Interview with AL HODGSON, Bigfoot Elder of Willow Creek, PART ONE

INTERVIEW WITH WILLOW CREEK'S AL HODGSON,

CONDUCTED AND TRANSCRIBED BY STEVEN STREUFERT, WITH ASSISTANCE FROM "C.I."

FEBRUARY 4th, 2010: PART ONE OF THREE.

This is the first forty minutes of an interview that lasted over two and a quarter hours. The rest will be posted here soon in two more segments.

Al Hodgson debunks the "Bluff Creek Massacre" theory, denies that Bigfoot are human, and throws one more question mark into the issue of the actual location of the P-G film site. Audio recordings are archived, lest some of you conspiracy theorists doubt the veracity of the following literal transcriptions.

Bigfoot Books and our associate and soundman "C.I." went up the hill and around the corner, about a quarter of a mile from the book shop, and visited Bigfooting elder statesman, Al Hodgson. He's lived in Willow Creek since 1933 (and was born before that!). Now in his mid-eighties, he was there on the ground when "Big Foot" went from being a local legend to an international sensation. In fact, he played an instrumental role in that crucial period of 1967, and made the phone call that brought Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin to Bluff Creek, leading to the famous filming of the creature. He was prominent as a local contact for all matters Bigfooty for decades, and participated in the early investigations of footprint finds and sightings. He knew Jerry Crew, who made the famous Bluff Creek casts of 1958, personally. As a member of the Willow Creek-China Flat Museum he was the guy who made the famed "Bigfoot Collection" wing happen, thus preserving the Bob Titmus materials and casts, and presenting other archival and historical materials in a domain accessible to the general public curious about Sasquatch evidence and history.

Images: Al in his home this February, holding the book Roger Patterson gave and inscribed to him. Below, the dedication and signature from Roger. Photos: by Steven Streufert. CLICK TO ENLARGE most images.

The discussion began as soon as we entered the front door of the Hodgson home in Willow Creek, CA, and covered some interesting ground before we could even get the recording device and microphones set up. What follows is a transcription, literally done, but with “ums” and “ahs,” “likes,” “you knows” and other extraneous bits mostly edited out for concision. We were sitting at the table for about five minutes before the first words were recorded. A discussion about the “human-ness” of Bigfoot was in progress. Sitting on the table before us are Al’s copy of Roger Patterson’s book, Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist? (later to be revealed as personally inscribed by the author), a Six Rivers Forest Atlas topo book, some computer printouts of various photos from the Blue Creek Mountain film shot by Rene Dahinden in 1967 (before the Patterson-Gimlin Film/PGF was made) and an outline of the events of 1967 in the Bluff Creek and Willow Creek areas (private notes not shown to Al) as found in John Green‘s book, Sasquatch: Apes Among Us.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I don’t want to get into any accusations about anybody in particular…. In normal fields of study we have disagreements about things that we can discuss…

AL HODGSON: Well, if you’ve got, if you can…. Yeah, right. It’s OK to disagree as long as you don’t fight, you just talk about it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You don’t end up hating each other, and throwing around insulting accusations back and forth.

HODGSON: I wouldn’t do that anyway. I tend to be the other way.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Try to make peace...

HODGSON: I’m not a fighter. You can get me mad enough that I WILL fight, but it’s quite a bit… (laughs).

[Banter regarding recording levels excised.]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It gets so hot and argumentative because we don’t have the Bigfoot in front of us…

HODGSON: No. [Shakes head emphatically]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And so one group believes Bigfoot is human, and the other one, oh, it’s an ape. And it goes from there.

HODGSON: Well, I flat don’t believe that it’s a human. I mean Dave Paulides seems to think so. I don’t think so. I can see some things that would give you the idea. I don’t think so.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It looks like a humanoid, it stands upright, its got feet that go flat on the ground, and walks on two legs…

HODGSON: Yeah, that still doesn’t mean, that still don’t mean, it’s a hard… Until you get the beast itself, or you get some DNA, but even that, DNA might not prove it. I don’t know.

Images: Above, from Patterson's book; below, Al in the A and E Bigfoot documentary.

 BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah. To say it’s human you kind of have to say it acts like a human, too. There are "wild people," but they still have culture, religion….

HODGSON: But they can be tamed quite easily. I shouldn’t say "tamed," it‘s kind of a poor word….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Like, “civilized”…?

HODGSON: Yeah, civilized, better word for it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And so it’s hard to imagine that if they could catch a Sasquatch, that they would be able to keep it in a King Kong cage, let alone in a classroom, or a job.

HODGSON: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Well, there’s stories how they’ve found…, and that one captured that one time up in Canada, you know….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Back in the 1800s? Jacko?

HODGSON: Yeah. Yeah. And then there’s stories about down in Hoopa, down in the lower Klamath down there, of one interbreeding with the Indian Natives; but that’s all, I don’t know, I just don’t really agree with it. Now I’m not saying that they aren’t possibly aroused by a woman, but I don’t think it could be anything like mating with them…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, there’s stories about bears being the same way too, being attracted to campsites, and possibly more…

HODGSON: Well, chimpanzees are attracted to them in zoos, you know, a woman comes by and…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It would just indicate that they are somehow similar, that we may be related to Bigfoot, in the same way that we are related to apes, but that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily human. It may just be a different form that is like us…

HODGSON: It’s a different animal, you know; but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are….

[Banter regarding recording levels excised.]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: As far as the human thing, since we’re talking about that: It’s a major issue right now. Certain people like Dave Paulides, M.K. Davis and Bobbie Short, they're on the one side; and John Green is on the other side, more the ape crowd. It seems that these divisions have gone further than just whether it’s a human or an ape, its taken on a whole theoretical, almost political, division between the two.

HODGSON: Yeah, you’re right. And I got right in the big middle of that one, with John Green and M. K. Davis and everything, with the, that so-called "killed one up there and skinned it," you know, and all that stuff, that, I don’t know whether you know what really happened or not…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, that’s part of what I was hoping to ask you about, you might know some things…?

HODGSON: Well I know more than, well, I don’t know.... What happened actually, I was at both sites, and at much different times. See they, what they did, John Green and Rene Dahinden, when they took and spliced the two films together, one was made at the film site, the Patterson film site, from the Patterson film, and the other one was made on the Blue Mountain…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Blue Creek Mountain?

Images: Blue Creek Mountain track, above; John Green's book; a photo taken by Green on Onion Mountain, from the trackway find that preceded the one on BCM by a few days (Onion Mountain is on the same road, right next to BCM).

HODGSON: Yeah, Blue Creek Mountain. It was there. And they completely went way up there. They put together [the films], and they were like six weeks apart. And they spliced them together so that you would have more to show people, so they took this film across…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Like, for documentary presentations…

HODGSON: Yeah, across Canada, they took this and showed it across Canada, and then somehow after, what happened was, I believe, after Rene died somehow they got a hold of a copy of that film that they took across which had those on it. And so when they saw that immediately they said, there’s a backhoe in there, they killed one. M.K. says they can see where they skinned one, and…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I have pictures here, you know, from M. K…. But also, Dave Paulides was saying that they found this film in the archives of Ray Crowe, in the Western Bigfoot Society archives, that was an "uncut," earlier version of the Patterson film that had bits that "no one had seen before." And, you know, acting as if these were the same film, rather than spliced together for a documentary or whatever.

HODGSON: Now that, see, is wrong. Absolutely wrong. You see, I know him [Paulides] very well, and I told him so. I told him. I told M.K., and I told Paulides, they’re wrong. Two different sites! I said, for one thing that backhoe has a very big footprint. You can’t dig a hole with that and mess around there with a backhoe because it leaves a lot of tracks, and you can see where it dug and everything else. OK? I went up there with John Green and some other people that I don’t remember. John Green’s the only one I know for sure went up there. Anyway, we went up there the next spring…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: After the film was shot, the Patterson film?

HODGSON: Yeah, right, right. About, I think, it was about June.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, that agrees with what John Green says in his book. He didn’t make it down there until the following summer, because of the roads being closed and the snow…

HODGSON: Ah yeah, sure… But anyway, we went up there, and John had every slide, every… of the… part of the film, he had a slide made of every one of ‘em, every frame. And he would, told me, I was out in front of him, and this time all the leaves from the fall had fell and covered the whole thing, and it hadn’t washed through there. The river, it never got a hold of it, never had any real high water.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Ah yeah, that sandbar sits up a bit from the creek doesn’t it?

HODGSON: That’s right. And it… Nothing got in there, OK? And he’d take that and look out through it and he’d go out to it and say, is this a right or a left, or a little further out, and he said try there, and I could feel underneath the leaves the tracks. And so we managed to go out to where he [Patterson] lost it, the end of the film, the whole way, and we could go right through there and find every track. Now, darned, it made quite a mess, but you couldn’t but know it was there, we knew we had the right place because you could tell a knot on a tree, or something to guide us by, so we knew we had the right place. And there was no indication of anything out of place, anything being buried, no indication of any equipment being in there.

Images: Al's copy of Rogers book. Below, Bob Gimlin at the Yakima Bigfoot Round-Up, 2009. Photos: by Steven Streufert.

 

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well Bob Gimlin has said--and this is being quoted by M.K. and his associate people--Gimlin had said there was no way they could get heavy equipment in there save with a helicopter.

HODGSON: No, no, there still isn’t.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But others claim that in fact there was a road right next to the creek. They have this picture with the truck in the back and it’s got logs on it. I don’t know if I have that with me.

HODGSON: Well you see that… [Picture is retrieved and shown to Al]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: See they’re claiming that this is the Patterson-Gimlin site, but that’s from the film that was taken by Rene Dahinden on the Blue Creek Mountain trip.

HODGSON: That’s correct, because there’s the dog, the dog was with us. And that, looks like John.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That’s John Green. That’s known… And they claim this guy is Dale Moffit, the guy from Canada, who came down with John, and he’s acting as the dog handler, apparently.

HODGSON: Well, you know…They had, there was four of them, I think. OK. I’ve gotta stop and think. There was John, the dog handler, Rene, and um… Yeah that’s it, that is three, I guess…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, there’s Rene taking the film there, and there’s John Green in the middle, and that’s Dale Moffit in the white t-shirt, and then this guy is one of the central questions…

HODGSON: I don’t know… who could that be…? [Gets up to retrieve a magnifying glass]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s a fairly poor image, taken off of the internet.

HODGSON: OK, let me turn that light on.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That’s the best print I could get of that image.

Images: film taken by Rene Dahinden, from John Green's archives, lettering applied by MK Davis.

HODGSON: Yeah. I can’t, I thought this might help but it don’t.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: What about the one on the other side there?

HODGSON: Nah, it almost makes it worse.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: This image here is the same guy, and you can see who they are claiming it is with the lettering above it there.

HODGSON: Well, see, for some reason or other it blurs it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But you can see who they are claiming it is there…?

HODGSON: Well, it isn’t Bob Titmus, I know that.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And this is the Bob Titmus from 1963 in Hyampom. [Al is shown another photo]

HODGSON: Well, you see, I was the one that caused this about Titmus. See I was mistaken, I had forgotten that it was Dahinden that went with him, not Bob Titmus.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And maybe they [MK, in an interview he did with Al] didn’t clarify which trip it was from, perhaps?

HODGSON: Well, I dunno, but this is, Bob wasn’t on this trip, there’s no doubt about it.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I understood that Bob Titmus was living in Canada at the time…

HODGSON: He was, I believe he was.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Are you aware of when he moved from Redding, or Anderson?

HODGSON: Well, I’m not sure, I just don’t know, he may have, but I don’t remember. But he went up there, Bob went up there a long time, in fact he explored some of the offshore islands and he had casts from up there…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Up near Vancouver?

HODGSON: Yeah, but his boat burned and he lost all of the casts.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, that’s a sad story, and all his research materials and stuff, too. But this is the guy who was actually there. [Al is shown “the pilot photo”] Would you say that looks like Bob Titmus there?

HODGSON: No, no that doesn’t look like Bob Titmus to me, no.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That’s a picture from 1967, up on Blue Creek Mountain.

HODGSON: No, that’s just too... no.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well you can probably see that this is the same guy [the pilot], perhaps, based on his shirt rolled up and the pants?

HODGSON: Yeah, I would agree.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That’s definitely not Bob Titmus in there. I mean, this is definitely a younger man that the Bob Titmus from 1963 on the other side there.

HODGSON: And he looks taller than Bob, Bob wasn’t that tall of a man.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: When you last saw Bob Titmus what year was that?

HODGSON: [Yawns] Hmmmmm.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You probably knew him pretty well.

HODGSON: I knew him fairly well, but I don’t remember when was the last time I saw him.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You think it might have been after the film was made here, by Patterson and Gimlin? Because Bob Titmus was said to have come down like, what was it, like ten days after…

C.I.: Very soon afterwards, he came in…

HODGSON: He came down when, I think, John called him, or told him what’s going on, and he came down. The fact is Bob went up there afterwards, a couple of weeks afterwards, and got casts of some of the tracks he hadn’t cast.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, and Lyle Laverty, did you know him? He was one of the first guys who was on the site, he was working up there, and a few of the guys who were working on the projects up there…. But then the first actual (researcher)…. And Jim McClarin got up there, I guess, too?

Images: Above and below--archival, historical: Bob Titmus, the Pilot, Lyle Laverty's famous Bluff Creek film site photo, and Rene Dahinden with McClarin's Willow Creek Oh-Mah statue, still extant on the Hwy. 299/Hwy. 96 junction..

HODGSON: Yeah, Jim did, too, and Jim of course is up in New Hampshire now, I think.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: He was down in Sacramento, in politics, wasn’t he?

HODGSON: He was a strange guy, a nice guy, but he was, what Unitarian or something like that, but he’s little bit different. I don’t know what to say about him or anybody. Now he was, at that time, he was carving that statue at Soldier Park. And he at that time he was carving it and he was mad at himself because went up and was  hiking in the [Trinity] Alps or something and he came back out and found out it happened he was really mad. And so he immediately took off hitchhiking up to Yakima to see the film.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, there’s a lot of stories like that. This whole timeline of 1967 is like that, actually. I mean, I’ve got it from John Green’s book…

HODGSON: Yeah, apparently and, I don’t know, I have John Green’s book, and I haven’t read it line for line

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Nah, actually, I haven’t finished reading the whole thing myself.

HODGSON: A lot of these books I have not read completely, you know.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But the parts that deal with Bluff Creek I’ve read those about fifteen times each.

HODGSON: Yeah. [Laughs, chuckles]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: So, you don’t remember when you last saw Bob Titmus. Did you see him after the film was made, perhaps?

HODGSON: Oh I think so, but I can’t remember when.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: He must have been down here…

HODGSON: You know I have some pictures. I’m just going to have to hunt and see if I can’t find, of Bob and John Green, and I’m not sure I have any of Dahinden…. A lot of those guys I have pictures of.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Wow, I’d love to see any of those you have. A lot of them probably have never been published or anything.

HODGSON: I understand they’re going to try to do a big deal this year for Bigfoot Days, and it might be, we may get to have all of those pictures, like the first ones of John and Bob Titmus and Rene, and even my friend [laughs, chuckles] Peter Byrne. Ah, Peter Byrne’s a bit different. I don’t know. I know he and John seemed to have a bit of a falling out.

Image: The banner used each year for Willow Creek's community event, Bigfoot Days. Photo by Steven Streufert.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And they all seemed to hate each other….

HODGSON: Well, I don’t know what to say about that, I don’t know what to say. I’ve always thought he, ah… I call him—don’t tell anybody about this—but I call him the “Great White Hunter.”

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, I’m sure he’s heard that before because it’s out there now. Everyone refers to him as that.

HODGSON: Yeah, he always had it just so-so, he always had a tie. And I understand that the reason he had that is he had something wrong with his throat.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Ah well, he was stylish [still is!]. It gave an image to bigfooting, wearing that safari outfit and a hat and an ascot tie. It would be great to see Bigfoot Days have more focus on Bigfoot.

HODGSON: They want me to be Grand Marshall but I said, NO WAY. I’ve already been Grand Marshall twice.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: “Mr. Bigfoot”….

Images: Above and below, from the fine SASQUATCH ODYSSEY documentary. Below more, John Green on BCM trackway find, 1967, archival.

HODGSON: Get somebody else! But you know what would be great, though? I don’t know if we can do it, but… get John Green to come down there.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Yeah, that would mean something... major.

HODGSON: You’d have to take and uh, it would probably cost somebody, probably. Well, I think it would, now.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: We’d have to really get the word out. A lot of the local people probably don’t know who John Green is.

HODGSON: Yeah, well, they don’t know. But I know John well enough that I would ask him! Now, his wife is not well, so that may be a problem. And also, the man’s got plenty of money, he doesn’t necessarily need help, but  at the same time I would say it might be a nice gesture if we offered to pay for his flight down and back, you know. Now, he inherited, his father was a politician in Canada, and he inherited. Even though John had a, owned a paper, in Canada, and uh, I can’t think of what the name of it was now…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Wasn’t it the Agassiz Herald, or something? [Actually: Agassiz-Harrison Advance]

HODGSON: Yeah I can’t remember now. But anyway, John’s a good guy. I thoroughly think he’s a good, honest guy. He’s not gonna give you a bunch of malarkey.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, I’ve always felt the same way! I told you once before that I thought John Green was like the "Moses of Bigfooting," you know, holding the tablets but, um….

HODGSON: [Chuckles]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: …not to put him up on a pedestal. A lot of these people who believe in this “Massacre Theory” are coming out really slanderously against John Green, accusing him of lying.

HODGSON: Oh, I know that. I know! I know!

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I mean if they slaughtered a family of Bigfoot up in Bluff Creek, and buried it, then all the work that John Green did after that, all of his books, all the work of all these other guys, all of this was a lie to cover up something that happened in 1967!

HODGSON: But you see… but you know, number one: if they buried that thing in the creek, that creek is now at least ten foot, it’s graded down at least ten feet. Now if it’s buried in there we’d have found bones somewhere, a bone went down the creek, somewhere it would have showed up.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: A big, uh, big bones…

HODGSON: That’s right! We’d have found something. And the fact is it wouldn’t have taken it very long. Like I said, it’s eroded out. I was up there when they had the Symposium you could see where it eroded down, you could see where the old creekbed was, and it went down, and the reason was….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s like seven feet, or like five, six, seven feet in places…

HODGSON: And some places are lower than others…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And when you get way down in the bottom of it that gulch there…

HODGSON: And that tells you there, but how come this was? This was right after the flood, right after our ’64 flood. And they went right up the creek and logged the creek, because all of these logs were in the creek and it was blocking the creek. So a fellow the name of Blake logged that creek.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You mean salvaging the logs that had been washed downstream?

HODGSON: Yep, and some of them had washed down that had already been cut, and everything else. So they went right up the creek and logged the creek. So the creekbed, then, was left at a level way higher than normal. So then after, as the years went by, it graded down to its original bed, or what it maybe, I think it is now. So it’s probably, I’d say it’s close to ten feet now that it’s come down. Where they say is the film site is NOT the film site. It’s not the film site.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, you were there in 2003, with Gimlin and Green. I was there at that Symposium, but I didn’t go up to the creek on that trip to the creek...

HODGSON: Well, I didn’t either. I was so tired by that time that I…

Images: Museum promo photo of Al in front of the Bigfoot Collection building and statue; below, a map from Barbara Wasson's book, Sasquatch Apparitions; a government topo map of Lonesome Ridge. CLICK TO ENLARGE.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, Chris Murphy’s told us that he was going on your estimation of where the film site was. But then I talked with Daniel Perez, and Cliff Barackman and Bobo and those guys from the BFRO, and they say no, it’s upstream further. I talk to M.K. Davis or Sean Fries from Weaverville and they say no it’s a quarter mile downstream from that car landing spot.

HODGSON: Well, I don’t know. I’m not exactly sure where it is. But I’ll tell you who does know. He was going to take me up there. Well, I don’t know if I could make it anymore. I think I could. But I, uh…. It’s a walk-in show. You’re not going to get there by driving down like they did there [at the 2003 International Bigfoot Symposium]. And what confused me now, here several years ago, was that Mark and I went up there to the film site. Well, we went up, we had to go up the creek, and that’s how we went up before. We went up the creek, from Notice Creek, we went up…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: All the way up from like Louse Camp area…

HODGSON: Yeah, yup.

C.I.: So even in the spring of 1968 the access was up, or walking up along the creek?

HODGSON: Yes, yes it was. There was no access from above.

C.I.: Right. And because you knew how well preserved the creek had  been over the winter, you could still find the footprints, and so you could be sure that there was no possible way that any heavy equipment had been moved up the creek, or… have any kind of  a mass burial or grave or…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You would have seen the tracks on the road or something…

HODGSON: That’s correct, there was no evidence of it all the way up that creek, there was no sign. Now what confused me, we got up there, Mark and I went up the creek, we got up so far and here was a bridge. I said, we’ve gone too far, we’ve passed it. And then I find out that bridge was built afterwards. And that’s what throwed me. Now, you have to go up to that, above Notice Creek, go up to that first bridge, and get in the creek there and go up, to get to it…Now exactly whether I’d find it or not, I don’t know.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well here’s the map here,  This is Louse Camp, Notice Creek, and here’s the spot where the film site is supposed to be right near that “R” [does not correspond with the images provided on this blog page].  That’s the spot, either down here or up here. It’s not the biggest topo map but…

[Al is shown the Six Rivers Forest Atlas, Lonesome Ridge quadrant. Some following map pondering “ums” and “hmms” and attempts to locate this bridge have been excised.]

HODGSON: There might be a bridge right here, see it shows a road here, it’s kind of a small road…

C.I.: Yeah, right, now that’s marked as 12N10, and it’s currently closed to cars, vehicles. It’s been bulldozed, berms at each end, both the north and the south. I assume there was something there, a bridge or a ford…

HODGSON: But ya know, a fellow by the name of Kenny Pugh, in Orleans is the one that says, he says I know, you’re right, it’s not where they say it is.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Remember, in 2003, I think you guys drove down off there onto this little spur [Pointing to 12N13H on the map] and got down to a parking area…

HODGSON: That’s right…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: and you probably walked up stream about less than a quarter mile or so and got to that big bend, where all of those big root balls are in the creek?

HODGSON: That must be right here, it must be that bend…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s right where that “R” is there…

HODGSON: Yeah, right in there, I think you are right. But this is, in here somewhere, but I don’t know. I’m confused too, eh....

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well it’s hard to correlate a map to the ground if you’ve been walking on the ground all your life.

HODGSON: Being in there so few times, you know what I mean? But I know that talking to Kenny he says that bridge was put in after the flood….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well there’s that 1958 bridge you know that’s over Notice Creek right down near Louse Camp…

HODGSON: Yep.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But when you were up there did you feel you were at the right spot in 2003, with those guys? I heard that Gimlin didn’t necessarily recognize it too much either.

Image: the panel of speakers for the 2003 Willow Creek International Bigfoot Symposium, including Al Hodgson, Bob Gimlin and John Green (standing behind Gimlin in this photo, unfortunately).

HODGSON: I was, I didn’t think…. Even before that, there was no road to come down to the creek at that time.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, we’re trying to figure out…. That road was apparently built for a clear cut….

HODGSON: What was it, I think, it was a special road that came in there. They undoubtedly had a special landing there, and hauled up at that spur. Now there would be no reason to put that road in afterwards, so it had to be there before. And it wasn’t there, when the film site…. So the film site was some other place. Now, exactly where, in fact, was it even below that site, because we didn’t cross it when we went up there.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Hmmm. You mean when you walked up the first time, up the creek?

HODGSON: That’s right.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You were with your son when you did that?

HODGSON: No, that was the second time, that was just a few years ago. The first time was John Green.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And when you went with John Green you had to go up the creek all the way?

HODGSON: That’s right.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But, it’s well known that the site that John Green filmed was the right one, because the trees all lined up, and he was there just months after…

HODGSON: That’s right. That’s right.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And, you know, he had Jim McClarin walk… Were you there when he made that film with Jim McClarin walking the trackway?

HODGSON: No, I don’t think so.

Images: from John Green's film site follow-up, featuring Jim McClarin walking and superimposed with the Creature.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Hmmm. Well, I’m pretty sure that was made on that trip. Anyway, he had a camera and he was filming and was trying to compare the exact location where Roger had shot the film. And he had Jim McClarin, who was like six foot five walk in the trackway, and then he lined them up just as perfectly as he could. But it’s obvious that that’s the right film site, that he found then?

HODGSON: Are you sure it was Jim McClarin, though? [Gets up to retrieve a framed photograph]

C.I.: But he is credited in several different places with that film, it’s in several of the books....

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s well known to be John Green’s. But maybe he went on the trip with Al, and then he went in on another trip?

HODGSON: It’s not this one here, is it? [Returns with a framed photo of the film site.]

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Oh, well isn’t that your son there?

HODGSON: Yeah, right.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That would be Mike…?

HODGSON: That’s was Mike, yeah, when he was going to Humboldt State, I think.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Did John Green take this photo, too?

HODGSON: No. Peter Byrne.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I was going to say this looks like the Byrne photo. I have a copy of this on my computer. But this was the correct film site that you…

HODGSON: That is definitely the correct film site.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And from where you were in 2003, where do you think the correct film site was?

HODGSON: It was downstream from where we were at.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Downstream???

HODGSON: I don’t know exactly where…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You can’t quite gauge the… because you were on two different trips you don’t really know the distance between them?

HODGSON: The best thing I think is check with my friend.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: He’s still around in Orleans? In the phone book?

HODGSON: Yeah, I think so. Kenny Pugh. He’s a nice guy.

Images: Al's framed Peter Byrne photo featuring Mike Hodgson on the film site; middle, from I.C.'s GPS unit, the Bluff Creek headwaters; below, the film site seen from upstream of the "big bend." Photos, first and last: by Steven Streufert.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, there’s a lot of controversy over the film site, but I think that’s not as significant as a lot of these other controversies that…

HODGSON: I agree with you. But it makes a difference, though. In a way.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, we have a hunger just to find the right place and settle it. Before it’s too late and no one who was there can go up there and say this was the right place….

HODGSON: Well, I certainly agree with you. I agree with you. I think that’s the best bet right now, and I would love to go with you. But I don’t think I can. Ahhh… I think I can. But I don’t think my son would go with me.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Well, maybe this summer?

C.I.: The current road down from the ridge is usually in good shape for a good four wheel drive. You can get there without too much trouble. But then, it will take some bushwhacking up and down the creek to try to find the location. But it would certainly be closer, from your look at the map, be closer to start there and go downstream than to come upstream from the Notice Creek bridge.

HODGSON: Well, I don’t disagree, but you know, if you know what you’re looking for. But I would talk to Kenny Pugh. Because he’s a nice guy, he’s a bit different, but he’s a nice guy. But he was a forestry ex-, retired ex-forestry…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: So when was he at the film site, originally, in the early days? Was he up there after…

HODGSON: I honestly don’t know. He came, he was stationed here in Willow Creek for some time, and that’s how I got to know him. He was stationed for some time in Orleans, and then he retired up there, and I can’t really tell you exactly.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It’s just like the site has changed so much from what it was then, and not just the creek but all the trees that have grown in. And my understanding of 1967 is there was a dirt road at least along the creek that they used for logging access…

HODGSON: Well, way UP from the creek. It was way above the creek.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: It wasn’t down in the creekbed?

HODGSON: Oh no.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: There was not any kind of road there? Because this picture here was supposedly taken on the sandbar just southwest of the film site, because there are trucks there. Well, maybe we’re all wrong assuming that was where this picture was taken?

HODGSON: You’re ALL wrong. This is up on Blue Creek Mountain…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: Up on the ridge?

HODGSON: Up on the ridge.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: That’s not…. This is the picture with the red hands and the bodies and the…. This is the one where MK is saying there’s blood on the ground and…

HODGSON: yeah, I know…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: …the skins are lying there on the sand bar, it’s vague, you can’t tell, it looks kind of like it could be on a sandbar in the creekbed…

HODGSON: But this is not the creekbed! That’s a road right up on top of the ridge.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: A couple thousand feet at least up from there….

HODGSON: I tell you there’s a guy, if he’ll talk to you, I don’t know if he will or not. He was the one who discovered those tracks, on Blue Creek Mountain. He lives in Hoopa, he’s an Indian fella, I don’t know if he’ll talk to ya, I don’t know….

BIGFOOT BOOKS: He was there on that work crew?

HODGSON: I believe that he was the foreman on that road at that time. And he told me, Al, I was the last man out that night, and I was the first one in the next morning, and those tracks weren’t there. And it was a long ways down there if anyone had come in by foot. And it had sprinkled a little bit, and you could see there was no new tracks when he came up the hill, there were no tracks except for the tracks in this dust.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: As I understand it, maybe you would know better, the Onion Mountain Road went down to Louse Camp eventually, and then they started building the road over Blue Creek Mountain….

HODGSON: Yeah , they changed the roads all around. I don’t know how exactly they changed them, but they changed the roads all around.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And that road was being plowed through, a new road, I think John Green’s book says it was a new road being built, and that’s why the tracks were so fresh there in the dirt.

HODGSON: A lot of things happened there. The flood had done such a number on the roads that they went in and put the roads someplace else because of slides and so forth.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: You mean the roads that went down below more?

Image: Terrain map containing the Onion Mountain to Blue Creek Mountain area, down to Louse Camp.

HODGSON: They stayed back out of the creek. Exactly how they went I don’t know. I was up there several times before that and then I was up there a few times after, but not too many.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: What’s the name of the Hupa man you said found the tracks?

HODGSON: He’s, um, now I can’t, I’m losing it here… Dud Orcutt. They call him Dud. Not Doug, “Dud,” that’s just a nickname. He has flashbacks from the Korean war, and has a tough time, so…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: But Bud Ryerson was running that show up there then…

HODGSON: Yeah, I think that was his show. He might have been subbing for someone, I don’t know.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I have a timeline here of events from 1967.

HODGSON: Is that right?

BIGFOOT BOOKS: This is all taken from John Green’s book. He says in February of 1967 he came down with Rene Dahinden. He says they stopped to visit Roger Patterson in Yakima, and then he says they came to Willow Creek, and they heard of some recent [BF] activities, and they met Syl McCoy, in February of that year. Had you, at that point, had you met John Green? You must have met Rene Dahinden?

HODGSON: I met the both of…

BIGFOOT BOOKS: I mean, in the 1958 business, right?

HODGSON: No, ’58 I did not know all of those guys. At that time I just flat out thought it was a hoax and had nothing to do with it. [Laughs Out Loud] And so, I did not know them.

Images: Syl McCoy at Hyampom with track casts found there; an old post card of Willow Creek, part of Hodgson's Department Store is seen in the lower left corner.

BIGFOOT BOOKS: And so, you were running the store and probably got a lot of reports coming in at that time….................?

(40:38 of 2:17:11)

END OF PART ONE.
PART TWO TO FOLLOW SOON.
KEEP CHECKING BACK (or just subscribe)!
Transcribing this is an incredibly hard slog.
This is only the first THIRD or less of the interview.
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Con-texts of this blog, save for archival or historical images (fair use for research), copyright 2010, Bigfoot Books Intergalactic and Steven Streufert.

Please feel free to quote with citation and link to this blog included.

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ANGRY BIGFOOT SPEAKS!

... is still hibernating this week. 

He was mad enough last time in regard to those film guys. Were they working for Tom Biscardi, or what?

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EXPLORING BLUFF CREEK BIGFOOT HISTORY, August 2010 Trip, PART 1; Arcata SASQUATCH MOVIE NIGHT; BIGFOOT DAYS

BIGFOOT'S BLOG, EARLY SEPTEMBER 2010 EDITION

Mid-August always brings the call of the Bluff Creek basin and perfect weather and conditions for the exploration of Bigfooting history. The famous Onion Mountain and Blue Creek Mountain footprint trackway finds, investigated by Rene Dahinden and John Green, occurred at this time of year in 1967. This is the season that made Bluff Creek famous, leading up to the October 20th date when the Patterson-Gimlin Film was shot, and when the weather typically sours enough to bring snow and mudslides to the upper watershed roads.

Images: All shots (excluding maps) taken by Steven Streufert, 2009 (top three) and 2010 (the rest). CLICK TO ENLARGE, especially the MAPS.


FROM HIGHWAY 96 TO THE PGF SITE, 
Bluff Creek Trip, Part One

So it was that for three days our associate, "C.I." and ourselves ventured up Highway 96 from Willow Creek and up past Weitchpec to explore our favorite historical issues and locales, and maybe have an encounter with the Big Hairy Dudes ourselves. Here is Part One of our annotated pictorial presentation, complete with topo maps that may help you fine readers find some of these spots. Note--some aspects of this trip have been kept secret to protect current on-going investigations by other researchers of Bigfoot activity in the area. We will not disclose details at this time. Read on...

Just past Weitchpec, where one crosses the bridge over the Klamath River at its confluence with the Trinity River, one takes a right heading northward on Highway 96, the official scenic "Bigfoot Byway." One passes the historic Bluff Creek Company store, now known as Bluff Creek Resort, just south a few dozen yards from the southern end of Bluff Creek Road. Just ahead, staying on the 96, is the bridge over Bluff Creek where it meets with the Klamath (and a sweet river access spot). On this particular trip we proceeded just a touch less than a mile farther north to a left on Slate Creek Road, officially identified as Forest Road 11N05.

 [At this point the traveler will dearly be wishing they had asked for and purchased the Six Rivers National Forest Atlas at the Lower Trinity Ranger Station just outside of Willow Creek. This book is worth every over-priced penny. Ask for it at the desk, where he keeps them hidden for some reason. Do note, the roads on the topo maps in this presentation are not quite as they appear in the Atlas and on the ground today.]

We headed up some seven miles of nicely paved or well graded dirt but narrow road to Twin Lakes, a nice spot with two lakes entirely covered in lily pads at this time of year. There are a few primitive camping spots here along the shore, but there are no facilities, and we would not exactly recommend drinking the water without filtration.

It being warm and lighted by an essentially full moon, we decided to have no campfire (was it legal to, anyway? probably not at this spot), and spent the night scanning the area with Gen-3 military spec. night vision monoculars. When night had fully set in and the moon had not fully risen, sounds kept coming to us from the lake shore to the southeast. Finally, scanning with the green view eyepiece, we saw something dark and mysterious moving in the brush and reeds. It was heading our way.

Was it a Bigfoot???

It was creeping around mysteriously, its visible parts appearing and then being obscured, much like one often sees in thermal night shots claimed to be of Sasquatch. Just as the suspense had risen to quite a high degree the creature's head rose up---and we saw its puffy, round ears. It was a black bear, apparently not smelling nor hearing us, ambling along right toward the edge of our camp. After a few moments we decided we'd better spotlight it, especially as our traveling partner did not have his second night vision scope unpacked at that time and could not see it in the darkness. The thing bolted rather quickly at the sudden change in lumens. This was to be one of three bear sightings on this three-day trip.

During the night we heard something that kind of sounded like a wood knock and then a smashing wood break, as if a limb had broken off a tree (at totally normal, non-Bigfoot-related occurrence). Later, way off in the distance, we heard some kind of vocalization, a barking sound that, however incongruous way out here in the middle of nowhere (we only saw three other vehicles up there the whole weekend), we'd have to ascribe to a dog rather than a Bigfoot. But who knows, eh? Twin Lakes are, after all, just a couple of miles directly east of Big Foot Creek, which flows into Bluff Creek at that point.

From our camp at the lakes we headed back out the next day toward Cedar Camp, up onto the ridge, heading toward Road 12N12. We stopped and found some cell phone reception up there (believe it or not!), while looking down at the fine westward view toward Bluff Creek, looking down the Fish Creek canyon. Somehow we drove right past Cedar Camp, which is apparently unmarked; but we did see a lot of lovely cedar trees. Up here they seem unaffected by the root rot fungus that plagues the Port Orford Cedar down at Fish Lake and Blue Lake on the south end of the Bluff Creek Road.

One cruises along on 12N12 and without realizing it the green metal gate to 12N13, the left turn onto the "Sasquatch Road" according to local old-timers, suddenly sneaks up on one. Watch for it, or you will end up on the G-O Road (F.R. 15N01) and miss the turnoff to the PGF site. Any Bigfooter worth their salt, and with a decent high-clearance vehicle, will want to head down to the creek to set foot on that sacred and historical Bigfooting ground. 

About three miles from the gate you will pass three vague old road spurs to the right. When you see a steep one on your left you're almost there. Soon you will come to a wide, flat pull-out log landing area, and to your right you'll see the 12N13H spur. You will see a small road marker sign at the entrance. Keep to your right once on the road. THIS is the road down to the film site, which is 2.1 miles down a rather steep course. Beware the treacherous rock slide down at the bottom, and be sure to keep your wheels UP on the slide's side, lest you slip off the edge and plummet down the near vertical drop through the woods to an untimely death on the film site below. 

One thing that we found utterly astonishing, once on the familiar roads after Cedar Camp Road, was that all of these roads have been RECENTLY RE-GRADED. It is amazing to see the formerly hellish, shrubbery covered, pot-holed and rocky, tree-branch covered tunnel of the film site spur graded FLAT and clean, and fairly widely at that. It was that way all the way down to the big rock slide at the bottom. Those who have been to the site before will recall that it was essentially impossible to navigate this road without scratching the hell out of one's vehicle's paint job. All of those trees and bushes have been cleared away off the road. It is now like a Disneyland ride cruise down to the once nearly inaccessible site

Now we understood the purpose of the construction vehicles we'd seen up at the top on 12N13. Don't let it fool you, though. One should still use a 4WD vehicle to traverse the last part with its rain gulches and all. At this point, before the rock slide, there are a few turnouts that can now be used to pull off and safely park your low-clearance car, and then walk the last little bit to the bottom. 

We, of course, drove on through, and we survived it. Down at the bottom one finds a flat landing area where one can park, and a fire-ring and primitive camping area. When we arrived here, like everywhere else on this trip, no one else was there. Very strange.

Here's a photo of the nasty rock slide at the bottom of the road to the P-G site. WATCH OUT! Many have nearly gone the way of Roger Patterson on this spot.

We put on our knee-high river boots and started up the creek about a quarter of a mile at most to the bottom of what most consider the general Patterson-Gimlin Film Site. It's a big gulch with the creek running in two branches with big piles of logjam debris, fallen giant old-growth firs, and some large root balls (just like the ones in the "Big Bend" described by Bob Gimlin). In the map above you may see the lower film site right above the "A" and the road, where the small unnamed creek flows into Bluff Creek Some believe this is where Patty walked, but others believe it is in the smaller sand bar (white in the map) area right beyond there, just before the spot where the creek juts in a straight "bowling alley" line northward. We sought to explore both options, looking of course for "the big tree" seen in the film, or any other markers of verification.

Images: Just below the film site, large fallen firs typical of the area. Below, trees above the lower film site.

SEE OUR PREVIOUS BLOG ENTRIES HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE AND HERE for our earlier exploration of the film site. There is also A LOT of Bluff Creek and PGF information found in our extensive INTERVIEW WITH AL HODGSON, Willow Creek Bigfoot Elder, viewable here: PART ONE, PART TWO, and PART THREE.

Here we were interested in esoteric dimensions like trees, stumps, and sand types. We walked up the creek past the film site to investigate another sand bar up there at the top of the "bowling alley." When we headed back we crossed up onto the now quite elevated and forested sand/gravel bar, and walked across both prospective film site locations. BOTH are  plausible, especially as they were obviously both part of one single sandbar, now greatly eroded with the creek down in a much deeper gulch than it was after the 1964 flood's deposits were washed away over the years. 

Since everyone seems to disagree slightly, and the older guys like John Green and Bob Gimlin can hardly recognize the significantly changed site, we may never be able to exactly locate the route and situation of the Patty trackway. Adding to that problem, there has been significant erosion of the creekbed, possibly taking away a large part of the former film site sandbar; and the familiar and distinct filmed trees in the background have either been toppled or logged, from all we can tell. John Green told us in an email today that he could not locate the "big tree" he remembered.

We'll present the rest of this part of our travelogue as images with brief captions. Again, there are a lot of photos of the film site on our earlier blogs (check the left hand links) that we don't have room to replicate here. Enjoy!

Lower PGF sandbar, with downed tree roots.

Root ball in "Big Bend" Gulch, just like Gimlin describes.

Film Site alder trees, like the ones Patty walks among.

Slanting alders with big firs visible in background, northern sand bar.The "soil" below is actually forest duff over deep deposits of dark blue-gray sand.

Marshy spring and pool on PGF site. Possibly accounting for the "wet spot" one sees in the first few frames of the film, often mistaken for the creek itself. This one is mid-sandbar.

Big Tree? This one is found at the northern back side of the sandbar, located up beyond the marshy spring. This is one of the largest, most obvious candidates for the tree, growing just up from the level sand/soil.

Just past the eastern edge of the PGF sandbar, looking north up the "bowling alley." Just above where Patty probably crossed the creek and headed up the hill above the site, as per Bob Titmus.

Straight on north, up the alley a bit farther.

At the top of the alley there is another nice looking prospective sandbar. From here the creek turns right on directly eastward. This is where we stopped.

For perspective, here is one from one of last year's trips: looking up the gravel bar from the creekside at the site we feel pretty darn sure is the PGF site. Notice the large fir trees at the back. This would probably have been the embankment area Patterson ran up once crossing the creek, already filming.

***END OF PART ONE*** 

See the thrilling second part of the adventure next week, same time and channel!

We would like to thank TopoQuest for making their nice, scalable maps of the area available. One may even click to center on a spot and get the GPS co-ordinates for it. Great! Check it out here:
Lonesome Ridge, California Topographic Map on TopoQuest
Here are the approximate co-ordinate we got in using the site. Your results may vary. The MK Davis site, as told to us by Weaverville researcher, Sean Fries, is 500 yards downstream from the "bat boxes."

Upper sand bar (Barackman location)
Map Center:  N41.44069°  W123.70039°

Daniel Perez' "X" (after Dahinden, as in Bigfoot at Bluff Creek)
Map Center:  N41.44047°  W123.70082°

Lower bar and gulch (as Christopher Murphy places it, and where Perez was seen walking around in 2003 and 2006)
Map Center:  N41.43942°  W123.70186°

Ferris Camp (historical) Locale [NEWS TO US!]
N41.44151° W123.70145°

Northern top of "Bowling Alley"
Map Center:  N41.44347°  W123.69975°

Bat Boxes (approximate) car/log landing
Map Center:  N41.43854°  W123.70453°

Datum: NAD27
USGS Map Name:  Lonesome Ridge, CA    Map MRC: 41123D6


Image: a broad view of the Bluff Creek basin, centered near Louse Camp. CLICK TO ENLARGE. Get the USFS Forest Atlas if you need better, more reliable road markings. Other one: from the Cibachrome of Patty. Enjoy!

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The ARCATA THEATER LOUNGE SCIENCE FICTION PINT AND PIZZA NIGHT, featuring SASQUATCH

This event was a pretty big hit, with a long line out the door at 6:00, constituting a nearly full house for viewings of THE SNOW CREATURE and then THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK. Interspersed were give-aways of cryptic novelties like a Bigfoot Pez dispenser, hosted by Matt Jackson of MISSING LINK RECORDS and some Bigfooty film clips and songs assembled from our samples by event coordinator Mike Sargent. This was pop-culture Bigfoot with a twist: there was more than just the usual monster focus.

We of BIGFOOT BOOKS had a book table in the back along with Patterson-Gimlin film subject casts brought along by James "Bobo" Fay. Bobo heroically appeared despite having had surgery just a day or two earlier. Attendee/customer questions proved to be generally sincere concerning the possibility of Bigfoot's existence, with only the slightest traces of mocking humor (though good-natured) from a few. There was, unfortunately, no time for the planned discussion panel.
We sold a good bunch of Bigfoot books and maps, so we could tell interest was high, and pretty darn serious despite all the pints of strong beer consumed by the viewers (and the hosts). We are hoping that there will be a repeat of this event next year, perhaps with more non-fictional and serious content.

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Willow Creek's BIGFOOT DAYS 2010,

"Bigfoot's Nifty Fifty" Anniversary of the celebration, was really great and quite unusually Bigfooty this year. Watch for our next blog post for a complete pictorial coverage of the parade, and the decidedly less Squatchy celebration in the park afterwards. It was fun, for sure; but someday we are hoping that the organizing committee will actually go along with our suggestion that they add some Bigfoot speakers to the event. We suppose that most folks think that would be boring compared to reggae music, fireman's water competitions, axe-throwing, and  sno-cones.

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ANGRY BIGFOOT SPEAKS!

Hu-man! Me real angry now. You give away all me secret hiding spot! Now where me go?
Wait until next week, Bigfoot!
Wha', Hu-man? What you talk?
We have pictures of where you live, Sasquatch!
Me not name Sa'quatch. That me trailer park trash brother. He like reach arm through trailer window, scare hu-man sitting on poop throne. You listen Bigfoot, hu-man. Me SMASH camera! Me STOMP compute machine! You go out to truck think drive to Bluff Creek? You find engine down hillside.

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This blog is copyright and all that jazz, save for occasional small elements borrowed for "research" and information or satirical purposes only, 2010, Bigfoot Books and Steven Streufert. Borrowings will be tolerated without the revenge of Angry Bigfoot, if credit, citation and a kindly web-link are given, preferably after contacting us and saying, Hello, like a normal person would before taking a cup of salt.