January 15, 2025 – Our Second Trip of the Year
- mmartinson2
- Jan 15, 2025
- 3 min read
Back in March 2024, I connected with a woman on Facebook who had been experiencing strange activity at a campground she’d been visiting for years in the Northern Cascades. She was asking for help, but most of the comments were just trolls. I reached out through Messenger to offer support, and over time, we became friends.
Eventually, she invited Alan and me to visit the area ourselves. We also brought along our friends Jon and Sara Brown—creators of the Salish Sasquatch YouTube channel—to help document the experience and share her story.
The trip got off to a rough start. Just as we were pulling out of the driveway, we realized the fifth wheel hadn’t been properly hitched. It dropped, completely destroying the truck’s tailgate. We almost canceled right then and there—but decided to keep going.
The drive took about five hours. When we arrived, I finally met Ally, her daughter Liv, and their two dogs. Ally had mentioned before that her dog Lucy would sometimes point toward the mountain when there was nearby activity. I actually saw her do it—twice. At the time, I chalked it up to coincidence.
Once we set up camp, we celebrated Liv’s birthday with some cake and a few small gifts. Later that night, after Alan, Liv, and the dogs went to bed, Ally and I stayed up by the fire trying to stay warm—it was around 30°F.
At about 10:00 p.m., with her generator running, Ally turned to me and said she thought “the female” might be nearby. I grabbed my thermal imager, turned it on, hit record, and stepped out from behind the trees, scanning the area left to right. I could see the warm glow from the fifth wheel’s windows, residual heat under the truck… and then I saw it.
A nine-foot-tall Sasquatch was standing right in front of me, its head tilted slightly to the right.
I gasped:
“Oh my f---ing god, this thing is huge. Oh my f---ing god, Ally, you have to see this!”
I handed her the thermal. She saw it too. She panned to the right, checking for anything else, then panned back—
But it was gone.
We ran down the trail to the lake, scanning for heat signatures. Nothing. As we made our way back—far enough now from the generator noise—we heard crashing in the woods, followed by a single, distinct wood knock. Then, silence.
We both realized that with its head tilted right, the Sasquatch had likely moved behind the truck and fifth wheel, then bolted up the hill and crossed the road into the forest.
The next morning, we went to download the footage.
Alan said:
“I just formatted it.”
I was stunned.
“What?! That erases it!”
If we had stopped using the thermal imager right then, we might have been able to recover the clip. But since we used it all weekend, the data was overwritten and lost for good. I even spent $150 on a data recovery service to try and retrieve it—but it was too far gone. A painful, expensive lesson learned.
On Friday night, Jon and Sara arrived and filmed the area. Their video will be linked below. The rest of the weekend was relatively quiet—until the drive home.
Somewhere on I-5, Alan had to swerve suddenly. The fifth wheel tipped up on two wheels and slammed back down. When we got home and opened the slides, we discovered that a can of bear spray had been knocked loose, wedged behind one of the slide-outs. As we extended it, the can got crushed—releasing an entire canister of bear spray inside the fifth wheel.
Needless to say, it was a wild, unforgettable weekend.
Comments