He Tried Running From a Bigfoot Attack. What Happened Next Will Sh0.ck You

The Descent That Shouldn’t Exist

I spent most of my life believing the forest was honest.

You learned its rules early, or it killed you. Gravity, traction, speed, weather—none of it lied. A trail rode the way it was built. Rock was rock. Dirt was dirt. Animals were animals. There was nothing out there that science hadn’t already named.

That belief held for forty‑eight years, through broken bones, concussions, and more hospital visits than I care to remember.

And then, on a cold October day in 2003, something nearly eight feet tall chased me for six miles down a mountain bike trail at speeds that should have killed us both.

After that, I stopped assuming the world was fully mapped.

My name is Derek Hullbrook. Back in the ’90s, I was that guy—the downhill racer in all the gnarlier courses people whispered about and replayed in slow motion. Whistler. Moab. The Kamikaze at Mammoth. If there was a line that scared sane riders, I wanted a race plate on it.

That ended in ’98 on a course in British Columbia when I hit a rock I never saw, rag‑dolled off a drop, and left half of my skeleton in angry little pieces along the way. Shattered collarbone. Three broken ribs. Concussion bad enough that for two weeks my own kitchen looked like a funhouse.

I never fully quit riding. People like me don’t. We just switch roles.

By 2000, I’d moved into trail design—consulting with national parks, private landowners, whoever could afford an ex‑pro with a head full of lines and scars to match. I’d design descents that looked impossible and rode like a dream. The ones that make you feel like a god until you unclip and realize your legs are jelly.

In October 2003, that work brought me to Mount Hood National Forest in Oregon, about forty miles east of Portland, on 200 acres owned by a wealthy tech guy named Richard Trent. He wanted a private, world‑class trail system just for himself and select friends.

He was paying me fifteen grand just for the design.

The land was perfect: steep slopes, dense Douglas firs, old logging cuts, natural rock features, gullies begging to be shaped into berms and drops. I spent three weeks on that property with maps, flags, and a GPS unit, translating terrain into flow.

The crown jewel was a three‑mile descent that lost nearly 1,500 feet of elevation. That trail was my baby.

I also had a different baby: a heavily customized 2003 Specialized Enduro Comp, full suspension with six inches of travel, hydraulic disc brakes, and enough aftermarket mods that you’d have to squint to recognize the stock model. About four grand of aluminum, steel, and obsession.

And, mounted on my Fox full‑face helmet, a VIO POV 1.5 camera—a brick by today’s standards, recording onto miniDV tapes, but it gave me ninety minutes of usable footage and could handle brutal vibration.

I wanted Trent to see what he’d bought. Not just on a map, but from the saddle.

The Perfect Run That Went Wrong 🚵‍♂️

It was late morning—about 11:30—when I parked my 2001 Tacoma at the bottom of the trail, took Trent’s Jeep up a rough access road to the top, and stood alone at the head of the descent.

The air sat at maybe fifty‑five degrees. The sky was high and pale. The forest was all contrast—dark firs, vine maples burning gold and red, the ground still tacky from rain two days prior. Dirt like this is what riders dream about: enough moisture for grip, not enough to turn to soup.

I clipped into my pedals, hit record on the VIO, and started talking.

“First full test run of the main descent,” I narrated for the camera. “Three miles, fifteen hundred feet of drop. Trail conditions are mint.”

The opening section was textbook flow: smooth berms feeding each other, every turn building speed without forcing you to brake. I let the bike hum, tires whispering, suspension doing that low, buttery bob it does when everything’s dialed.

I’d ridden world‑class trails my entire life. This one? It was right up there.

“Looking good,” I said aloud. “First berm section is riding perfectly. Rock garden in fifty feet.”

The rock garden was a thirty‑foot patch of boulders the size of basketballs—nasty if you didn’t know the line, fun if you did. I’d ridden it twice during design. I knew where my wheels needed to land.

Weight the pedals. Stay loose. Let the bike dance.

The Enduro skipped and floated across the rocks like it wanted to make me proud. My front wheel kissed each stone; my arms and legs did the suspension’s job before the shock ever needed to.

“Rock garden rides clean at speed,” I told the camera, rolling into the first big feature: a four‑foot step‑down.

By pro standards, four feet is just a “hello.” But for clients, you add a nice lip, give them a little pop, and they feel like they’re flying. I hit the takeoff, sailed maybe fifteen feet, landed buttery. My grin filled the helmet.

Then I saw the footprints.

Tracks That Shouldn’t Exist 🦶

They were on the trail about twenty yards ahead, cutting across at an angle. The soil, still moist and smooth, took the impressions like plaster. I grabbed both brakes, the bike slowing from twenty‑five to almost nothing, unclipped and dropped a foot.

These weren’t deer or elk. Not bear. They were bare footprints.

Each was at least sixteen inches long, about seven inches wide at the ball of the foot. The toes were clearly defined, splayed slightly, with what looked like dermal ridges in the damp dirt. The depth suggested serious weight. The stride length?

Five feet between steps.

I’d seen plenty of hoax prints over the years. Wooden cutouts, modified boots. They always look… sterile. Too perfect, too shallow, wrong weight distribution.

These weren’t wrong.

“Okay, that’s weird,” I muttered, bending down. The VIO captured everything from my point of view—the prints, my gloved hand reaching out, the disturbed earth where something had stepped off the trail and vanished upslope into the brush.

The edges of the prints were sharp. Not dried, not crumbling.

“Made today,” I said under my breath. “Probably this morning.”

I straightened and looked into the thick forest where they led. Understory there was dense—ferns, salal, Oregon grape. You couldn’t see more than thirty feet. If someone was in there watching me, I wouldn’t know until they exhaled on my neck.

Every rational part of my brain said hoax. Prank. Local joker.

Every older part—the one that remembers we used to be prey—said something else.

You are alone. No cell coverage. Your nearest neighbor is five miles and an entire mountain away.

“Probably just someone messing around,” I told the camera. I didn’t believe my own voice.

I clipped back in and rolled on, slower now. The playful confidence of the earlier run was gone. My eyes kept flicking off the trail, scanning shadows.

The trail curved left in a long, sweeping arc I’d designed to carefully ramp speed—thirty, thirty‑five miles per hour if you let it. I kept it under fifteen. My fingers rested harder on the brake levers than they should have.

That’s when I caught the smell.

The Thing in the Trees 🌲

Imagine wet dog, compost, and something coppery, almost metallic, all baked together into a thick, oily musk. It hit me in a wave, cutting through the cool air, overwhelming the clean smell of damp earth.

Predator. That was the word my body chose long before my brain did.

I squeezed the brakes harder, rolled to a full stop, feet on the ground. The forest around me went wrong—too still, too quiet. Even the distant birds shut up.

Something big moved off to my right.

Not the light, delicate steps of deer or elk. This was weight. Brush snapping, branches pushed aside, not avoided. Whatever it was, it didn’t care if I heard it.

I turned my head, moving like I was underwater. The VIO camera followed, recording every wobble of my vision. At first, I saw nothing but green shadow.

Then, through a gap in the salal, I saw eyes.

They were set under a heavy brow ridge, almost like someone had grafted the face of a Neanderthal onto something even larger. The nose was broad and flared, the jaw massive. Dark fur framed the face—but the eyes…

The eyes were not animal in the way I understood animals. They were assessing me.

We locked stares for maybe three seconds. It felt like three lifetimes.

Then it stood up.

The foliage that had been hiding it collapsed around its rising torso. Branches brushed aside like grass as it rose to its full height—easily seven and a half feet, maybe eight. Shoulders like a refrigerator tipped on its side. Arms hanging down past where its knees would be.

I saw muscle under the fur.

It opened its mouth and roared.

People throw the word “roar” around for everything from lions to angry stadium crowds. This wasn’t that. This had structure to it, a layered sound. Animal power under something that almost, horribly, suggested speech.

I didn’t make a plan. I didn’t weigh options.

I clipped in and launched.

The Impossible Chase 🔥

The first pedal strokes felt useless, like spinning in molasses. My body flooded with adrenaline, throwing a wrench into fine motor control. Behind me, another roar tore through the forest, followed by a succession of heavy impacts and breaking wood as it followed parallel to the trail.

My racer’s brain came online in a snap.

Head up. Eyes forward. Trust the bike. Ride.

The trail pitched steeper. I let the bike roll and used the pedals to pour on speed. Twenty. Twenty‑five. Thirty. My suspension worked overtime under me, slamming through root webs and small drops.

To my right, through gaps in the trees, something massive and dark kept pace about twenty yards away, just inside the forest wall. It didn’t run like a man. It didn’t run like a bear. It moved with a terrifying efficiency, bulldozing its way through obstacles I would never consider on a bike.

The descent increased: a section I’d nicknamed the Devil’s Run—forty degrees of loose dirt, roots, rock, and poor life choices. The place where I expected intermediate riders to grab brake and think about their life insurance.

I didn’t touch the brakes.

Forty miles per hour. Forty‑five. The forest blurred. Every feature came at me in fractions of a second.

My hands cramped around the grips. If I made even a minor mistake at this speed, I was going to die. Period.

The forest to my right exploded. I saw a flash of fur and shoulders and arms as the thing vaulted a fallen log in a single motion that would have put any parkour athlete to shame.

It was still with me.

The trail fed into one of my favorite berms—big, sculpted, banked high. I dove into it, bike leaned so far the inside pedal nearly scraped dirt. G‑forces pushed me down and out. Bark was a smear at the periphery.

For a moment, the crash of pursuit faded.

Coming out of the berm, I realized why.

The creature had cut straight while I’d carved the radius. The line I’d designed for bikes. It had just gone direct.

It stepped onto the trail fifty yards ahead—right in the center of the line—arms spread wide, chest heaving, as if to block or… herd.

At fifty miles per hour, with a damaged human body and two seconds to decide, your choices get simple.

I bailed off the trail.

I yanked the bars right, launched over the edge of the bench, and plowed into virgin undergrowth at around forty miles per hour.

Branches whipped my arms and legs. A low tree limb smashed into my shoulder, twisting the handlebars hard. I almost high‑sided into a fir trunk. Somehow I stayed upright, feet floating on clipped‑in pedals, knees absorbing chaos.

This was not a line. This was just survival.

Behind me, the creature roared again, so close I could feel it in my chest like someone had kicked a subwoofer under my ribs. I threaded between two cedar trunks with barely an inch to spare on either side of my bars. A fallen log loomed up, three feet tall.

No time to go around. No time to stop.

I lifted the front wheel and bunny‑hopped the log. The bike slammed into the landing hard enough that my rear shock bottomed with a metallic clank.

The thing behind me didn’t slow. It vaulted the same log in one fluid bound, landing and continuing the chase without stumbling.

If it had wanted to tackle me, it had had multiple chances. It could have ended me on that off‑trail insanity alone. It didn’t. It just stayed on me.

Ahead, I saw daylight: a slice of open space where the trees widened.

The trail.

I aimed for it, burst through a wall of ferns, and slammed back onto my own carefully sculpted line. The bike felt wrong immediately—rear end loose, a new click in the suspension.

Didn’t matter.

I was coming up on a series of table‑top jumps—three in a row, each bigger than the last. Built for serious riders to style. Built for thirty, maybe thirty‑five miles per hour tops.

I was still north of forty.

There are moments in life where you’re not sure if your skill is keeping you alive or just prolonging the inevitable. This was one of those.

I hit the first jump and flew farther than I’d intended. The landings were smooth enough, but I could feel the impact hammering directly into the frame. My rear shock complained loudly with each touchdown. Somewhere behind, the creature pounded over the same features without needing to leave the ground.

On the third, largest table, I was fully committed. Six‑foot lip, near forty‑foot gap. No chicken line once you were in it.

I took off, and for a heartbeat everything went silent: wind in my ears, the strange sideways angle of the VIO after a branch had twisted it earlier, the world dropping away under my tires.

I landed deep—too deep—and both wheels smacked down at once. Pain shot up my arms. My rear linkage made a sound like it was resigning from its job.

The damaged suspension started grinding instead of clicking. The rear wheel tracked oddly. Every small bump felt like someone was jabbing a metal rod into my spine.

The trail funneled into a bigger rock garden—refrigerator‑sized boulders arranged by a god who liked watching bikes die. I had threaded it before; I knew the line by heart.

Left of the first boulder, hairpin squeeze between the second and third, hard right after the fourth.

I put absolute trust in muscle memory and the bike beneath me. I cleared it clean, somehow.

Behind me, the forest erupted with the sound of something much heavier smashing over the same rocks, not around them. I heard stone tumbling. The ground trembled.

The trail spat me onto an old logging road—straight, wide, fast. A rare chance to breathe on this descent.

I used it to make a mistake.

I looked back.

It was there. Maybe thirty yards behind, now moving on all fours like a gorilla—knuckles and feet driving forward with horrific power. I was doing forty miles per hour on a bike. It was keeping pace.

I snapped my head forward again and dove into the next section: a narrow, twisting corridor of trees I called the Pinball Run. Tight S‑turns, trunks close enough to skin your knuckles if you got lazy.

At normal speed, it was a handling test. At the velocity I brought into it, it was surgery.

I thread the chicanes, bike sliding at the limits of traction, pedals inches from bark. I could hear the creature behind me slowing, forced to pick a line now instead of just bulling through. The trunks were too tight even for it.

For the first time, I started to pull away.

And that’s when the bike finally gave up.

Mechanical Failure & Silent Forest ⚙️

The Pinball Run dumped onto another steep pitch. The moment the trail turned down again, my rear end lurched sideways, and I heard a sharp crack from behind me.

The linkage connecting the rear triangle to the main frame snapped.

The rear wheel jammed at a crazy angle, seizing completely. The tire locked. The bike tried to become a catapult.

I grabbed both brakes, fought the skid, and somehow kept from high‑siding. The Enduro wobbled to a graceless stop, rear tire dragging a black scar into the dirt.

I stepped off and just stood there, gasping.

No crashing steps behind me. No roars. No smell.

The forest was just… there. Trees. Ferns. Ordinary birdsong creeping cautiously back.

I looked uphill. Nothing.

If it had kept chasing, I would be dead. It hadn’t.

When I finally crouched to inspect the bike, my diagnosis was immediate and depressing. The rear linkage bolt had sheared. The triangle was folded inward, the shock at a grotesque angle. No trailside fix. This bike was now a very expensive sled.

The rational plan was simple: stash the bike, mark the location, hike out, come back later with the Tacoma. Except this wasn’t a rational day.

That camera had been rolling since the top.

I reached for my helmet, fingers trembling. The VIO was still attached, twisted sideways, red record light steady. It had filmed the first sighting, the entire chase, the partial glimpses, the meadow.

I had proof of something that wasn’t supposed to exist.

And all I felt was sick.

I stopped recording and straightened the camera as best I could, then—against my better judgment—decided to bring the bike.

Because if I told this story, the wrecked frame and the footage together would matter.

I started dragging the Enduro down the trail. Every few seconds I had to lift the rear end to unhook the wheel from ruts and rocks. Forty pounds of dead weight, plus my pack, plus the lead in my legs from redline effort.

The trail mellowed—gentle grade through old growth, a section I’d designed to be a reward, a place to breathe and enjoy the view.

I couldn’t enjoy any of it. I kept checking over my shoulder every thirty seconds.

That’s when I heard the calls.

Voices in the Woods 🗣️

They didn’t sound like the earlier roar. These were shorter, layered. Hoops. Grunts. Clicks. Something like words, if you squinted your ears.

One came from upslope to my left. Another answered downslope to my right. A third floated from somewhere behind me.

They weren’t random. They were coordinating.

There was more than one.

The bike hit the ground where I dropped it.

I stripped my CamelBak off the frame, yanked out the essentials: water, two‑way radio, multitool, the VIO camera. The camera went into the pack like it was made of glass and secrets. The radio clipped to the strap.

The calls came again, closer now. Movement in the trees. Multiple heavy forms converging.

I did the only thing that made sense: the thing they wouldn’t predict.

I ran perpendicular to the trail.

The undergrowth clawed at my legs—sword ferns, salal, vine maple. My shoes were Five Ten riding shoes, great for gripping pedals, lousy for sprinting on uneven ground. The stiff soles made every rock feel like a bad decision.

Behind me, something crashed through the brush, gaining.

I scrambled around a cedar, vaulted a small log, and promptly slipped on a moss‑slick rock, going down hard. My left wrist hit first. Pain detonated up my arm.

I didn’t check it. Just got up and kept moving, cradling the arm against my chest as best I could.

The slope pitched downward sharply. Loose dirt, needles, small rocks. It felt more like a slide than a run. Halfway down, I lost my footing completely and tumbled the rest of the way, pack digging into my ribs, helmet cracking branches, the world spinning.

At the bottom, I landed in a heap, coughing. Copper taste in my mouth said I’d bitten my tongue.

I looked up.

One of them stood at the top of the slope, silhouetted.

Broad shoulders. Huge torso. That same impossible head shape. It tilted its head like a curious person might, calm as a statue.

Then it descended. Not sliding, not stumbling. It picked steps deliberately, used its arms for balance. Graceful, like it had done this a thousand times.

I ran again.

The ground leveled out and turned marshy. Water soaked my shoes through, cold mud pulling at every step. Skunk cabbage and sedges brushed my thighs. Ahead, the trees thinned, and a brighter patch of sky glowed through.

Open ground. Bad for hiding. Good for speed.

I broke out into a natural meadow, two acres of waist‑high grass gone gold.

Crossing it would leave a path as obvious as neon tape.

I did it anyway.

Halfway across, I heard them reach the edge of the clearing behind me—multiple footsteps, the whisper of grass. I didn’t look back. I’d already seen enough of them for one lifetime.

The far tree line got closer—thirty feet, twenty, ten. I crashed into the shade of the forest and immediately dove behind a long, fallen log, hugging the damp earth, forcing myself to lie still.

I was breathing like a locomotive. My heartbeat felt loud enough to register on the Richter scale. I clapped my right hand over my mouth and nose, trying to force the sound down.

Through a gap in the rotting bark above me, I had a clean, cinematic view of the meadow.

Three of them emerged from the opposite tree line.

The biggest was taller than the first one I’d seen. Seven‑ten at least, maybe more. The other two were slightly shorter, if you can call six‑ten “short.”

They stood at the edge of the grass, looking at the obvious trail of flattened stems I’d left. One made a series of vocalizations—the same kind of structured call I’d heard in the woods. Another answered. They weren’t random noises. They were talking.

The biggest one lifted an arm and pointed.

Directly at my hiding place.

My body went ice cold. They knew exactly where I was.

They didn’t move.

The big one called again, a different pattern. The other two looked at me—at my hiding place—then turned.

All three of them walked back into the forest they’d come from.

Within seconds, they were gone.

I lay there another ten minutes, waiting for the ambush that never came. The forest noises slowly returned, filling the silence they’d left.

I wasn’t dead because they had chosen not to kill me.

That knowledge felt heavier than the bike.

Rescue & Half‑Truths 🚑

Eventually, I forced myself up and clicked on the two‑way radio. Static hissed, but somewhere under it, there were voices. I was at the ragged edge of range.

“This is Derek Hullbrook,” I said. My voice sounded thin and wrecked. “I’m approximately three miles northeast of the Barlow Pass trailhead in Mount Hood National Forest. Injured wrist, disabled bike. Requesting assistance.”

Static. Then a faint reply: “Copy, Hullbrook. Position confirm…”

We went back and forth until the ranger on the other end was satisfied I wasn’t making this up, at least about the injury. They said they were dispatching help.

All I had to do was stay alive.

I found a small opening in the trees where a search team could spot me more easily and sat down with my back against a Douglas fir. My wrist throbbed in time with my heartbeat. Every muscle in my legs twitched with leftover adrenaline.

Time melted. The forest’s normal sounds never fully reassured me. Every crackle sounded like a footstep. Every shift of light like a looming shape.

Around 2:20 p.m., I heard the sweetest sound on earth.

“Derek! Derek Hullbrook!”

Human voices. Two of them.

“Here!” I shouted back. “Off the trail—fifty yards west!”

Two rangers stepped into view minutes later. The lead was a woman in her thirties with dark hair in a ponytail, moving like someone who knew exactly where her feet were at all times. Her name tag read CHEN. The younger guy behind her, all freckles and earnestness, was MORRISON.

“Mr. Hullbrook?” Chen said, already pulling out a first‑aid kit.

“That’s me,” I answered.

She took one look at my left wrist, which had swollen to twice its normal size and was turning spectacular shades of purple, and gently started wrapping it. Even that light touch sent lightning up my arm.

“Bike’s disabled?” Morrison asked.

“Rear linkage snapped,” I said. “Wheel seized. It’s on the trail, about a quarter mile back.”

He nodded and headed upslope to retrieve it.

“What happened?” Chen asked as she worked. “Your radio wasn’t very clear.”

I hesitated.

This was the first decision point.

“I was doing a test run on a new trail I designed,” I said. “Saw… something. Large. It spooked me. I pushed harder than I should’ve, went off line, blew my suspension, wrecked my wrist.”

“Something large,” she echoed. “Bear? Cougar?”

“I don’t know,” I said, which was the truest lie I’ve ever told. “Didn’t get a clean look.”

Her eyes stayed on my wrist, but there was something in her expression—a flicker, a gear turning.

She finished the wrap, made a makeshift sling, and we started the slow walk out. She kept up a medic’s small talk: dizziness, nausea, blurred vision, numbness. Classic concussion checklist.

“No,” I told her. “Just old, tired, and stupid.”

“You’re lucky,” she said finally. “These forests aren’t forgiving. People underestimate them.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I got that memo today.”

We walked in silence for a while. The trail here was part of the mellow lower section I’d designed—rolling, approachable. Under different circumstances, I would’ve been mentally tweaking it, thinking about berm angles and drainage.

Today I was thinking about something else.

“Chen,” I said, “you ever hear Bigfoot stories around here?”

The question landed between us like a rock.

Her face went carefully neutral. “Why do you ask?”

“Just… you know,” I said. “Pacific Northwest, all that. People talk.”

“There are stories everywhere,” she replied. “Most are misidentifications. Bears. Shadows. People wanting to see something.”

“But not all,” I said.

We stopped walking. She turned and studied me.

“Did you see something specific?” she asked quietly. “Out there.”

“I saw something I couldn’t identify,” I said, and held her gaze. “Big. Fast. Parallel to the trail.”

She watched me for a long moment, weighing what I wasn’t saying.

“If you did see something… unusual,” she said, “you wouldn’t be the first.”

“You have stories?” I asked.

Her professional mask slipped a fraction. “Three years ago, near Lookout Mountain. I found tracks. Bare, huge. Seventeen inches long. Six‑foot stride. Followed them until they went up a slope I couldn’t safely climb. We documented them, took measurements, filed a report. Official conclusion: unknown.”

“What do you think they were?” I asked.

She shrugged, but her eyes said more than her shoulders. “Officially? Unknown. Unofficially? I think there are things out here we don’t have names for yet.”

Morrison caught up to us about twenty minutes later, pushing my Enduro. He’d already eyeballed the damage.

“Linkage is toast,” he said. “Must’ve been one hell of a crash.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You could say that.”

They got me out, loaded me into a Forest Service Explorer, drove me to Hood River Memorial. X‑rays confirmed the wrist fracture. They wrapped me in fiberglass and painkillers and told me to take it easy.

Chen drove me back to my truck afterward. Before I climbed into the Tacoma, she glanced at my CamelBak with the VIO hidden inside.

“Whatever’s on that camera,” she said, “think carefully before you share it. Once it’s out, you don’t get to choose what happens next. To you, or to whatever you filmed.”

She walked away before I could answer.

She knew. Or at least, she suspected.

Proof in a Living Room 💽

Back in my Pearl District apartment in Portland, I set the CamelBak on the kitchen table like it was radioactive.

Hours later, I finally dug the VIO camera out, hooked it up to my laptop via FireWire, and hit play.

The footage was worse and better than I’d imagined.

The camera missed key moments, sure—twisted sideways during the off‑trail madness, occasionally pointed at the ground or sky while I fought for my life. But the important parts?

They were there.

That first glimpse of the face through the foliage. The full stand‑up. The chase—dark shape keeping pace in the trees. The moment on the bridge when it stopped, watching me instead of following. The three of them at the meadow’s edge, clearly framed against the open grass.

The clarity wasn’t perfect by modern standards, but compared to the grainy, zoomed‑in, shaky messes people argue about on the internet? This was high‑definition revelation.

This was proof.

My phone rang. It was Richard Trent.

“So?” he asked. “How’d the trail ride? Get some good footage for me?”

I stared at the paused frame on my laptop—one of the creatures mid‑stride, its face partially turned toward the camera.

“The trail rides beautifully,” I said slowly. “But we need to talk about your project.”

“Uh‑oh,” he said. “That doesn’t sound cheap. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing with the design,” I said. “The problem is what’s already living there.”

“Bears? Endangered birds? What are we talking?”

“Sensitive wildlife,” I said. “Very sensitive. Rare. If you open this trail to riders, you’re going to disturb something that should not be disturbed.”

“What kind of sensitive?”

“I can’t say specifically,” I lied. “But if this gets out, you won’t be running a private bike park. You’ll have researchers, media, and armed idiots crawling over your land.”

Silence. Then, flatly: “You’re talking about Bigfoot.”

“I’m telling you I saw something that guarantees your property will never be left alone if it’s public,” I said. “Call it whatever you want.”

“Did you get it on film?” he asked.

“Some shapes. Some sounds,” I said. “Nothing definitive.”

“I want to see it.”

“No,” I said immediately. “You hired me for trail design and consultation. I’m giving you both. My professional advice is: do not open this to the public.”

There was another long pause. Then, surprisingly, he laughed. “My wife told me this project was my midlife crisis,” he said. “Maybe she’s right. Okay, Derek. Project’s dead. I’ll pay you out. For the record, I think you’re nuts.”

“That’s fair.”

We hung up. For the first time since that meadow, I felt a small weight lift.

The trail would be left alone.

The forest, and whatever lived in it, would get to keep its secrets—at least from the general public.

That still left the issue of the footage.

Two Cuts, Three Copies, One Secret 🎥

That night, with my arm throbbing under its new cast, I opened Adobe Premiere 6.5 and started editing.

I made two versions.

Version One was for Richard. A clean, professional trail showcase: flow segments, rock gardens, jumps, the bridge, the natural beauty. I cut every frame where a dark shape wasn’t just trees. I muted any suspicious vocalizations. At the end, I recorded a straight‑to‑camera segment explaining that I’d encountered “dangerous, unidentified wildlife” and recommending he abandon public development.

Version Two was complete.

Every sighting. Every roar. Every crash of pursuit. The three figures at the meadow, clearly visible.

I exported Version Two back to a fresh miniDV tape, then made a second copy.

One tape went into a fireproof safe in my closet.

The other went into a padded envelope with no return address.

I didn’t mail it.

Not yet. Maybe not ever.

I just needed to know the proof existed in more than one place. Some combination of insurance policy, confession, and future burden.

When I finally emailed Richard his edited version, it took nearly an hour to upload on my early‑2000s cable connection. By the time it finished, the sun was coming up. I crash‑landed into bed and slept twelve hours straight.

In the days that followed, my phone rang. Richard pushed, argued, then surprisingly relented. The project officially died.

The forest quietly won.

To Share or Not to Share 🌍

Weeks passed. My wrist itched under the cast; my mind spun in circles.

I watched the complete footage a dozen times, then a dozen more. Each viewing revealed new details: the way they coordinated their movement, the structure in their calls, the fact that even at their most aggressive they never cornered me.

They’d had me more than once.

And they’d let me go.

Two weeks after the encounter, Ranger Chen called.

“Just checking on your recovery,” she said.

“Cast comes off in a few weeks,” I replied. “Then the fun of physical therapy.”

She hesitated. “Have you decided what to do with your footage?”

“How do you know I still have footage?” I asked.

“You had that look,” she said. “The look of someone who’s seen something they don’t know how to talk about. People like that either rush to show everyone or they hide it. You seemed like a hider.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“Still deciding,” I admitted.

“Can I give you some advice?” she said.

“Please.”

“If you release it,” she said, “you change their world. Whatever you saw out there has survived by staying hidden. You blow that cover, and suddenly hunters want trophies, scientists want bodies, governments want control. Their life gets worse. Maybe shorter.”

She let that hang in the air.

“And you change your own life,” she added. “You become Bigfoot Guy. Some people will worship you, most will call you a liar or crazy. Your work, your name, everything gets dragged into that. It’s not an easy banner to carry.”

“You sound like you’ve done some carrying,” I said.

“I showed my footprint photos to a colleague, once,” she said. “They made the rounds. Half the station thought I’d been fooled. The other half thought I wanted attention. It took years for them to take me seriously again.”

We both went quiet.

“I’m not telling you what to do,” she finished. “Just telling you that not acting is also a choice.”

After we hung up, I opened the full footage on my laptop.

One click and I could have started an upload. By 2003 standards, it would’ve taken hours, but it would get there. Message boards would light up. News outlets eventually. Lives—mine, theirs—would change.

I moved the cursor to the delete button instead.

Are you sure you want to permanently delete this file?

I sat there, finger hovering, heart pounding.

I couldn’t.

I cancelled, then did the next best thing: I copied the full footage to an external hard drive. Burned it to a CD‑R. Labeled everything non‑descript. Stored the miniDV in the safe.

Then I encrypted the digital copies with a password I never wrote down.

“In case I ever need to prove it,” I told myself.

Or in case someone someday needs to understand why I did what I did.

Years in the Shadow of the Trees 🌲

Life went on in the slow, lopsided way it does after something big and silent rearranges your worldview.

My cast came off after six weeks. The physical therapy was ugly. The wrist never got back to pre‑October condition; there’s still a twinge when the weather changes, a stiffness in the morning that reminds me of that meadow.

I took fewer contracts. Nothing in deep, unexplored backcountry. I told people it was about getting older, limiting risk, respecting my body’s limits.

The truth was, the forest wasn’t the same place for me anymore.

It wasn’t just a playground of dirt and rock. It was a house I’d barged into without knocking, where something bigger and older had shown me the door instead of the gun.

I never went back to that part of Mount Hood. I never called Trent to ask how often he rode the trail. I assumed—hoped—that nature would take it back: berms softening, features collapsing, brush reclaiming the lines.

Every October, on the anniversary, I’d pull the tapes and drives from the safe. Play the footage. Confirm it still worked.

Confirm I hadn’t imagined it.

Sometimes, I’d see a news story about Bigfoot. Grainy footage, laughable costumes, guys in camo explaining how they “just knew.” Part of me wanted to blow them out of the water. Shut up the fakes by dropping a nuclear truth.

Then I’d remember those three figures at the meadow, pointing at me, then turning away.

They’d chosen not to close the distance.

So I chose not to close it for them.

A Letter from the Woods ✉️

Seven years later, in 2010, I got a brown envelope in my mailbox. No return address. Postmarked somewhere in Oregon.

Inside was a newspaper clipping from a small local paper.

LOCAL TRAIL DESIGNER DISCOVERS RARE WILDLIFE HABITAT

The article was about Richard Trent.

It said he’d donated his entire 200 acres to a conservation trust, permanently protecting it from development. It quoted him saying a “professional consultant” had identified the land as home to “sensitive and potentially undiscovered species.”

Also inside was a short, handwritten note on Forest Service letterhead.

Thought you’d want to know.
Some secrets stay secret. Some places stay protected.
Thank you for making the right choice.
– A.C.

Amanda Chen.

I sat there in my living room, holding that note, feeling a knot I didn’t know I’d been carrying finally loosen.

Whatever lives on that mountainside now has a buffer. Not perfect safety—humans are still humans—but better odds.

It was enough.

What I Believe Now 🧭

It’s 2016 as I write this. I’m sixty‑one years old. My downhill days are over. I still ride, but more like someone staying fit than someone chasing podiums.

People ask me sometimes, at parties or when they find out what I used to do, if I believe in Bigfoot.

I always give the same answer:

“I believe the forests are full of mysteries. Some of them are better left unsolved.”

They usually chuckle, thinking I’m being poetic. They don’t realize I’m being painfully literal.

In October 2003, three impossible creatures chased me down a mountain bike trail. They ran faster than physics says an animal that size should. They communicated, coordinated, adjusted tactics. They could have killed me at almost any moment.

They didn’t.

Instead, they scared me out of their territory. They let me see enough to know they were real. Then they chose to let me walk away—with my life, and with their secret.

I have proof.

A miniDV tape in a safe. A couple of encrypted files. A CD‑R slowly degrading at the rate all media does.

I check them once a year. I’ve never shown them to anyone.

Not because I’m afraid of being called crazy.

Because I’m afraid of being believed.

I owe them that much—the beings who understood mercy better than most humans I know, who knew when to reveal themselves and when to vanish back into the trees.

Some truths are too dangerous for the world we’ve built. Some mysteries do more good unsolved. Some footage is meant to exist only so one stubborn old rider can replay it on bad days and remember:

The world is still bigger than our maps.

Somewhere, in a protected patch of Oregon forest, a family of impossible creatures is living their lives exactly as they did before I ever showed up. Uncatalogued. Unexploited. Unhunted.

That, more than any podium I ever stood on, feels like a win.

And if the world keeps insisting that Bigfoot is a myth?

That’s fine.

The forest knows better.

So do I.