These events occurred two summers ago in the Grand Teton area.
My boyfriend at the time (now husband, lets call him H) was an avid outdoorsman and also served in the military. I was an ecology major and wanted to spend more time outdoors, so he decided to take me on my first backpack- just the two of us.
For those who aren't familiar, the Grand Tetons are well known for their wildlife- specifically grizzly bears. My only experience with bears up to this point was watching a little black bear cross the road from the safety of my car. Seeing "GRIZZLY COUNTRY" signs around every corner wasn't doing much to calm my nerves.
First incident:
My boyfriend looked like Indiana Jones; machete hanging from his belt, large knives attached to each side of his pack, bear spray strapped to his waist, you get the picture.
The beginning of our 25 mile journey was all uphill. When in bear country, you're supposed to make noise as to not startle the wildlife by accidentally sneaking up on it. As you can imagine, going up a steep hill while carrying a 40 lb pack makes it difficult to make conversation.
We were an hour in, and almost at the top of the ascent. I noticed that the woods had gone completely silent, save for the rushing stream that was to our left of the trail. Silent woods are never a good sign, this usually indicates predators nearby.
At this point I was in front of my boyfriend, and we were about to crest the hill. For the past 20 minutes we had not said a word to each other, having been too tired to speak. We noticed the silence at the same time, and gave each other knowing glances.
I came up over the top of the hill, and immediately froze. Sitting not 10 feet in front of me in the middle of the trail was a grizzly bear. My husband wasn't aware yet, as he was behind me... so I did the first thing I could think of.
While still in my frozen stance, I managed to take my arm and started flinging it wildly behind me trying to get H's attention. I was too terrified to speak.
The bear went from sitting to all-fours, not looking away from us once. H quickly swung me around so that I was behind him, and he just started YELLING. Being in the military, he knows how to yell.
The grizzly wasn't quite fazed, as it started to walk slowly towards us. At this point, I was on the verge of passing out from terror.
This bear was about 5 feet in front of us when we heard a loud "CRACK" coming from the woods to our right. The bear heard it too, and he bolted towards the stream. A second "CRACK" boomed again, this time much closer than before.
H said, "It's probably just some falling branches...", but we both knew that wasn't the case.
At this point, we were walking quickly up the trail in an attempt to create some distance from the grizzly, and those strange noises.
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up, and at that same moment H stopped moving in front of me. He turned around to look at me, and I turned to look behind me. To this day, we are not sure what we saw.
Back where we were standing was a large, black/brown mass. It looked to be 3x bigger than the already large grizzly that we had seen just a few moments before. It's back was facing us, and then it stood on it's back legs. It looked similar to a bear, but something about the shape was just... off.
At this point, it was probably stupid to run away but that is exactly what we did. We were aware of heavy footsteps behind us, but neither of us looked back. The footsteps eventually faded.
At this point, I was a mess. H was doing his best to console me, "Honey, this is extremely unusual. The bears usually stay away from humans, we're going to be okay. I'm sure that won't happen again."
That was enough to convince me to continue on the backpack.
Not another hour later though, we reached a clearing where we decided to take a rest and eat a snack. About a minute after we had sat down, I notice bushes moving in a line toward the clearing- toward us.
Out of the brush comes this adolescent grizzly, who looks just as spooked as I'm sure we did. But he came straight for us.
H, being the crazy nut that he is, decided to charge back at the bear while screaming- bear spray at the ready. That did the trick, and the bear ran off.
All I could think was, "Just my luck". But, that wasn't even close to what happened the second night.
Second Night:
Before we began our backpack, we had to let the Ranger station know which trails/route we planned to take. With this information, they usually send a ranger on horseback at some point during the backpack to check on you to make sure everything is okay. There were not many approved trails left for us to choose from, and it was just our luck that they were the most difficult.
Apparently over the three days we were on those trails, we had been the sole hikers. We didn't see a single other person once we were en route.
Anyhow, I guess we missed the ranger who came to check on us. We had been following hoof prints the entire second day, and we hadn't seen any the day before. I had some foot problems, so we spent valuable daylight trying to adjust my boot/laces/socks to compensate for the pain. When we started on the trail again, we had maybe an hour or two of daylight left, and in the woods, it gets dark fast.
I was exhausted. It was now dark out, and H was the only one with a working headlamp- as mine wouldn't even turn on for some reason. We needed to find somewhere to set up camp, as we still needed to eat. It was freezing, and the wind was blowing. It was creating a howling sound as it rushed through the trees which made it difficult to hear H or discern any other sounds coming from the woods.
After another hour of hiking through the dark, we found a clearing- well, it was more like a bowl. It looked to be ~200m in diameter, with the sides being ~10m down from the trail to the bottom of the clearing.
This place was strange, we both felt it- though he didn't tell me how freaked he was till after we had left.
There was no moonlight, so all we had was the illumination from his headlamp, our small camp stove, and the flashlight that I fished from my pack. Half of the trees were dead/fallen- just in the bowl. The vegetation everywhere else was very dense.
To help alleviate my anxiousness, he started playing Ninja Sex Party out of his portable speaker. This didn't help much, as it just echoed off the trees creating a dissonance of sounds. He also thought it would ward off any predators nearby.
This is when we knew our anxiousness wasn't paranoia.
The silence was back, there hadn't been a single bird chirp since we arrived at the clearing. It also may have had to do with the obnoxious music, but because of our previous experience, we decided to turn off the music and head into the tent.
Also, it was freezing. As soon as we were situated in our sleeping bags, we heard deep cracks and thuds echoing from beyond the treeline. Falling trees? There had been a lot of wildfires and very little rain this season.
"THUD".
We both froze. That sound wasn't an echo, it came from inside the clearing. Definitely not a falling tree.
"THUD".
It came from right outside out tent. We both stopped breathing. H's hand found mine and we clung to each other, paralyzed. Something dragged across the outside of our tent, making an indent as it went along. It was thin... almost, like a finger.
"What is it?", I whispered, shaking.
"I don't know. Shouldn't be a person, we're the only ones on this side of the mountain."
I was trying my hardest to stifle sobs, trying to listen to what was outside. I could hear steps, but couldn't decipher what it was.
The steps stopped, and then the whole side of the tent was slowly pushed in inwards. At this point, whatever was outside knew we were inside, so I shined my flashlight at the side of the tent. What I saw made my blood run cold.
It was the shape of a human face pressed into the tent wall.
I could make out the nose, and an open mouth. Each time they breathed it made the tent around their mouth billow in and out.
H said, "Fuck that" and pulled a glock from his sleeping bag.
He cocked it, and the sound shattered the silence. The face pulled back, and we heard fast footsteps heading towards the edge of the clearing.
We didn't leave the tent till the sun was shining the next morning. The first thing we noticed was the smell of urine. We came out of the tent and looked around- whoever it was had peed on our coals we had left in the fire, leaving a disgusting stench of evaporated pee.
Footprints surrounded our tent, circling around multiple times. Muddy hand prints decorated the outside of our tent- we think it was mud anyway.
The takeaway:
Wildlife is not the most dangerous thing in the back country.
Edit: Gold????? Holy crap. Thank you kind stranger!
Edit #2: Silver? Wow, I've never been gilded before, let alone twice in one post.
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#Area/Woods #Creature/Humanoid/Bigfoot #