He Tried Running From a Bigfoot Attack. What Happened Next Will Shock You – Sasquatch Story

🚴💨 The Six-Mile Descent: A Reckoning in Mount Hood

I never believed in Bigfoot until a creature nearly 8 feet tall chased me for six miles down a mountain bike trail at speeds that should have killed us both, and it changed everything.

My name is Derek Hullbrook. I’m 48 years old, and my life has been defined by two wheels. I was a professional downhill racer back in the ’90s—Whistler, Moab, the Kamikaze at Mammoth Mountain—I rode the gnarliest courses in the world. A bad crash in ’98 in British Columbia—shattered collarbone, three broken ribs, and a concussion—ended that career, but it couldn’t keep me off the trails. By 2000, I was a trail design consultant, turning my adrenaline-fueled expertise into world-class mountain bike experiences for others.

October 2003 found me 40 miles east of Portland, deep within the Mount Hood National Forest in Oregon. I was contracted by a wealthy tech entrepreneur to design a private trail system on his 200 acres of prime forest—a system that would rival any professional park. The money was excellent: $15,000 for the design work alone. And the terrain? Steep, natural features, dense forest—it was the perfect canvas for a killer downhill run.

For three weeks, I’d been mapping, flagging, and planning. Today was the first full test run of the main descent: a three-mile downhill run dropping nearly 1,500 feet in elevation. My ride was my pride and joy: a 2003 Specialized Enduro Comp, full suspension with six inches of travel, hydraulic disc brakes, and every modification imaginable—a bike that had cost me four grand and was worth every penny. For the client, I’d mounted a bulky VIO POV 1.5 camera on my Fox Racing helmet, capturing the entire descent on a mini DV tape. I needed footage to show him what his money was buying.

At 11:30 in the morning, clipped into my pedals at an abandoned logging road, I started the descent. The October air was crisp, about $55^\circ\text{F}$, and the forest was a brilliant mix of Douglas firs and vine maples turned red and gold. The trail conditions were perfect, tacky from rain two days earlier. I clicked on the VIO camera and launched into the first section: flow. Smooth, banked turns designed to let a rider carry speed and warm up. The bike hummed beneath me, the suspension soaking up the roots and bumps. The familiar rush of speed and control was a pleasure I’d never lose.

“Looking good,” I narrated for the camera, “First berm section is riding perfectly. Transition into the rock garden coming up in 50 feet.”

The rock garden was a 30-foot section of basketball-sized boulders I’d incorporated into the design, requiring precise line choice and timing. I hit it at speed, floating the bike beneath me as the suspension compressed and rebounded in rapid-fire succession. It was a dance I’d done 10,000 times. Clean through. Perfect. Next, the step-down—a four-foot vertical drop I’d built a small lip into. I hit the lip, felt the bike leave the ground, flew for 15 feet, and landed smooth. I was grinning. This was an amazing trail.

That’s when the grin vanished.

👣 The Tracks and the Stench

I saw tracks on the trail ahead. Not deer, not elk, not bear. Footprints. Huge, fresh, pressed deep into the tacky dirt, easily twice the size of a large man’s bootprint. I squeezed my hydraulic disc brakes, slowing from 25 mph to a crawl. Hoax prints weren’t uncommon in the Pacific Northwest, but these looked wrong for fakes. They were deep, showing real weight distribution, with distinct toe separation and what looked like dermal ridges. They were fresh, made within the last few hours. Each print was at least 16 inches long, 7 inches wide, with an enormous five-foot stride length.

“That’s weird,” I muttered, leaning down, the VIO camera capturing my perspective. A chill ran down my spine. I was alone, miles from the nearest house, with no cell coverage. My two-way radio had a minimal range in this dense forest. I looked up into the undergrowth where the tracks led, seeing nothing but a green wall of ferns and salal bushes. “Probably just someone playing around. Moving on.”

I clipped back in, but my relaxed confidence was gone, replaced by a low-level anxiety. I scanned the forest nervously. The trail curved left, a long sweeping turn where I’d planned to hit 35 mph, but I kept my speed down.

That’s when I smelled it. A powerful, musky odor like a mix of wet dog, rotting vegetation, and something else I couldn’t place. It was strong enough to hit me even while moving, triggering a primal warning system in my brain. Danger. Predator. Nearby. I slowed further, riding directly toward the stench.

Then I heard it: a sound from the forest to my right. Something large crashing through the undergrowth. Not the quiet movement of a deer, but heavy, purposeful, bulldozing through brush without concern for stealth. I stopped completely, heart hammering. Every instinct screamed to turn around.

The movement stopped. An oppressive, unnatural silence fell over the woods.

🦍 The First Sighting and the Chase

I slowly turned my head toward the sound. Through a gap in the salal bushes, about 40 feet off the trail, I saw it. A face. Partially obscured, in shadow, but definitely a face, and it was looking directly at me. It wasn’t human. Too wide, too flat, with a prominent brow ridge jutting over deep-set, dark, intelligent, calculating eyes. The head alone was twice the size of a human’s. We stared at each other for three seconds that stretched into an eternity.

Then, it stood up.

The creature rose to its full height, pushing aside the bushes that concealed it: 7 and a half feet tall at minimum, possibly 8 feet, covered in dark brown, matted fur. Its shoulders were incredibly wide, its arms disproportionately long, hanging past its knees. The chest was massive. It opened its mouth and let out a sound that turned my blood to ice: a roar with an almost human quality, angry, aggressive.

I didn’t think; I only reacted. I clipped in and started pedaling. My racing instincts took over. Body forward, weight centered, eyes scanning for the fastest line. The bike accelerated: 20 mph, 25, 30. Not fast enough. I could hear it keeping pace off to my right, maybe 20 yards into the forest. While I carefully navigated the rough terrain, this thing was simply bulldozing through.

The trail dropped into a steep pitch—my ally now. 35 mph, 40. My knuckles were white inside my gloves. The VIO camera captured the blurred trees and the occasional glimpse of dark fur moving through the undergrowth. I powered through a rough root section at full speed, the bike bucking beneath me. I leaned hard into a banked berm, carrying maximum speed through the curve. The G-forces pressed me down.

The sound of pursuit faded for a moment. But as the trail straightened, I heard it again, closer. It had cut across while I followed the trail’s curve. It was learning my route. It was smart.

🪨 The Devil’s Run and the Trap

“Come on, come on,” I muttered, lungs burning, heart redlining. The trail dropped into the Devil’s Run, a $40^\circ$ pitch. I let the bike run, finding the smoothest line through the chaos of rocks and roots. 50 mph. 55. At this speed, a mistake was death.

Suddenly, the crashing sounds behind me stopped. I thought I’d lost it. Then I saw it ahead: 50 yards down the trail, standing in the middle of the path, its massive frame blocking my route. Its arms were spread wide, trying to make itself look bigger. It was hurting me.

Pure instinct took over. I veered hard right, leaving the trail entirely, crashing into the underbrush at 40 mph. I nearly lost the bike, but somehow kept it upright. The creature roared again, so close now I could feel the sound vibrate in my chest. It was right behind me.

I wove between trees, the bike responding to every input, my technical riding skills the only thing keeping me alive. I threaded a gap barely wider than my handlebars. I hit a three-foot-high fallen log straight on, popping the front wheel up and over. The creature just jumped over it in one fluid motion, landing and continuing the pursuit.

My front tire hit a hidden root. I fought the bike, stayed on, and saw a break in the trees ahead: the trail. I burst out of the virgin forest, back onto the designed path. The bike felt wrong; the rear suspension was making a clicking sound, but I kept pedaling.

I hit a series of tabletop jumps I’d built to give riders air. The first jump I hit at 45 mph, launching for 25 feet. Landed hard but clean. I heard the creature hit the first jump—but it wasn’t jumping. It was running across it, those long legs eating up the distance, barely affected by the terrain feature. The third jump, the biggest one, a 40-foot gap. I hit the lip and flew, weightless, sailing across the void. I cleared it easily, landing hard.

Behind me, the creature made a sound like a small landslide as it went through the next rock garden, not navigating around the refrigerator-sized boulders, but over them.

My rear suspension was definitely damaged now. The clicking was a grinding sound. The trail opened up onto a fast, wide section. I checked my six. The creature was maybe 30 yards back, now loping along on all fours, or more accurately, on its knuckles and feet like a gorilla. It was matching my speed—40 mph on a bicycle, and this thing was matching me. Impossible.

The trail dove back into the pinball run: narrow, tight turns, trees close on both sides. I hit it at 45. The trees were too close for the creature to maintain its speed. For the first time, I was pulling away.

Then, my damaged rear suspension finally gave up. I heard a metallic snap, and the rear of the bike felt loose, wallowing. The grinding became a screech, and the rear tire locked up completely. I squeezed the brakes, skidding to a stop, managing to unclip a foot before I crashed.

I stood there, straddling the bike, legs shaking, heart hammering. I looked back up the trail. Nothing. I’d really gotten away.

🤫 The Family and the Choice

I knelt down. The linkage connecting the rear triangle to the main frame had sheared completely. The bike was dead. My Tacoma was about three miles away—a marathon walk with a broken, 40-pound, seized bike. I had to walk it out, though the thought of abandoning my $4,000 bike was painful. But I realized something else: the bike, and the VIO camera footage, was evidence.

The camera was still mounted, twisted, but the red recording light was still on. It had captured everything: the face, the chase, the jumps. Proof.

I pushed the bike down the trail, the seized wheel scraping. After about a quarter mile, I heard them: vocalizations coming from multiple directions. Not the roar, but lower, more complex hoops and grunts and clicks. They were communicating, coordinating. They were surrounding me.

I abandoned the bike immediately, grabbed my Camelback—water, radio, multi-tool, and the VIO camera—and ran. Not down the trail, but hard left, perpendicular into the dense forest. I slid and tumbled down a steep slope, spraining my left wrist badly.

At the bottom, looking up, a figure appeared, silhouetted against the sky. It saw me and started a controlled, graceful descent. I ran, bursting out of the treeline into a natural meadow of waist-high grass. Crossing it would leave an obvious trail. Halfway across, I heard them emerge from the treeline behind me. I didn’t look back until I reached the far side and dove behind a fallen log.

Through a gap in the rotting bark, I saw them: three creatures. The largest one, the one I’d first encountered, stood at least 7 feet 8 inches tall. The other two were slightly smaller. All massive, powerful, moving with coordinated purpose. They stood at the edge of the meadow, looking at my path through the grass. The largest one pointed directly toward where I was hiding.

Then, it made another vocalization. And all three turned and walked back into the forest they’d emerged from. They were gone.

They had me. Exhausted, injured, lost. They could have ended the chase whenever they wanted. But they had chosen not to. They hadn’t been hunting me; they had been herding me, driving me away from something. They were intelligent.

I used my two-way radio and, through static, reached the rangers. “This is Derek Hullbrook. I’m on the Mount Hood trail system… I need assistance. Repeat, I need assistance.”

🔒 The Unsolved Mystery

Rangers Chen and Morrison arrived. Chen, a fit woman in her mid-30s, assessed my fractured wrist. Morrison was skeptical. I told them I’d been spooked by “something large” and crashed, omitting the truth. Morrison retrieved my broken bike.

As Chen walked me out, I asked her about Bigfoot sightings. She glanced at me, and her professional mask slipped. “If you did see something unusual, Mr. Hullbrook, you wouldn’t be the first… Most rangers who’ve worked these forests for any length of time have stories.” She admitted to finding huge, non-human tracks years ago. “We documented them… The official answer, too: Unknown.”

At the hospital, X-rays confirmed a clean fracture that would require a cast for six to eight weeks. Chen drove me back to my truck. Before leaving, she warned me about the footage: “Whatever’s on it, think carefully before you share it with anyone. Once it’s out there, you can’t control what happens to it or what happens to whatever you filmed.”

I knew she was right. Releasing the footage—clear, modern video that was too compelling to ignore—would change everything. Hunters, scientists, skeptics—they would overrun the creatures’ home. I thought about the three figures who had looked at me and chosen mercy. I owed them the same consideration.

I created two versions of the footage on my laptop. The first, for my client Richard, was a professional trail demo with every shot of the creatures cut and every vocalization muted. It ended with my professional consultation that the project should be abandoned due to “sensitive wildlife.”

Richard, though thinking I was crazy, surprisingly agreed. The project was dead. The trail would remain private and eventually be reclaimed by the forest. The creatures would have their territory back.

The second version, the complete footage, I copied, encrypted, and put in a fireproof safe. I couldn’t delete the only proof I had, but I wouldn’t release it either.

Years passed. I limited my work to established trails. I never returned to Mount Hood. Then, in 2010, seven years after the incident, I received a package. Inside was a newspaper clipping reporting that my former client Richard had donated his 200 acres to a wildlife conservation trust, establishing it as a protected area where development was permanently prohibited. Tucked into the clipping was a note on Forest Service letterhead, in Ranger Chen’s handwriting:

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

A.C.

I’m 61 years old now, writing this in 2016. My mountain biking days are mostly behind me, but I check the footage once a year on the anniversary of that October day. It’s my insurance policy against doubt.

I never believed in Bigfoot until three of them chased me down a mountain on my bike and then chose to let me live. That experience changed everything. The world is stranger and more wonderful than I ever imagined.

The world doesn’t need my proof. It’s doing fine with its skepticism. And somewhere in the protected forests of Oregon, a family of impossible creatures is doing just fine, too. I owe them that much. The creatures who survived by staying hidden, by being smarter than us, by knowing when to disappear.

Some truths are too dangerous to share. Some mysteries are meant to remain unsolved.