Navy Veteran Nearly Lost His Life to a Massive Sasquatch Attack

The thing about broken ribs is they make every breath feel like someone’s driving nails into your chest. That’s what I remember most about hanging from that cliff face. Not the 800-foot drop below me or the blood running down my arms, but the way each gasp for air sent lightning through my body. My fingernails were splitting against the granite, and somewhere above me, that thing was still moving through the trees—branches snapping like gunshots. I shouldn’t have made it off that mountain. Twenty years in the Navy and two tours in Afghanistan had taught me what it felt like to face death, but what happened on Mount Shasta that September afternoon wasn’t in any field manual.

The Sixth Sense of the Hunted

The morning had started perfectly. Clear skies, a comfortable sixty degrees, and visibility for miles. I’d picked the Bunny Flat trailhead because it was less crowded than the main routes. After months of physical therapy for a knee injury sustained during a night jump, I finally felt strong enough for a real hike. I was about three miles in, winding through red fir and mountain hemlock, when I first noticed the sensation. It’s hard to explain if you haven’t spent time in combat zones, but you develop a sense for when you’re being watched—a crawling sensation at the base of your skull, the way the hair on your arms stands up.

I stopped and did a slow 360-degree scan of the treeline. Nothing. Just the wind and a Stellar’s Jay calling upslope. But the feeling wouldn’t go away. Then I heard the first footstep: heavy, deliberate, maybe fifty yards to my right and moving parallel to the trail. It wasn’t the shuffle of a bear or the light scatter of deer. This was bipedal and massive. The impact made the forest floor vibrate. My hand went automatically to my hip, reaching for a sidearm that wasn’t there. California law is clear about carrying in state parks, and usually, I’m a law-abiding citizen. Right then, I’d have given anything for my Sig Sauer.

Suddenly, the forest went dead quiet. That unnatural silence where even the birds stop calling. My instructor at SERE School used to say, “That’s nature’s early warning system.” When the little things go quiet, the big predators are moving. I kept walking, trying to look casual, while every nerve in my body screamed danger. Then the smell hit me: like a wet dog rolled in something dead mixed with a sharp ursine musk, but ten times stronger. It came in waves, making my eyes water. The footsteps accelerated, no longer trying to be quiet. Branches were breaking, and small trees groaned as something bulldozed through them.

The Roar and the Cliff

Then, it roared. I’ve heard lions in Africa and bellows from grizzly bears, but this was different. It started as a bass note so low I felt it in my chest cavity, then climbed into a screaming howl that made my teeth ache. It bounced off the ridges until I couldn’t pinpoint the source. Every military instinct said, “Find cover. Establish fields of fire.” But there was no cover, and I had no weapons. I ran.

It wasn’t a tactical withdrawal; it was a blind flight. I crashed through underbrush, leaping over logs, my bad knee screaming in protest. Behind me, the ground shook. I could hear its breathing now—deep, rhythmic huffs like a steam locomotive. It was right on my heels. That’s when I saw the edge. The mountainside simply dropped away into a sheer granite face wreathed in morning mist. With no time to stop, I tried to arrest my slide by grabbing saplings and digging in my boots. My momentum carried me over the edge, and I managed to catch myself on a thick, exposed root. My legs dangled over the abyss.

It burst from the treeline like a nightmare given flesh. Eight feet tall, covered in matted, dark brown hair. Its face was almost human but profoundly wrong—a heavy brow ridge and a jutting jaw. But the eyes were what froze my blood: dark brown, almost black, and filled with a terrifying intelligence. This wasn’t a dumb animal. It was evaluating me. Its fingers were as thick as sausages, ending in yellowed, dirt-caked nails. The root began to pop, wood fibers tearing free from the cliff face. The creature stopped at the edge, six feet from me, close enough that its stench made me gag. It tilted its head, studying me like an interesting specimen.

The Mercy of the Giant

It reached down, and I braced for the end. Instead of crushing my skull, it gripped the root I was hanging from. For a heartbeat, those dark eyes bored into mine. Then, it started pulling the root up, lifting me with it. As soon as my boots found purchase on a tiny ledge, I lunged sideways, away from those massive hands, and hit the ground rolling. The creature made a sound—not a growl, but a huff of frustration. I didn’t wait. I scrambled down the scree field, sliding and falling, leaving skin on the granite outcroppings. When I looked back, it was just standing at the cliff edge, watching me. It wasn’t pursuing; it was watching, as if it had made its point.

I half-crawled, half-slid down the mountain until I hit a creek. Every breath was agony. It was nearly dark when I stumbled onto a Forest Service road and collapsed. A couple in an RV found me and called 911. At the hospital in Redding, the doctors treated me for three broken ribs, a torn MCL, and deep lacerations on my arms. The doctor, an ex-Army medic who had served in Iraq, pulled me aside. “These wounds on your arms aren’t from falling,” he said quietly. “Something grabbed you.” Looking at the marks—four parallel tears on each forearm spaced eight inches apart—I realized those massive hands had brushed against me when it pulled the root up. No bear has a paw span that wide.

The Classified Silence

Reporters started calling, and the headlines wrote themselves: “Navy Veteran Claims Bigfoot Attack.” But I stopped answering. One man, however, insisted on seeing me—Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, an anthropologist and primate expert. We talked for three hours. He showed me footprint casts and asked about the creature’s gait and facial structure. He told me that about 10% of the hundreds of reports he receives are remarkably consistent: bipedal, massive, distinctive odor, and intelligent behavior. He left me with a warning: “You surprised each other. It could have killed you easily, but it didn’t. Don’t go back there alone.”

The physical therapy took months, but the mental scars are ongoing. Combat PTSD I understood, but there is no support group for Sasquatch survivors. I’ve started researching indigenous legends of the Sautik—the giant hairy men of the mountains whom tribes respectfully avoided for generations. What keeps me up at night isn’t the terror; it’s the realization that these things have stayed hidden despite satellites and urban sprawl. That takes planning. When it pulled me up from that cliff, it was making a calculated choice. It decided I wasn’t a threat worth destroying.

Conclusion: The Scales of Shasta

Mount Shasta still looms on the horizon when I drive North on I-5—14,000 feet of volcanic rock wreathed in clouds. It is beautiful and terrible. I know what lives in those forests now. I know that I was judged by something that shouldn’t exist and found wanting enough to dismiss, but not dangerous enough to kill.

I carry a satellite beacon and a .45 now, though I know it wouldn’t matter. You can’t shoot what you can’t see coming. My official report is filed away as an “unexplained wildlife encounter,” and the Forest Service found no evidence. But the scars on my forearms tell a different story.

If you ever find yourself on those mountain trails and the forest suddenly goes quiet, and you smell something that makes your primitive brain scream “danger”—trust that instinct. Run. I got lucky once. I was weighed on a scale I don’t understand by a creature that operates by rules I can’t fathom. The mountains belong to them. We are just guests who have forgotten to be afraid of the dark.