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- You ready?
- Yeah.
- Are you ready? - Uh-huh.
- To watch him come in and out of reality
as his disease progressed was torture.
It was really, really painful for not only myself, but others who knew him over the years.
He went from this gentle giant
to being this man that was unpredictable and to be feared,
and would talk about stuff that would blow your mind.
I remember one night getting off the phone with him
and just curling up in a ball crying
because after a 45-minute conversation, he made no sense.
- Well, this is about the spot where I first saw him.
And he was standing about over there.
He was sort of a Neanderthal-looking,
I could describe it like that.
Powerful, about six foot 'cause I later looked
at that rock behind him.
After the primate went down back through there,
I came down here, went behind there and I got this sample.
- Where is it? - It's in there, yes it is.
But this is only a tiny snippet.
I've got the other stuff safe and sound,
the test samples I sent out,
but I must have dropped this.
I sent samples off to various biologists,
but none of them reported anything other than human hair.
- Some of these people become actually pretty obsessive.
They want a recurrence of the experience.
They're actively hunting for
and seeking out another sighting.
And they will start to disregard their careers,
their marriages, their children, their hobbies.
Everything will get shunted to the side
in pursuit of the second sighting of another time
when they can see this mythical creature before them.
Some of these people, unfortunately,
their lives can spiral out of control.
- The guys that catch Bigfoot gold fever become lost to it.
I think obsession has a kind of a pathological edge to it,
where you lose contact with the rest of life
and you lose your ability to function
as an ordinary human being in society,
or at least it becomes impaired.
These people, by the way, the Bigfoot obsessives,
are all male in my experience.
They go over the edge
and it becomes the central concern of their lives,
and they make a connection to themselves,
and it becomes themselves,
and they lose their perspective of the difference
between themselves and Bigfoot.
And they identify with him so closely
that they simply have to find it.
- Through the years, his focus has completely changed
from all the things in normal life with his business,
with his family, with society, all that changed.
And it's now completely just this singular focus.
You know, he lives down at the river
in the most meager way you can imagine,
and he's content with that.
And he believes really anything more
is just a luxury that it's not necessary.
Then he can dedicate all of his time
and put all of his energy into traveling through the woods,
trying to vindicate himself.
I think he really wants to just connect the dots.
And they're not connected right now.
- Yeah, my parents met in AA.
I think, as far as I know,
I think they just were in the same club,
the same meetings together.
So an AA club is really just a bar
where everyone's just drinking coffee and smoking.
But it functions just like a bar until there's a meeting.
"Hello, 12 o'clock meeting is about to start."
And then half the people that go upstairs, do their meeting,
come back down, belly up to the bar,
get more coffee, and then they mingle.
It operates just like a bar.
So they met in that environment.
- There she is.
Hey madam, last day of vacation.
Did you have a goodly time?
Huh? - Yes.
- What's that?
Is that hang loose thing?
I thought you meant something else.
Oh, yeah, that's just my mind working.
- These are our homemade drinks.
Mine is mango, guava, pineapple and rum.
You're gonna hit the thing, the furniture.
- Oh, okay and mine's--
- It's very tasty actually.
And John's is rum and Coke.
- I think she's mad at me again. Look at that.
- Okay, turn it off. You know what?
You're just, wait.
Have this guy take a video of both of us.
- Okay!
- Yeah, keep the lights going. - Okay, yeah!
- We just want-
- Hello honey, hello.
- I just want to be together on the video.
- She wants to be together.
- Yep, that's the way to do it.
- Okay. - What else, what else?
What do you want to tell us? - Nothing.
- Tell me nothing?
- End of the vacation.
- You're gonna keep your back straight,
stick your butt back,
two hands up and down as hard as you can go.
Up closer, up closer to the weight, there you go.
Keep those knees back, please.
Four, and extend hips.
Up in the air, boom.
All the way down, rotate high.
Reach high out of the toes.
For being out in the woods,
and you're gonna always changing angles everywhere you go,
as far as the terrain is concerned, it's always changing.
And you wanna make sure that any position
that you get yourself into,
and you're gonna repeatedly get yourself in and out of,
you want to train that.
If you haven't lifted it in the past in the gym,
then it's gonna be even harder to do out there
in the real life, outside the gym doors.
So dead lifts and squats, lunges, all those things
are really gonna improve your core,
they're gonna improve your flexibility
and you're gonna make a lot more time out
in the woods possible.
- He works really hard on being fit
because if you're gonna get out into this wilderness,
it's physically very demanding.
I've become pretty close to him
and he's a very interesting guy.
And he's very dedicated to what he's doing.
He's taken a little different approach
than myself and my group.
I've created a non-profit group
that we call Sasquatch Savers.
And we're dedicated to discovery of the science
about ultimately the preservation of these primates.
I've got a strong, scientific curiosity,
but it hasn't changed me in the way it's changed John.
I've never really teamed up with him in the past,
'cause he's just a lone wolf.
- Come in. - It's cold out today.
- So there's beef and chicken,
there you go. - Alright, one of each, okay.
- I'll weigh it for you.
- Yeah, beef and chicken it's- - Yeah!
It's not real beef anyway,
it's just flavored.
- We have a lot of homeless.
We have 92 homeless men and women.
And the men basically are the ones that come in
and they have stories, they love to tell stories
about everything that happens to them out in the wild.
We don't know if it's true, we don't know if it's false,
but they sure are convincing.
- What I saw is what I saw.
It's real.
I looked at it, I looked in his eyes or her eyes.
I'm going to prove that that primate exists.
And when I do, I know it will be sensational,
hit all the news media, I know that.
But to take it further than that,
to take it to celebrity status, and fame and money and,
that's not what I want to do.
I want to prove it exists
and achieve a lifetime's ambition.
- One thing about the Bigfoot gold fever people,
they're not very good woodsmen.
They don't know very much natural history,
which is one of the biggest problems of all
in the Bigfoot community.
Those who go out and search Bigfoot,
they don't know much natural history.
So they'll hear a great gray owl or a barred owl,
which are very common now,
Oh, it must be Bigfoot.
- That area down there is perfect for a primate,
a Sasquatch to come down through here.
And there have been known sightings
in different times of the year, along this river.
- They don't know how to forage
for food in the wild,
they don't know how to protect themselves
from the elements very well.
They're going to places
that they're not really fit for physically,
and getting themselves in dangerous situations
in terms of relief and the exposure and falls.
And some of them, I suppose, probably don't come out again,
I don't know.
I don't know of any cases of that really,
losing their life to it,
but I can see that happening, certainly.
- I was working down at the gym yesterday,
I should've backed off a bit.
My legs really hurt and lower back.
Hello.
Sara, do you have a towel?
- Yeah. - Please.
Thank you, got it, thanks.
- You know, at this point in my life, why?
Why would I bother being in a relationship?
Why would I be with another man
that's going to make me feel unworthy, unattractive,
not valuable enough to be worth keeping?
And when I met John and was intrigued by his story,
and everything that came through
from him to me was genuine and good and real and honest,
and it seemed like it was lower risk
than maybe my past.
It seemed like it would work
to just have something that was non-committal
and not a relationship.
I feel sorry for my married girlfriends,
to be honest with you.
I'm so glad I'm not in that position anymore.
I don't want to brag about it too much,
but, I mean, I have my own place,
I have jobs that I love, I have friends that I love,
John comes by once in a while.
My life is actually pretty fucking great.
- There is a lot of dog shit. There is.
Yeah, I got it all over my jeans,
that's why I had to wash these,
I think they still smell a bit.
You know, I can't overstay my welcome here,
and I know she prefers I don't come around too often,
once a month or so.
I love this weather, look at this.
I mean, this is perfect for tracking,
gonna get up in those mountains.
- He's got a few haunts or trails
that you kind of know he's around frequently.
He only reaches out to me and my wife
when he's sick and has a medical question,
so he asks my wife, a doctor, "Oh, I have this."
And so he fishes for sympathy,
like classic alcoholic behavior.
- You know, I always have this with me
ever since I missed the opportunity.
I don't feel it, you know?
I mean, we're in Sasquatch country right here,
but I just don't feel he's around anymore, or she's around.
- Sometimes I would sit with my dad
and watch him late at night,
and he would look up at the stars
and he wouldn't say anything.
So I would ask him, "Dad, what are you thinking about?"
Or, "What are you looking at?"
He was really, really quiet at times.
I think he would draw within himself to find the strength
that he couldn't get from the outside world.
- It's beautiful right now, I mean, look at this.
But really, we're sort of just hanging here.
Look up there, there it is,
sitting up there, spinning around.
We're spinning around the sun.
We're sort of hanging on by a thread,
it's tenuous to say the least.
I knew it was wrong to come up here.
You know, I just knew it.
I knew it when we set off
that there was something wrong about today.
And look at here, we're in this bloody shithole,
it's a shithole.
And Sasquatch isn't around here.
And well, I mean, I'm all right.
We can sleep here, I can sleep.
Hello.
- Good to see you. - Good to see you too.
- It smells good.
- What you got here? Look at this stuff.
- That's a special treat, my friend.
That's Hickory Mountain barbecue sauce,
which is a Carolina-style sauce.
The name comes from my grandfather's hunting club
in North Carolina, and it's an old family recipe
that I basically stole from my cousin.
- Well, I go hunting every year over in Eastern Washington,
up in the Natchez.
And there's this one draw
that I've been hunting probably six, seven years.
Sometimes there elk in there, sometimes there's not.
And this one year I'm up there
and there was not an elk anywhere.
No sign, nothin' like that been in there all year long.
And it's a migratory path,
so I know that they're in there all the time.
So I set up my stand and I'm looking,
probably five, 600 yards away.
I thought it was a black bear,
but it wasn't on all fours, it was standing,
so I thought he was scratching a tree or something,
it's getting late in the season for it mark it's territory.
So I'm looking and it stepped out,
and I wouldn't shoot him
because I don't want to kill something that majestic,
but if I'd had a camera, we'd have proof.
- Did you get a chance to smell,
did either of you, did any of you smell?
Were you close enough to smell this thing?
- I was too far, but I know there was lingering scent
when we got down there, there was like kind of rancid,
I don't know if you've ever been to a pig farm.
- To be quite honest,
I don't think I've seen a Sasquatch or a primate, I don't,
I think they're made up,
and I think it's bullshit, to be honest with you.
- Here's where I had my sighting.
About 60 miles to the east of there
is where Craig had his sighting.
- When you see what we've seen, you know what you saw.
- These lights end up kind of showing a little red
'cause they're the infrared,
and so when something walks by it day or night,
it'll take a picture.
- If it's in the right location,
shouldn't it be picking up Sasquatch?
I mean, you've been doing this, what three years?
And how many cameras have you had out there?
- He's got what I call the tall man syndrome.
You know, they always talk about the short man syndrome,
well, there's the tall man syndrome
where they think they're better than everybody.
- And I believe that you've caught the cougar on them,
and I don't dispute that,
I don't dispute what you're saying at all.
I'm just saying those things
have to be in the right location.
- So your location is gonna be the right spot,
is what you're saying?
We're articulate, intelligent, educated people,
even if we are way up here in the Northwest.
- That is kind of interesting
he's from England, he's down out here looking for Sasquatch,
so, I mean, he is a believer. - He's telling us.
You know, I grew up here, this is where I'm from.
My whole family roots are from here in Washington,
and some guy coming from across the pond,
what do they call them over there, pikers?
- I am intrigued by people.
I like experiencing different people,
and being a part of something that is different
and out of my realm is what keeps life exciting.
And I'm game for anything, all the time.
- But the thing that's attractive about you
is that you have the ability to talk
and you have a confidence and you have a self worth
that comes from inside you that can be seen.
- She's strong, strong-willed, opinionated,
got her own life.
I think she likes to be by herself,
and then when she wants to company of a man or me,
or even Ben, then she'll ask for that company.
I'm not gonna hold that against her.
- And we love you girls.
- You love us until some-
- I love girls, I love girls like nothing else.
I'll have girls, they're like a hunger.
- Girls for you are like
cigarettes or alcohol. - No, I hunger for girls.
- Like there's an addiction,
and it's not even sexual addiction,
you just love- - Not even that.
It's way beyond that.
- Yeah, you love- - It's a craving.
- I know.
- Totally craving. - You love women.
- I totally crave women.
- You know, he loves ladies.
And we've always grown up without very much of a filter,
but then it's like,
"Dad, okay, come on, you don't need to tell us
what you think about that girl's hair
or the shape of her body,
you don't need to tell me that,
I'm your daughter."
- It's purely coincidence
that most of my staff are attractive females.
I mean, I don't really know how it worked out like that,
but it did.
- If he's just in your face 24/7,
you wanna ring his little fucking neck.
But yeah, he's a really nice guy though on top of it.
So he has that balance.
- You can tell when you're around some of these women
that they might like me,
and they like me as a friend and for conversation.
But it comes down to a real relationship,
I think that it's just passed me by.
Women would look at me differently when I was a young man.
Sometimes I'll come into my car
and there'll be a little note on my car
of somebody that's maybe an admirer somehow,
and those things don't really quite happen anymore.
The truth of the matter is they look at me as an old man.
And I guess I'm still looking for those women
that are really turned on by the old guy,
but I haven't found much of that.
You know, I used to have a big house,
I used to have more money than I have now.
You know of course, getting divorced, took care of all that.
I don't own a home, I rent this pad from my friends,
but I have everything that I need here.
I could pick up and move in one day, I could be gone.
And there's something gratifying about that.
- There's your cyclist, Ben.
There's your guy following us. - What did I tell you?
I told you somebody is following us, son of bitches.
- I think this is prime location.
- What, you need a walking stick or something?
- Hey, don't go too far, wait a minute.
Let me see one of them cameras.
- I don't think the primate's gonna climb down that bank,
and you know what?
It's too close to this road.
- Primates like elk, they can go anywhere they want.
- This road is well used.
Look at it, it's well used. - Well used?
We've been on it for two and a half hours.
Have you seen one car or one person?
- Well, it's just the time of day we're here.
It's not the right, this isn't right.
What are you doing standing up there?
I mean, we already discussed all this, we talked about it.
And here they are,
I could tell straight away they didn't want to hike.
They want to quickly put a camera up
get back in the car and go back and have a beer.
- I just thought that was a prime location there.
It's got everything,
it's got food, water, cover on both sides.
You know, the guy has no respect,
he's been out of touch with society,
you know, he lives under bridges lives,
who knows where he pees, probably in that puddle behind us.
- What'd you think of John Green?
- Hard worker, John's a real hard worker.
Good, good personality, good human being.
He works harder than these kids we get these days,
he's old school ethics,
starts a task, finishes a task.
If John was available,
I'd work in five days a week, full-time.
- I don't mind, I mean, it's a means to an end, isn't it?
I mean, I'd rather be tracking that primate
but I need money just to live on.
- Good heart to him, good mindset for an Englishman.
- Well, I'd started a clothing company in England
in the early 1970s.
And with that success, I moved out,
or came out to Los Angeles.
The clothing business in Los Angeles
was about licensing T-shirts, it was sort of pop art,
sort of, I started with, "Leave it to Beaver,"
"Mr. Ed," "I Love Lucy," I went on to "Gumby" and "Pokey,"
and we were shipping out about $1 million a week
in T-shirts, which are an awful lot of T-shirts.
The business was consuming me, I worked weekends,
and I mentally collapsed
So the company was sold and the guy that took it on
he offered me a great job, but he was a snake,
and I'd had enough.
- They've got lithium batteries that are designed
to keep this thing functional for up to a year.
So first and foremost- - Press the button!
- Yes, so if the batteries are functioning properly
you've got to get a green light.
John is going to be the one to take the cameras out,
they're going to be delivered deep into the forest
into the mountains around here,
to these designated hotspots that we've identified.
Left all winter long, and then in the spring
we're gonna go back and retrieve them all.
I am unable to participate due to my surgeries
for the past few years,
I'm probably a year away from being able to be normal again.
- And I'll write notes and I'll take pictures,
and you just make sure that Sara is up on all of this too.
- Oh, I'm hopeful that she- - If she's up on this,
then we'll get both sides of the equation.
- Between the two of you guys- - We'll get it done.
I don't know if that dog won't scare off the primate.
The primate will smell it,
and I got to deal with the dog as well as everything else.
I mean- - I'll hold the dog.
- I thought you were just here
to help carry everything.
- I am here to help, but I don't have anywhere to put my dog
and I'll take care of her. - All right!
- Okay, now remember,
we can't fail to find the cameras in the spring.
- We'll put them here. - Okay!
- We'll get it all, five days now, okay?
I'll see you in five days back here.
- I'll be here, yes, sir. - All right!
'Cause I want to set the camera somewhere in that tree line
over there, so we can capture this whole open space
all the way to the lower part here.
You know what?
I think we need to stay close to this tree.
This tree, first off, is easy to get on for me.
I know it may look a little clumsy but.
- You need help? - You see that?
- Yeah. - That's all the way down.
- All the way down.
- All the way down that slide area.
It's taped, you ought to see that from the trail.
We've got one camera set and I'm delighted,
and then I need to set camp
because I don't want to be doing that in the dark.
So, how's that dog of yours doing? Huh?
- She's holding up!
Just a little cold. - Well, I'm impressed!
- She looks cold, that's the only thing I'm worried about is her feet. - I wouldn't worry about that.
Animals act like human beings.
- It's okay, dog. - Sara, what are you doing?
- I'm trying to get better gloves on
'cause I'm freezing.
- You know how many years I've had this old tent?
- How many?
- I don't know, I've lost track.
We should have brought some. - This is all we're eating?
Is Clif bars?
- Yeah, it's a Clif bar.
So we can maybe put another packet in there,
how hungry are you? - I'm pretty hungry.
- I usually have one packet.
Tell me that's the best you've had camping?
- Mm-hmm!
- Good, isn't it? - Sweet.
- See, I told you. - Cold, but sweet.
- Yeah, it's all right, it'll warm once it gets inside.
Here you go, you have that.
Don't give any to the dog, I just gotta make a little trip.
All right, I'll be back in a few minutes.
Wait a minute.
We've got four more days up here,
four more days, all right?
This is the first day, and you're heading back?
Well, how are you going to get home?
- I'll call Ben, he could pick me up.
- Ben?
Have you got any more stuff in there
you should leave here with me?
Have you left me all my stuff?
- Yes, I didn't take any of your stuff.
- All right, okay. - Good luck.
- All right. - I'm sorry.
- That's why I'm single, I can see that.
I mean, no woman in their right mind
would want to live like I live,
and I'm gonna continue on, and it's just the way it is.
So, I've come down about 2,000 feet,
it was impossible up there for me,
I mean, it was getting dangerous, it was too cold,
and I just didn't think the primate
would be up in those altitudes,
especially this time of the year.
I'm convinced it's probably closer down here to the river,
to a source of water.
You don't have any of that trail mix do you?
- What's that? - That trail mix.
You know, you carry that trail mix stuff with you,
do you have, do you have any leftover in your pockets?
There, I've got that set.
- I really believe we're on the cusp
of a monumental historic discovery.
Our science is gonna pay off,
and we're gonna once and for all
prove the existence of these primates.
The turbines that were placed at Snoqualmie Falls
back in the early 1900s, needed to be replaced
finally, after 100 years.
Some of the fellows that worked on the falls
during this construction project,
they also worked out at my gym,
Mount Sinai Sports and Fitness.
I can tell you from talking to them
they had a situation where early on in the project,
they were rappelling down inside of the shaft.
And you're talking about a 300-foot vertical shaft
in the darkness,
and something was throwing rocks at them.
I wouldn't be surprised in any sense
to find that the Sasquatch, just like humans,
are drawn to this place.
It's just really all inspiring.
- I do think now after all these years
that I had a spiritual encounter,
and I'm going to have another one, I can feel it.
I can actually feel it more now
that I'm going to find the answers
in another perhaps appearance or another sign.
So I have to, I'm compelled to keep going.
- Well, the way you described it to me,
that is, he was scrawny.
He was a scrawny Sasquatch, not like your classic
big hulking guy. - No, no big hulking, no, no.
- Yeah, yeah, so I did him on the scrawny, lanky side
and I kinda think I tried to make him
kind of tree stumpish.
'Cause I'm thinking that's maybe what you actually saw
in the woods was just a tree stump.
- No, no, no, no
No, I disagree.
No, this was 10, 12 years ago.
No, it wasn't a tree stump at all
because I was there, you know, and it was moving.
And at one point I think it was actually gonna try
and say something 'cause it opened its mouth.
Like it was gonna say something,
and then it took off behind one of these huge rocks.
You know, the big ones that are up there
on that trail. - Mm-hmm!
- A stump?
No- - You know what you saw?
- I know what I saw, yeah.
And for her to say to me, you possibly saw a stump
that's why I painted this stick insect.
Yeah, it was a stick insect really with hair on it.
- You know, you have this experience,
and then you don't know what it's about,
and you want to try to prove what you saw,
and you want to try to understand it,
and you want to try to explain it and you can't.
You know, there's a lot of people out there
that are having experiences like us.
We're gonna try to do some research
and see if we can find some commonality
between these countless other sightings
that have been reported.
- I showed my mom the picture and she called my dad
and she said, "Your son just took a picture
"of something in the water." - Yeah, but when she called me
I was busy at work and I said,
"Babe, I ain't got time, I'm trying to get done with work
"and come home."
And she was excited saying that he took something,
a picture of something in the river.
I told her it was just a river otter,
don't worry about it.
She said, "No, it was bigger than a river otter."
And I said, "Okay, I'll be home in 20 minutes.
"Don't worry about it."
Five minutes later, I get this picture on my phone,
so I quit work and came home.
I just don't know what it is. - Give me a look!
- I mean, I try to get in touch
with somebody that knows more than me,
I'm just a backward school boy.
So you took a clear picture of something, but I don't know,
I don't want to say it is or it is not.
- Its head was moving and looking at me,
it's arms was just massive.
And the way that it squatted as if it had known to do that
so many different times to protect itself
or to keep a visual on me.
I've just seen something
that I thought you only saw in the movies.
We kept hearing this and I knew it wasn't an elk,
I knew it wasn't a bear, I knew it wasn't a chipmunk.
I knew this was something, was something big,
big enough to hold a great big log and hit a tree with it.
But I don't call it Sasquatch
because I didn't see a Sasquatch, I didn't see a Bigfoot.
What I call it is the Olympic Tree Knocker.
Because I was on the Olympic Peninsula
and the thing was knocking against every tree it could,
this Olympic tree knocker was something
that I have never encountered in a forest before.
- Do you think they form communities?
- I believe so.
- Do you think there's a mother and a father,
a child in that sort of community?
- Absolutely. - Family units.
- And we've yet to come across bones of them.
- No, it's never been a discovery of bones or carcasses.
- So they have a superior way of-
- Dealing with all that.
- Dealing with death.
I think they were created by God,
they were one of God's creatures-
- Just like all the other creatures?
- Just like all the other creatures,
but with purity and simplicity and living off the land.
- It just seems to be a hodgepodge
of different people's opinions,
and I think most of it is made up.
They want to be part of the conversation
so they say, "Oh, I've seen the primate."
- But you could see the trees shaking.
Whack, whack, whack!
And then all of a sudden we just hear something book it
through the trees running around to behind us.
I couldn't believe it.
- Exploring and searching for answers,
yeah, I think can be healing.
It's just about that balance of time.
Are they staying grounded in the tangible reality
That is us here, this gym,
these people, this community or family.
- Mount Sinai Sports and Fitness.
Yes, we do indeed.
- You know, he does run this business well,
I think me being here definitely helps that.
Though sometimes I wish he would kinda dial back
and kinda come be a little bit more part
of the family with the grandkids.
He does do that though,
I think he tries to find a healthy balance,
but he goes through seasons
where he gets a little bit obsessive.
- We just can barely contain our excitement
over what we might find when we look at all the tapes.
- I'm pretty certain it's right up there, the first camera.
But you know, these avalanches,
they just rip everything down.
So it can be a little confusing.
Ow, fuck!
That's what I want, just throw me those,
throw me those gloves, I'm sorry, just broken my nails.
I had the camera right up there,
the camera and the buntings gone.
Nobody would've come up here.
I mean, who would climb up here in the wilderness,
find this tree and take the camera off it.
The primate saw the red bunting came over,
saw the camera's strapped up there
and just reached up and got it.
Just like I stood up in here, put it up there.
Then what we need to do is we need to find the other cameras
and see if they panned this area.
Here's the second tree! - There's the bunting.
Let me get up there.
- The other one's, I know it's this way.
I want to show you something over here.
Look at this, how do you think this happened, huh?
This is a perfect example of primates activity.
That stripped bark off that tree there, they rip it off.
I've found some hair stuck on this broken piece here.
I mean, it could be anything,
but why would a piece of hair be on here?
- May I see it, John. - This?
Well, it's hard to see but.
- Well, hold it up for me.
- Well, it's not a bear.
- It's soft. - Mm-hmm!
- It's almost like a woman's hair.
Look at that big guy.
- Look at him, which your cameras say, is this four?
- This is four. - We've got the bears now.
We unfortunately still don't have-
- It's crap, really, isn't it?
- It contains- - It's absolute crap,
There's nothing we can show to anybody
that proves our point.
- When we analyzed the cameras that were placed at really
high elevations, where there's a lot of snow
the weather's really bad.
There was virtually no sign of any life.
I mean, there are instances where the wind would kick up
some snow would cause a camera to trigger
but really absolutely nothing at all,
and that was a bit surprising to me.
You know, as opposed to the lower-level cameras,
I must say it was very interesting,
the number of animals that we saw and the wildlife
that exists right in this community,
right up to the edge of civilization.
The only tangible piece of evidence that we found
was a piece of fur.
- What's up?
- Thanks for-
- Is there something you want me to try to identify, or?
- Somebody dropped it by today,
it's actually a bushy-tailed wood rat.
- It's a really interesting character,
it differs from a Norwegian rat or a Norway rat,
in that as its name implies, it has a bushy hairy tail.
Interesting.
Okay, well, let's just look at it in a microscope here.
You wanna look?
- Well, to me, it looks just like-
- Here, take a smell.
- Interesting the way the fibers are stranded.
- That's diagnostic.
Let him take a sniff, what do you smell?
- What is that smell?
I dunno.
- Equine, horse hair.
- No! - No, he's wrong.
- I can say categorically it's horse hair.
- Well, I can say you're wrong.
- They were starting from the standpoint
that they knew what it was, and they wanted to prove it,
and that's not the way science works.
Science works by assembling data, and then analyzing it,
and then drawing conclusions from it.
- Why do you feel, John?
I mean, why are you really doing this?
What is it about this that...
I mean, why, are you still?
I've been following you a long time
and I still don't even fully understand.
- Well, I've seen it.
I've been 20 feet from it, I've smelled it, the creature.
I've looked into the creature's eyes,
I think there are times when the creature is tracking me
and it's no more than 20 or 30 feet away.
Just listening, it could be listening to me right now.
- And you can't see, you know,
what you just said there,
someone like your daughter thinking that
that's a mentally ill person talking right there.
That's someone who's?
- I can see that she can,
I'm not normal in the sense
that normal people don't do this,
but there's a lot of people that have pursuits.
Let me put it this way,
if I was to discover and find,
and photograph and document this primate,
would she then think, or would others think
that I was still mentally deranged
chasing this thing in the mountains?
There's something behind that stump.
- Sounds like squirrel to me.
- That's not a squirrel.
There's a whole area around here
that's all kind of brushed out.
- Yeah.
- I'm not making it up you must hear that.
- Yeah, I hear the squirrel.
- Okay, yeah, well, you're not listening,
that's the problem.
You don't climb with me
'cause you're saying what you're saying,
you're wasting your time,
there's nothing there, John, let's go.
- I don't think I said that.
- Huh?
- I don't think that I said that.
- Whatever it is now it's gone 'cause we're talking,
you know, but you can see how it came through here,
where I've come see,
through, through there, over there zigzagged,
and behind that tree.
Plain as the nose on your face.
- People would say stuff like,
"Well, we thought we knew your dad,
"but he's so mean, like what happened to him?"
And it was hard for me because that wasn't him,
that was the illness,
and somebody living with that type of chronic illness
and pain, I think they lash out at people
because they need and they want help,
but they're not getting it.
At least not getting it sufficiently enough
to ease their pain and to help them
feel like they're not going to succumb to their disease.
- So adopted, today on paper,
is he a legal? - Mm-hmm,
- Okay. - Yeah.
- So legal custody.
- He's the only father I ever knew.
- So do you think there's any chance
in the future that you would see him again
or connect with him again?
- It's up to him, I'm not gonna reach out.
- I realized that I should be spending
more time with my children, with my grandkids,
with everybody connected, their relations,
with their cousins, all these people,
but I don't, in fact I'm not really interested
in all the peripheral stuff.
The only time that my father actually I could see emotion
and I could see him breaking down,
was when I saw him for the last time, and he was dying.
He knew he was dying, and he was living.
My mother had already died some years earlier,
and so when my mother died,
he went down, he just started folding in.
He was a big strong man,
and he used to kneel by his bed every night
and say his prayers strictly, a very strict Catholic.
But when I saw him for the last time,
he looked at me and he was a big man,
but he'd shrunken in size, you know?
And he was stooped over on his cane, and he, he said,
"I just wanna tell you, I'm not gonna see you again."
And of course, I brushed it off and said,
"Oh, you'll see me, I'll be back."
And he said, "No, you won't be back."
And then he said,
"And I'm sorry that I was not there more for you."
But and then he said, "But I'm so proud
"that you have turned out the way you have."
And I was emotional, I'm a little emotional now.
And I hugged him and you know, it was, we didn't hug,
but I hugged him, and he said,
"Then well, it's goodbye then, isn't it?"
And I said, I brushed it off immediately,
and I said, "No, no, I'll be back.
"Jerry will call me, my brother will call."
But he said, "No, you won't."
Then he reached out his hand and he shook my hand,
and that was the only time in my life
that my father actually showed
really strong emotion towards me, you know.
- Get that out of your mouth. Gimme that!
What's in your mouth, little boy?
Uh-uh, you can't throw your things.
You know you can't throw your toys.
- You know, they got the bathroom ready for him.
Having my dad here has been a lifesaver.
If I didn't have him living with me
I would be drowning in stress.
I wouldn't have any time to myself,
I wouldn't have any time to go to school,
to even keep a clean house,
to really love the boys the way they deserve.
He moved into my garage
because he refused to take one of the boy's bedrooms,
even though I was willing to have the baby come sleep
in my room or get the boys to just share rooms,
he refused to let them do that.
As a single mom,
that is the greatest gift anyone could ever give me.
Yeah!
I'll always be thankful,
even if he's a little crazy.
Sorry, Dad!
- Particularly if he's a little crazy.
- Extra crazy.
- The legend of the primate in this part of the world,
it's something that's never gonna die.
They are breeding living creatures,
and they're male, they're female, there are children.
They live, they die, they're grandparents,
and they have the whole, you know,
social structure to survive.
- How's that, is that alright?
- Maybe a little more. - A little more?
- Like real saturated.
- Well, I don't want it too short at the back.
I like it down with the collar because of the sun.
I don't wear any sunscreen
'cause stuff stings me in the eyes, it's horrible stuff.
So anyway, I ran down the logs,
and around the corner I found this huge mountain meadow
laid out in flowers, and there was a trail
that just been cut all the way through it,
as if two large or three large primates,
not bears not deer,
had run through there, it was fresh, fresh, fresh.
I was jumping up and down.
- Did you get footage of it?
- No, we didn't get footage of anything, we're too noisy.
- I've been discouraged a lot in my life
especially by my mom, and it doesn't feel good.
When you're excited about something
and passionate about something,
and somebody says something to put doubt in your head,
it's just that never feels good,
so I like, I like being supportive of him,
he's a good person.
He's been there for me
in places when I've just sort of needed someone, something,
some company, some companionship,
some diversion, distraction,
and that's played a necessary role in my life.
I don't think romantically we're connected
in the way that I entertained at one point,
but I certainly will always consider him
a really, really close friend and a good person.
I think one of the things that I respect most
about John is that he is just tireless
in his pursuit of what he feels is out there
and what he feels will bring him happiness, victory, joy,
something, some sense of accomplishment,
and he won't give up on it.
And it doesn't seem to matter if he gets tangible evidence,
it doesn't seem to matter if other people believe him,
he just never gives up.
And there's so many people
that give up on small things all the time
and he's basically devoted his life to this.
And he doesn't get a lot of positive feedback
and encouragement that he's going to find
what he wants to find.
And the fact that he continues down that path,
tirelessly and tenaciously,
and with a purpose, I have to respect that,
especially in a man.
- All the criticism I've had
for all the years I've been doing this,
and the people poking fun at me,
and walking across to the other side of the street
when they see me coming, 'cause I'm nuts,
I know it's there, I'm going to find it.
I'll be smiling inward about it, I will,
I really will have a smile on the inside,
looking out at them all.
- Just explain, Ben, what are we doing here?
- In her hand is a very small thin strip of aluminum
with essentially a chip on it, and it's a tracer.
It in turn is tracked by the tracker.
Now, when we really go live with this thing,
there's gonna be bait
that the tracer will be placed in.
Right now we just placed it in the container
to see whether or not the tracker will still be able
to pick up the signal from the tracer.
- If the primate was running, 'cause she's just walking,
if the primate was running,
it would track while the primate's running, right?
- I love the contrast of her blonde hair
with the green of the trees.
- Is it working?
- You better tell her it's working, encourage her,
say something, say something nice.
- It's working great, babe. - There you go!
We'll probably be out here about a week and a half
to two weeks maybe, we didn't bring that many supplies
but we've got enough to hold out for awhile.
- What you doing, Ben?
- I'm gonna place the bait.
Just like that.
- I mean, there's a little bit of gas.
Oh, there it goes! Look at that!
How about some hot oatmeal? - All right!
- Well, this is almost ready.
It's a mess, Ben, we need to make some decisions
about what we're gonna do.
I got water in my tent.
Look, most of it actually was absorbed by the bed bag,
which is drying out there,
and of course I was soaked, I woke up wet.
My feet are wet.
- Science is not utterly contemptuous
of the Bigfoot question, if you look at the living fauna,
if you look at the biogeography, the ecology,
the evolutionary, picture in the fossil record,
all these things point to, if not the likelihood,
at least the plausibility of such an animal.
Population biologists have often said,
if there is a reproducing population in the Northwest
it's probably somewhere between 500-5,000 animals
between Northern California and Alaska.
That seems plausible to me.
So, I mean, it's a kind of animal like any other.
- Hey John, John.
- Yeah.
- Something's going on with one of the tracers.
- Was it moving, what's it?
- I'm not sure, hold on.
Stop and listen.
- Do you see it, Ben, on the tracer?
- This thing is a quarter mile up the hill now.
- It keeps zigzagging. - Yeah!
- What do you think?
It's in there.
It stopped, I can't hear anything now.
All right, are we getting any closer?
Has it stopped? - Sorry, I think we're
It's hard to say John.
- Huh, it's a distance?
Are we gaining on him?
- It's up in there, right on the top of that ridge.
Our only hope is to try to go around the girth
of the side of the mountain here and possibly head it off.
- How far is it?
- Well, it's moving north,
and unfortunately we're going south right now
because we've got to traverse our way back
up across this ridge line.
Not many, it's pretty sparse, it's been so dry.
- What are you looking for? - Blueberries.
- I'm not gonna go down, Ben, I'm not going down.
I'm not that thirsty.
- I'm getting dehydrated though, John.
- Well, you can't do anything about it,
going down there is two hours.
How accurate do you think that thing is?
- I think it's accurate. - Can you pinpoint it more?
I mean.
- Well, this thing shows the direction he's moving,
and so it could be over here
but it's still way up high as over a half a mile away.
- Where does it say it is, Ben?
It's pointing up there.
- It's about 200 yards from this spot,
facing due south.
- I don't see anything.
- Well, I'm gonna get up, I'm going closer.
- When we came up here, we've come back around
and we traversed a side of this mountain
it went straight up the side. - Yeah.
- So, it came this whole ridge line,
all along here is what I speculate, all along there.
- Yeah, it looks like two footprints like that.
- Almost does. - Huh?
- There's flies everywhere, look at them.
- Oh my goodness.
- What?
- That thing took a shit up here,
got bloody traces inside that pile of shit.
- How fresh do you think the shit is?
- It's very fresh in the last hour or so.
- Less than an hour.
There's a, fuck!
Look at this, Ben.
- Fuck me!
- We got it. - It's not gonna do any good.
- Well, I didn't come all the way-
- No.
- I didn't come on this way,
we didn't come on this way to just walk away from this.
Maybe they could run a DNA, we've got something at least.
- I'm worried about him, he's dehydrated.
We gotta get to that water.
Okay, come on.
One foot in front of the other, you go in front of me.
How've you been, I haven't seen you in a while.
- It's some kind of a scat.
I'm a little,
that odor is nitrogenous waste.
Generally herbivores don't have
that nitrogenous smell to it.
You know, being deer, elk, something of that nature.
So you're thinking the tracer was consumed and excreted?
- Correct. That's right.
- In the scat.
- Yeah, I took the actual tracer out of the scat.
- Now let me back you up just a little bit.
It was in a container- - Initially.
- That it required an opposable thumb,
that doesn't mean something
couldn't have broken the container.
- Correct. True.
- Black bear can tear into anything.
There were a couple of things that confused me about it.
Number one, the smell of it.
The shape, and the overall texture to it,
it just wasn't like anything I'd seen before,
I don't believe.
- How much of an expert
would you consider yourself in that area?
- Well, there's you know the,
"This guy don't know shit!"
I've got a friend up in Fairbank's, his name is Ted Swimm,
Dr. Theodore Swimm.
He's with endangered species,
with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
- Well, like I said before,
he circled around the bear topic but-
- It's just a hypothesis.
And I can appreciate, he's a scientist,
you know, you want to have some kind of speculation.
- I guess, he wasn't certain.
- He wasn't certain 100%. - No.
- And he's sending it to his friend up north
who's gonna do a real analysis on it.
- So I'm wanting to go through there.
This is ridiculous.
- I don't need an entourage, Ben and his group of friends,
and I could quite frankly, I can do without you,
'cause I don't need, I don't need publicity.
- You know, I'll go out and find it and- - I'm not bringing you publicity,
- I'm just covering your story. - I know you're covering the story
but sometimes it's just annoying.
I mean, look at us standing here in this bog.
- Wouldn't you be standing here
if I wasn't with you?
- Probably not, no, probably not.
I would've gone the other way, I would have seen-
- Why would you have gone the other way
if I wasn't here?
- Well, because look, the water now we're standing here,
I would have gone that way.
- What does me being here
have anything to do with the route you would go?
It makes no sense.
- Well, because I thought this trail was open,
and you wanted to come down here with me.
And I said, I wanted to go
and look at this other site over here.
- I think, between you and I,
that thing that I would like to just say
about my dad is that I miss him.
There are times when I am doing something in the best mood,
listening to music, and then all of a sudden,
like the wind will blow, or I'll catch a scent in the air
that will remind me of him, and somebody will walk in
and it will start on me, and I'll be crying
and they'll say, "Oh my gosh, what's wrong?"
And the answer to that is nothing like, nothing is wrong,
it's just part of everyday life without him,
the pain definitely never goes away.
It just catches you when you least expect it.
- John!
John!
Shit!
- Fuck you!
It was raining and I got wet.
You know, I took pictures.
- What pictures?
- I took pictures of the primate, two pictures, two of them.
- Have you actually looked at them
on the camera?
Like, you know what you shot?
- No, the camera's not working anymore.
- I mean, how do you know you have anything?
- Well, I got out there at night,
in my tent up in the mountains, when the primates came-
- Hey John, if I set up everything
can I do an interview?
Like, would you do it?
- Well, you're talking to me now, isn't this an interview?
Huh? - No!
Let me set everything up.
- I saw two, two primates.
I was in my tent in the middle fork,
I'd been there about a week,
I heard them coming into the campsite.
- Is this a true story or are you making it up?
- I have pictures.
No, I have the pictures here.
Sara has a charger at her house, I'd plug it in-
- So why haven't you gone there?
I mean, it'd be the first thing you do.
- Well, I, you see-
- You know what?
I'll tell you something,
I've been following you a long time.
And I think you just are making, this is bullshit.
- I'm not making it up.
- The guys that catch Bigfoot gold fever
become a lost to it.
They can be lost to
what we consider a day-to-day reality
to the extent that it's not good for them,
and not good for those around them who love them.
- It's kind of temperamental.
I mean, I've had that camera for years and years,
it's been out in the wilderness with me.
You see, when I took pictures of the primates
with the flash-
- John where are the pictures?
- Well, Sara is looking for them.
- That's the whole point. - They're in there.
- All right. It still says, "Lens Cover Error."
- Well you have to push, look, look, let me-
- John, what does the lens cover error
have to do with looking at photos?
- I don't know.
I'm not technical, but this, when you hold it up somehow
you push the lens cap.
- But you just got the lens cap off.
- No, but you have to push it up, even though it's hidden,
if you push, push it further into it's recess, into the.
You can figure it out, I'm gonna keep eating.
- It doesn't seem to have any stored pictures,
it like lets me take pictures,
but it doesn't seem to have any stored pictures.
That's really disappointing, disappointments are so hard.
I hate disappointment.
- It's like years of disappointment.
I mean, it's like just,
I don't know if I can do it again.
I just don't know if I have it in me.
- He was more desperate.
He seemed more desperate than he has in the past,
and I don't know if that's because he's getting tired,
or because he's getting older,
or because he's losing faith or hope himself.
I think there's a lot of him
that maybe feels like he's a failure in some ways.
- I sometimes feel guilty
that maybe if she married somebody else
she'd still be alive, you know?
I've been having these recurring dreams that I wake up.
She says, "Don't worry, everything's gonna be all right.
You, you'll go on without me, you're strong,
you'll bounce back, you are who you are,
don't you ever change that."
And she's lying in the bed there, she can hardly get up.
You wouldn't even know who she was, you just wouldn't,
you'd think she was a stranger.
The only thing you could recognize,
if you knew her well enough,
was her smile and her cheerful attitude.
That, even in death, that's never,
they can't take that away from her.
It's a terrible situation, and I don't have the control,
I don't have any control over it.
I feel to myself, "Did I do enough?
"Did I try hard enough to help?"
Yeah, I'm just gonna have to go behind the,
I'm gonna go around the back of this building,
'cause I want to take a piss.
- You said you're gonna see
your kids again maybe?
- Yeah, I do want to see my children.
You know what?
I really do, I mean, it's been a long time.
You know, I wasn't, I didn't do the right thing,
and hopefully after these years gone
that we can perhaps reunite a little bit,
'cause right now it doesn't look good,
it doesn't feel good.
I mean, I don't feel good.
It's just not there for me anymore.
- Why did it take so long,
did they say anything?
- Well, Dr. Swindler, I don't know.
I think, he's a very busy guy.
And to get this sample
I'm not sure how seriously he might've taken Jeff.
But anyway, he finally did get around to it.
And even though we've been discouraged,
we've heard nothing but you know what?
We have heard something now.
- And Ben came over and he said
that they'd found something very interesting
that they were all excited about it.
- You guys know, this is Dr. Ted Swimm, he's very nice.
- We're in the Endangered Species office.
- I'm Ben. - Hi, Ben.
- This is Bob Fergus from Fairbanks, Alaska.
- Pleased to me you! - Pleased to meet you as well.
- Yeah, yeah.
- You know, thank you for including me into this project.
'Cause I think there's some exciting discoveries that-
- Hey Jeff, sorry to interrupt,
do you think you could put the dogs?
- I know I can.
Come on, girl. Bonnie!
Bonnie! Kennel!
- Thank you. - Sure.
- You know, science has come down to a point
where it's more economical to do a lot
of long-term deep dive testing on DNA
and RNA and chromosome pairings and those sorts of things,
and even sort of the commercial stuff,
that's under market as humans,
we can figure out where we came from, right?
So I think the testing component
was to try to figure out where this sample came from.
You know, the RNA which is in humans, it's similar,
that's the messenger component of the science aspect
of what chromosomes and DNA is all about.
But this one was rather unusual.
- RNA stands for ribonucleic acid, RNA.
And it's a component of genetic material,
and it's associated with the DNA.
- What is it about this RNA that is unusual?
I guess.
- That's like saying what's unique
about an Irishman or a Norwegian.
- Okay.
- It's a detailed chemical explanation.
- So you're just saying
that you've never seen this before?
- That is correct.
- Not in our combined years of research, no.
- Yes.
- They're not willing to actually say out loud
that this could be the primate,
they're not willing, and I understand why,
because in your community you can be ridiculed.
- All we've got to this point is that it was human feces,
a hominid feces.
- There was no human who could have made that.
It was a pile about this big.
- It was unique in its transfer RNA,
and unlike anything that we've identified to this point.
That does not allow me to make the steps
that there is a Sasquatch.
- I think the other part too,
is you take a look at some indigenous tribes,
like in Brazil and other parts of the world
that basically remained undiscovered
for all intent and purpose. - Sorry guys!
You talk about this so matter-of-factly.
Are you saying that there could be some sort
of undiscovered tribe that there would be in South America
living in the North Cascades?
I mean, that's what I hear you saying?
- Well, no, we're not saying that,
we're saying a couple of things.
One that we know that there's undiscovered tribes down in Brazil,
because most recently they've been discovered.
I think what Jeff's talking about is that
there's a possibility there's an indigenous tribe here
that we haven't discovered.
- I think we're getting confused a little bit
using the word tribe, or it's a small group.
It's apparently a small inbred group
that has some unusual alleles in their DNA
that have made them distinctly different
from other groups that we know of in the area.
- I don't know what you guys thought in there,
but I found what they said in there to be highly confusing.
- Well, it is very confusing.
- Because when I interviewed him he told me,
he thought there was a greater probability
of some subculture humans that had never been identified
almost tribal living in the Cascades.
- Well, I mean, that's another hypothesis.
- I've seen these creatures, they're not human,
they're not human, so he can go round and round and round,
but they're not human.
- I there's a difference between belief and acceptance
as Grover Krantz, the great Bigfoot scientist did.
He felt the belief equated with faith,
acceptance based on evidence is something else.
As a scientist I prefer the latter,
because of the tracks and the sounds I've had
for which I don't have a better hypothesis,
I have upped my degree of acceptance from about 50-50,
when I really started looking into it
to probably about 75 or 80% now.
In other words, I am inclined toward the position
that it is likely
that Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Sehlatics,
walks as a flesh and blood animal,
but I'm not willing to say that I'm certain about it.
- He's been battling a lot of demons for a long time
and we kind of all see that,
but, you know, he's a great friend of mine
and I want to be there for him.
You know to have him come in here and bunk here sometimes,
and get clean and get something to eat,
I think it's a good thing.
He's a good kind soul.
- Hello! - Hi there.
Good to see you.
- To see him again, was a chance to hug him again,
to touch him again and tell him how much I loved him,
and how much I missed him.
We can give him the space to be whomever it is
that he wants to be so long as he's happy.
- Thank you!
from Carolina out there!
- And I'd also like to recognize somebody
that's here that's an old friend of mine
I've known for many years.
He rarely comes in from out of the woods
but he's here tonight and we're happy to have him in.
I'd like to dedicate this next song to him.
John Green, I give you "Mother Nature's Troubled Child."