Seven Days in the Wild: Shadows of the Canadian Sasquatch
I spent seven days deep in the Canadian wilderness with a small team of researchers, hunting for Sasquatch. I thought I was prepared for anything—cold nights, thick forests, the endless silence of the backcountry. But nothing could have readied me for what actually happened out there.
It started with the forest itself. Dozens of tree breaks and strange, woven structures appeared everywhere we looked. They weren’t natural—too deliberate, too artful. Yet they couldn’t have been made by any human. We found arches of living and dead wood, snapped branches, and patterns that spoke of intent.
“Look at this,” Todd Standing said, gesturing at a towering structure of branches. “It’s not just fallen trees. Something made this.” Todd’s reputation precedes him—some love him, some dismiss him—but out here, the evidence was undeniable.
At night, wood knocks echoed through the mountains. Sometimes it was two sharp cracks, like tree trunks colliding. Sometimes it was a distant, rhythmic drumming. And then came the footprints—massive impressions in the moss and mud, with clear toe marks and a heel, nearly 18 inches long.
We found apples missing from fifteen feet up in a tree—gone without a trace. One night, something walked right up to my trailer and shook it hard enough to wake me from a dead sleep. The next day, I ended up in the hospital. But what I saw, what I felt, was real.
II. Base Camp and the First Signs
Our base camp was nestled in the heart of British Columbia’s wildest country. Todd handed me a bear-loaded rifle as “insurance.” The team was quiet, focused, each of us carrying our own mix of skepticism and hope.
John Huninger, an experienced expeditioner, recounted a previous encounter. “Last year, we were sitting around the campfire. The loudest wood knock you’ve ever heard—just incredible. And then Todd started talking about ‘mind speak.’ He said there were three of them coming toward us.”
Mind speak. The term alone invites skepticism. But something strange happened to John—an electric charge surged through his head, his body stopped shaking, and he felt a presence. “I’ve never experienced anything like it,” he said, “and when Todd said one wanted to speak to me, the charge hit. My shaking went to zero.”
III. Evidence in the Trees
On the first day, Todd drove us down logging roads barely passable by truck. I expected days of searching before finding anything unusual. But almost immediately, we stumbled upon tree breaks that couldn’t be explained by wind or snow. Todd pointed out the differences: “This is a tensile fracture, not a shear break. It takes immense force to bend wood like this.”
Richard, our structural engineer, explained the science. “Normally, wood fails in shear—splintering at an angle. These breaks are different. They’re bending failures, tensile fractures. There’s an art to it, a direction, meaning.”
We tried to recreate the breaks with our own hands. The results were nothing like what we saw in the forest. “If you think that’s an accident,” Richard said, “you’re smoking drugs.”
IV. Footprints and Casts
Later, we found tracks—clear, deep footprints in the moss. Rick mixed plaster of Paris to cast one. “Stick your hand in there,” he said. “You can feel the big toe impression.” The print was nearly 18 inches long, with visible toes and a heel. The details were more compelling in person than on video.
I used a lidar scanner to capture the print. The digital image revealed what we saw: the first and second toes, the heel, the unmistakable outline of a foot.
V. Night Disturbances
That night, something strange happened. At 3:00 a.m., I felt the trailer tremble—a faint but distinct shake. Todd was asleep, and I lay still, but the trailer moved. Rick, in the neighboring trailer, reported the same thing at the same time. “It was a sharp jolt,” he said. “Everyone was asleep, but something bumped the trailer.”
No hand marks, no footprints. But two trailers, three men, the same experience. “If that wasn’t you,” Todd said, “then a Sasquatch shook the trailer.”
VI. The Apple Mystery
We devised a test: apples placed fifteen feet up in a tree, well beyond the reach of deer or elk. “If a bear goes up, there’ll be claw marks,” Todd explained. But when we returned, the apples were gone—no claw marks, no scraps, no sign of a bear.
“Something picked it up and took it,” Richard said. “I’m at a complete loss.” Todd was convinced: “A Sasquatch did that. You can’t rule it out.”
We tried again, placing apples even higher and leaning dead sticks against the trunk. If a bear climbed up, it would knock the sticks down. When we returned, the apples were gone, but the sticks were undisturbed. No fresh claw marks, no evidence of a bear.
VII. The Sighting
One afternoon, I wandered away from camp, drawn by a strange urge. Something moved through the trees—breaking branches, running fast. I saw a large, brown figure streak across my field of vision, bipedal and unnaturally quick. I fumbled with my camera, but the moment was gone.
John heard it too. “It was like two tree dogs,” he said—wood knocks echoing in the distance. Near where we saw and heard these things, we found a tree structure: arches of trees woven together, converging at a single point.
I replayed the moment in my mind. Something big, tall, brown, moving horizontally through thick deadfall, silent and swift. Todd ruled out deer, elk, and mountain lion. “When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth,” he said.
VIII. Pressure and Illness
As the days wore on, I started feeling sick. A fever crept up, and soon I was too weak to continue. Todd drove me to the hospital in Invermere. Lying in a hospital bed, I felt the bitter disappointment of missing the expedition. But my health came first.
Thankfully, it wasn’t pneumonia—just a viral infection. Advil and rest helped, and soon I was back at camp, eating oatmeal by the fire. I returned just in time to witness another apple mystery: apples gone from twelve feet up in the tree, with no footprints in the fresh snow, no sign of animal activity.
IX. Structures and Symbols
We visited the Penner playground, an area filled with old, deliberate-looking tree structures. Teepee-like formations rose twelve feet off the ground, lengths of wood converging at a central point. “Gravity didn’t do this,” Todd said. “Look at the rotation. These trees fell together, but one is wedged between them. Impossible.”
Todd theorized the structures were a memorial, commemorating trauma—perhaps logging that had scarred the land a decade ago. I built my own tree structure in solidarity, hoping the Sasquatch would see it someday.
X. Climbing and Mind Speak
On a rough mountain trail, Brian and I, the youngest members, felt an inexplicable urge to leave the path and climb a near-vertical slope. At the top, we found fresh black bear tracks and more Sasquatch tree breaks—tensile fractures, not the result of wind or snow.
We both felt strongly that we were close to these beings. A helicopter flew overhead, searching for something—or someone—lost in the wild.
Then, I heard a deep, resonant wood knock from the lush forest below. We followed the sound, but nothing more happened. Still, the sense of presence was overwhelming.
XI. Final Signs
On our last morning, we returned to the gifting site. The apples placed twelve feet up were gone. The sticks we’d leaned against the trunk were undisturbed. No claw marks, no sign of a bear. “Only a Sasquatch could get up there,” Todd said.
We visited another area, the Penner playground, filled with intricate tree structures. The evidence was everywhere: breaks, arches, woven branches. The deliberate artistry suggested something more than animal instinct.
XII. Reflections in the Wild
As the expedition ended, I realized we hadn’t captured the next Patterson-Gimlin film. We hadn’t filmed Sasquatch, but the trace evidence was undeniable. The thing I saw running through the forest—unnaturally fast and quiet, moving as if on a rail—was real. The apples taken from impossible heights, the trailers shaken in the night, the structures woven into the woods: all real.
You’re free to draw your own conclusions. But I know none of this was hoaxed, and all of it happened. For me, this expedition was just the beginning. I’m not going to stop until I’ve found and understood the whole truth about these beings.
XIII. The Rabbit Hole
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Thank you for watching. The journey isn’t over. The truth is out there, hidden in the deep woods, waiting for those who refuse to stop searching.
