the dangers that lurked in the untamed wilderness.

Thompson was accustomed to the wild. He had mapped rivers, crossed mountains, and endured storms that would have broken lesser men. Yet, as he moved along the Athabasca River valley that day, he noticed something that made him pause.

In the fresh snow ahead of them lay footprints and they were unlike anything he had ever seen. Thompson bent closer, brushing snow from the edges of the prints with his gloved hands. They were enormous at least 14 inches long and showed only four toes, an oddity that immediately set his mind racing.

“What manner of creature could leave such tracks?” he murmured to himself.

The men gathered around, eyes wide. Their hands instinctively went to their muskets, though no one fired. The footprints were set in a bipedal stride, like a man walking upright, yet far larger and stranger than any human. The trail wound through the forest, leading deeper into the wilderness, leaving a sense of unease in its wake.

Thompson carefully recorded the tracks in his journal. He noted their size, their stride, and the peculiar shape. Yet, true to his nature as a meticulous observer, he tried to rationalize the mystery. Perhaps it was a grizzly bear with a deformed paw, he considered, or maybe snow had distorted ordinary tracks into something extraordinary.

But even he could not deny that these were not ordinary tracks. His men whispered among themselves, uneasy. They had seen bears, wolves, and other creatures of the forest, but nothing walked like this. Nothing left such strange, humanlike marks in the snow.

For hours, they followed the trail cautiously, hearts pounding, but the tracks eventually disappeared into the thick forest. No creature appeared. No roar, no growl, no figure—only the lingering mystery of those strange footprints, frozen into the winter earth.

Thompson continued his expedition, mapping rivers and charting mountains, yet he never forgot the sensation of seeing those prints for the first time. Whether the tracks belonged to a bear, a trick of the snow, or something far stranger, the memory remained—a silent testament to the unknown that still roamed the wilds of North America.

Over two centuries later, explorers, cryptozoologists, and storytellers still speak of that winter day in 1811. The footprints discovered by David Thompson may never be fully explained, but they stand as one of the earliest and most intriguing records of what we now call Bigfoot.