Witness claims while hiking a trail to a cave a long a creek he had frequented many times before that he observed large boulders that had been moved around just outside this cave, he also noted the boulders to large to be moved by humans. Witness also smelt foul odor coming from just inside cave and believed some sort of animal to be living inside .
The BCSO decided to investigate this report .
We headed into the trail under heavy rain at 10:15 am Sept 25th/2011 . We noticed pretty quick that we were under dressed for this investigation as we were becoming completely soaked . We also noticed the creek was rising rapidly but decided to push on , about 15 or 20 minutes in , we came to a clearing at the creeks edge, we decided to stop and investigate .
Almost immediately I noticed to my right a large track ( 14.25" long ) , I said to Josh " look at that track " Josh replied by saying "I see it ". We took photo's and the required measurements for data and then covered the track with leaves to stop the rain from any further destruction of the track.We would be back later to cast the track .
It was at about this time we both heard what sounded like a rock being thrown into the creek from the bank on the opposite side of the creek .
Josh and I both looked at each other saying " did you hear that "? We spent the next 15-minutes observing the bank and tree's for any sign of what ever threw the rock . There were no further incidents with rocks being thrown . I determined the rock to be in-conclusive as to evidence of the Sasquatch .
Heavy rains could of loosened the rock from the bank, forcing the rock to roll down and into the creek .
As we pushed further up the trail we observed the water rising , taking notes of how high we thought it to be rising .The rain continued to hammer us all the way to the falls which was the point we decided to stop due to already being completely soaked and in order to continue we would be climbing up a steep grade with water and mud pouring down on us , the trail seemed to peter off their as well .
We both decided that we would attempt this trail another day when the weather didn't offer us such a challenge .
Heading back out offered us a different challenge , as we made our way back in the lower lying areas we noticed the creek started to spill over and onto the trail . We went through the water on several occasions , it was only 4" or 5" of water the first couple times but as we moved closer to where we discovered the track we hit a spot on the trail where the water was at least 2' deep and hadn't been there an hour earlier , in this spot, to our left was a hill allowing us to move around the creek and a couple logs helped us just far enough to get out of that flooded area .
After another 10- minutes we hit a spot resembling a 16' wide river, it had cut a path across the trail , there were 2-dry spots roughly in the middle, these spots allowed us to jump across .
We finally made it back to the track and observed that the creek had taken away about 5-feet of beach .
I quickly mixed the plaster and poured it into the track .
The next 40-minutes waiting for the plaster to set was like standing fully clothed in the shower with just the cold water on .
After retrieving the cast , we quickly bagged it and headed toward the truck but before we could get to the warmth of the truck mother nature threw one more curve ball, a new set of rapids across the trail . We stood looking at this water and noticed a fallen tree to our left about 7' or 8' off the ground .
After contemplating a slippery balancing act over this log I looked at Josh and said "to hell with this , that water can't possibly make me any more wet then I already am , I'm going through it ". The first step was about 18" deep , I could feel the water pulling at my leg , two more steps put me back on dry land , Josh followed right behind .
10 minutes later we were back at the truck with another investigation completed .
Notes;
Temp steady at +12 , breezy , heavy rain and trail flooding .
14.25" long track found ( left foot ) , measured , photo's taken , video taken and plaster cast made .
Possible rock thrown into creek well collecting data from track , this happened only once, leading me to believe it was possibly a loose rock on the bank rolling into creek ( can't be certain ) observed bank and surrounding tree's for approx 15-minutes did not see or hear anything .
Final thoughts ;
I found this investigation to be quite the adventure due to the extreme rain and flooding of trail . I am excited to have found a track which lends credibility to the witnesses observations .
We did not find the cave but believe it to be there. Under more ideal conditions I believe we will find the cave .
Future research is required in this area .
Lee
BCSO
John's cast is used in this picture for comparison .
