Sasquatch Tracks in British Columbia?
Posted by: John Kirk on March 6th, 2007
Possible new sasquatch tracks have been found and photographed in southwest British Columbia. The location is a mere 45 minute drive from downtown Vancouver.
Things in British Columbia are beginning to heat up with the pre-spring thaw currently taking place. It is distinctly possible that the sasquatch population is moving closer to human habitation in search of food.
The photos and story behind them can be seen at the Westcoast Sasquatch website forum. The site was created by Ken Kristian and Gerry Matthews and is a repository of the activities of British Columbia groups such as Westcoast Sasquatch, the BCSCC and independent investigators such as Tom Steenburg and John Green.
Click here to read the story and see the photos. Post your comments here for all to share.
About John Kirk
One of the founders of the BCSCC, John Kirk has enjoyed a varied and exciting career path. Both a print and broadcast journalist, John Kirk has in recent years been at the forefront of much of the BCSCC’s expeditions, investigations and publishing. John has been particularly interested in the phenomenon of unknown aquatic cryptids around the world and is the author of In the Domain of the Lake Monsters (Key Porter Books, 1998).
In addition to his interest in freshwater cryptids, John has been keenly interested in investigating the possible existence of sasquatch and other bipedal hominids of the world, and in particular, the Yeren of China. John is also chairman of the Crypto Safari organization, which specializes in sending teams of investigators to remote parts of the world to search for animals as yet unidentified by science. John travelled with a Crypto Safari team to Cameroon and northern Republic of Congo to interview witnesses among the Baka pygmies and Bantu bushmen who have sighted a large unknown animal that bears more than a superficial resemblance to a dinosaur.
Since 1996, John Kirk has been editor and publisher of the BCSCC Quarterly which is the flagship publication of the BCSCC. In demand at conferences, seminars, lectures and on television and radio programs, John has spoken all over North America and has appeared in programs on NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, TLC, Discovery, CBC, CTV and the BBC.
In his personal life John spends much time studying the histories of Scottish Clans and is himself the president of the Clan Kirk Society. John is also an avid soccer enthusiast and player.
MY BACKYARD!
Well … they certainly seem to warrant more investigation.
The Westcoast group seem to be very objective about it all, discussing other possibilities rather than just presuming it is a Sasquatch. It’ll be interesting to see what conclusions they reach.
Why all the speculation about whether the tracks went off into the woods, and only the one photo of one such (purported) track? And that one in a spot that would still be perfectly plausible for a human?
If you find footrpints, one thng that lends them validity is what they do that a human (probably) wouldn’t. That’s probably the most important info you can glean from them. If you’re going to the trouble to document, document everything.
Since these are right next to the road, I’ve thought up a couple of ways to hoax these tracks. However, they line up correctly to look as if a walking or running person or animal could have made them.
The theory that a running cougar could have made the tracks is interesting. I tracked a bear once in the Smokies for two miles along a snow covered paved road. His footprints were very similar in that he stepped in his own prints so that the track looked bipedal at times – and big. The bear tracks were more meandering along the road, weaving side to side, breaking from the bipedal outline enough to identify the tracks as clearly belonging to Ol’ Slewfoot (a bear). They ended in a large culvert where I saw the steam from his breath float out in the cold air. I quickly retreated back down the road.
I say this because an animal such as a bear doesn’t normally walk such perfect straight lines as in the photo, people do, and maybe Sasquatch.
If you look at the tire tracks on the road, they appear to be as far apart. The front tires of a car would be spaced about the same distance apart as the half-pace (left foot – right foot, not left-right-left) of a person jogging or running. The track off to the side could easily be that jogger stepping off to avoid the wind/splash from a passing truck.
Further, the tracks are not straight and appear to meander OUT of the tire track on the right (just to the left of the footprints) and then back in. To me, that suggests that the person was jogging in the road to stay mostly dry and moved into the slush to let a car go by.
Non-story.
The footprint looks like it has a melty tread pattern similiar to a hiking boot.
I could claim hoax and say the hoaxer used the area of the road to walk on to make the tire tracks…but I won’t go there because it’s easier to question why a “creature” that prefers to be hidden from humans would traverse down a road. But again, I won’t say hoax, maybe the footprints are mistaken.
Well, my first thoughts were of melted out foot prints, just as fred facker said. What kind of footprints is impossible to say. As usual these get us nowhere, unless someone’s gonna track off them.
Loren brought up an interesting technique that allows hoaxers to be suspended from a car and fake the footprints. Since these tracks are really quite melted out and inconclusive and they are so perfectly parallel to the road, I am thinking that someone could have been up to this here. The way they stick to the road and show no really identifiable shape, I feel there are plenty of possibilities that can be explored here before jumping to the conclusion of them being sasquatch tracks.
I’m thinking that maybe we need a new designation for highly inconclusive tracks.
How about “tracksquatch”, sort of a play on “blobsquatch”? These are of the highly inconclusive sort. Snow is a poor indicator of anything unless the tracks are extremely fresh. It melts (especially this close to a road where salt or snowmelting chemicals may have been used) and the tracks quickly distort. I had some rabbit tracks across my backyard after the heavy snow we got here in the midwest. Two days later after it started melting, the tracks fused together and looked like a bear or giant dog had wandered through.
The angle of these photographs could make them appear farther apart than they really are and it could have been a jogger or anything really.
Again I have to ask, did anyone bother to follow these tracks? Do they lead into the woods somewhere? Did Bigfoot hitch a ride or what?
How about “blobtrack”, Rillo777? 🙂
I thought I might add, as just a personal feeling, that spending time on tracks like these is a little embarrasing to serious research. It almost smacks of a desperate attempt to clutch at anything to show that bigfoot exists. And please don’t anyone take this personally, it’s just my opinion.
I like “blobtrack” mystery_man!
Rillo777: I think I’ve been saying something similar to what you say for some time now.
Tracks in snow need to show stuff these don’t. Foot features (at least toes, ferpetesake). HUGE stride, not possible for a human to duplicate without making demonstrably different tracks. Crossing of terrain that humans either couldn’t, or couldn’t with the ease that the tracks seem to show. (Why weren’t these followed to where they stopped? No evidence from the writeup that they were.) Compelling associated evidence (sighting by “good” eyewitness; brush/tree damage; etc.) This sort of thing.
Gotta say that I’d have a tough time, I think, making tracks, in slick snow, with that stride interval and in line like that. I can tell that much from looking at the photos. That’s a much straighter line than human tracks tend to make. Particularly when footing is an issue. But that’s all I can see. And I’m a layman. Not exactly enough to go: SASQUATCH!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
So webshopping them with the big question, SASQUATCH?!?!?!??!?!when there’s no other compelling evidence, apparently, but what’s in the shots, well, it does look to me like the kind of thing that makes the skeptics chuckle. And doesn’t advance the field.
Makes one wanna read “BIG BIRD!” Just to see what might be in there. And to while away the time before someone comes up with real evidence for the sasquatch.
And THIS is why I keep coming back with the supposedly same-old take on tracks. Because the skeptics pounce on stuff like this to discredit the field.
I think Loren touched tangentially on this issue in two previous threads: the one discussing ichnology (Norcal tracks) and the now-vanished one 😉 on crypto publishing standards.
Crypto needs standards, period. (Crib from zoology. They seem pretty good.) That there don’t seem to be any true standards for track analysis – although Meldrum seems to be working on that – and that stuff like this keeps getting tossed up half-baked, is just fodder for the skeptics. And the public still seems to go with them on the sasquatch.
Is all I’m saying.
BTW: dws is NOT me, typoed. HIS backyard. Me? I could only wish. 🙂
Articles like these makes me wonder why I check out this site. This one is really reaching.
I’m with deejay on this one. Tracks in snow by the side of the road? Badly sunmelted tracks, I might add? There’s nothing to do with these except speculate about them.
Even if they were from a veritable Shangri-La of Sasquatch tracks, how could you prove it?
Hunters don’t use tracks to prove their prey exists; they use the tracks to hunt their prey. Footprints like these serve only as faith promoting rumors. Sorry to be a downer, but I just don’t see what the hullabaloo is all about.
I would be very interested in John Green’s take on this one since it is right in his backyard. And what about you, John Kirk, have you or Thomas Steenburg or any of your other cohorts investigated it?
Jogger.
Did anyone notice that the nearby shoe prints do not look any smaller than the alleged Sas prints.. Factor in melting and BIGfoot it ain’t …
Ken Kristian is a professional guide. He hunts bear. If he says the tracks are of interest, they are. This website simply reflects the membership’s reticence. They don’t give out extra information because it leads to complication. There wasn’t any local press coverage, either, that I saw. I think this group is a bunch of field investigators that don’t need a crowd around.