Cultus Lake

Date: June 1999

Occurrence: In the words of the witness:

I have always been a believer in sasquatch. However I was never wanting to actually see one(childhood fear). I watched a documentary when I was 10 yrs old and had bad dreams ever since. In one dream he cornered me in a cave and threw a big log in at me. This woke me thinking I was dead.

Anyway my wife and I,and 2 kids,went camping at a provincial park near our home. It was the middle of june. One afternoon, my wife convinced me to go for a hike down one of the trails nearby. It was just after lunch.We walked down the road 100 ft and turned onto the trail that went straight into the bush behind the camp. About 200ft down the trail I was looking up a hill that was covered in ferns. not many trees for about 50 yds. the sun was shining on this hill. the trees were very tall so not much direct sunlight got through in most places. Camera still in the bag at this point.

I noticed what looked like a big stump at the back of the sunlit area. All of a sudden it got up and started running away. Very quickly. It ran about 100 yards in my view away from the direction of my campsite. I was able to see it foot when it came up to the back and it didnt look huge compared to the rest of him. I saw a long thigh come up level as it ran. It was very muscular in the back, I could see how the hair came to a v shape at the spine. The color was like a grizzly bear.

The last thing I heard was a big crack of a tree. I looked at my wife and said "lets go". I picked up the smallest boy and we all ran out to the road. My wife and kids saw nothing(were not looking).

I saw a parks guy emptying garbage bins. I went to him and said" I just saw something big and brown in the bush". To my surprise he said quite calmly," was it on 2 legs or 4 legs?". I responded"2". he said"OK, I'll tell the rangers". And that was it, didn’t seem surprised or disbelieving.

I went back with the camera to find tracks and found a rotten log all torn up where I saw it first. soft ground, scratch marks where tracks would have been. I found deep tracks 15 inches long where it ran. I'm 6Ft 3 and had to jump between them. loud crack was a deadfall broken in middle. I stepped on it and it didn’t move.

Went back a year later in the fall with my father. tried a different trail closeby, noticed another ripped up log and several large stones at side of trail turned over. park was closed at the time. would have needed a machine to do that. My dad said he thought he could smell a horse sweating. I said "that’s enough for me, I'm out a here”.

Witness: Name withheld by request.

WCSRO, 2005.