April 5, 2011

Long-Time Bigfooter and Cryptozoologist, Richard “Rip” Lyttle

Periodically, Bigfoot’s bLog conducts lengthy email interviews with prominent and interesting figures in the Bigfooting world, trying to get to the bottom of the personal aspects of The Quest for our favorite Hairy Hominoid. Our current interlocutor has spent so much time in the woods, seeking Bigfoot and the elusive, once-“extinct” Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, that his personality sometimes seems to have blended with the nature of his quarry.

Richard “Rip” Lyttle is a long-time Bigfoot field researcher who has recently moved to Humboldt County. Since arriving he has been a frequent visitor at Bigfoot Books in Willow Creek; he’s assisted our work on the Bluff Creek Film Site Project; he’s gone squatching on the coast with James “Bobo” Fay, Robert Leiterman, and Bart Cutino; and he has also assisted with game camera implementation and investigations of potential Bigfoot activity back in the woods behind our own hillside cabin above Willow Creek. Rip is an amusing guy, with a very serious and unique perspective on the mysteries he is sure are out there in the woods.

Rip Lyttle out looking for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, South Carolina

Since childhood in Maryland, he has had many mysterious encounters of his own. A devoted wildlife investigator and photographer, he has a massive array of experiences and images of the animals he has sought to document and interact with over the last twenty years or so. He once organized and taught a university-level course on Bigfoot/Sasquatch and Cryptozoology, which featured many noted researchers such as Jim Hewkin, Peter Byrne, Larry Lund, Datus Perry, and others. He was the very first member to sign up for the Western Bigfoot Society. Though he has never published his findings, save for brief write-ups in Ray Crowe’s Track Record, and he isn’t prone to intellectualizing and schmoozing at BF conferences, Rip has been a dedicated and intense Bigfoot researcher since long before it became trendy and popular on the internet. Hence, he is an important transitional figure between the first generation guys and the modern, post internet age of Bigfooting. SO, enjoy! Take a rip of Rip.

Read the full interview here at Bigfoot’s bLog: An Interview with Long-Time Bigfooter and Cryptozoologist, Richard “Rip” Lyttle

See below for a interesting excerpt featuring a couple of encounters Rip had with apparent Bigfoot creatures.

Rip Lyttle with Bigfooting icon, Larry Lund, and companion, 2010

Bigfoot Track, Carbaugh Reservoir, South Mountain, PA, circa late June 2004. Found by and photo by Rip Lyttle

Encounter Descriptions, by Rip Lyttle

When I first started looking for Bigfoot in the Northwest it took me two years to “see” one, but just two weeks to get near one, I believe, up in North Cascades National Park, June, 1992. Late one early June afternoon, I backpacked in alone along long Ross Lake with no gun into past dark, and set up my tent on a designated sleep platform 7 miles in, and immediately went to sleep.

On the long walk in along the lake trail I was confronted with several sets of bobbing glowing yellow eyes directly ahead of me as I made my way to the campsite area in pitch black. It took me several minutes to realize they were deer, and I walked past them. Right after that a huge toad or bullfrog jumped past me.

Slept fine, no disturbances, and next day I hiked 14 miles on a trail out past the lake to the northwest and got back to Ross lake around 3pm exhausted. So I laid down on top of the picnic bench at the side of the lake in one of its many coves in the sunlight and promptly fell asleep…. To be awoken later by a guy yelling/hollering at me from across the cove in the forest and shaking two large bushes/small trees at the same time. I’m so sleepy from the 14 mile hike I barely understand what’s going on, thinking in my fog, that’s just some weird guy trying to disturb my sleep by playing a funny prank on me seeing me there konked out, sprawled on the picnic table top comfy. It went on for at least two minutes. Now I just lift my head off the picnic tabletop, and look over at the dark forest across the cove 400′ away, and see these big bushes/small trees vigorously shaking vertically, parting and unparting while a guy behind them is yelling loudly at me, “Hey, hey, Hey,” no other words. I was so tired from my longest day hike ever I laid my head back down on that sunny table and went back to sleep, not bothered. He’d have to up the ante for sure.

Only after waking later did I realize there was no trail over on that peninsula at all, and why was a single guy goading me so long, for what? The next day on the way out I hiked an hour to that area and it’s not a spot anyone would normally try to get to or could easily have. There were no other campers on the whole lake at that time, no motor boats. I was 7 miles in along the west side of the lake completely alone. I thought, I don’t think that was a human hassling me.

But my most fun (besides Molalla River Campground) was when I camped 30 weekends (’94 – ’95) in a Prindle, Washington rock quarry in the granite highlands above the Columbia River across from Multnomah falls and Skamania Island after windsurfing all day farther upstream. I don’t see how you can beat the beauty and vistas of that part of the Columbia River Gorge all while being able to visually inspect the land and water for long distances laying before you for Bigfoot. I used to swim out to Skamania Island in my drysuit and found amazing items, tracks.

I’ve heard Skamania Island is a magnetic vortex or something. An old story told of a woman who used to live on the island during the turn of the last century and made her living by bundling firewood and selling it to passing ships. My 6′ blond girlfriend and I camped on that island early April, 1994, after canoeing over one afternoon. Mid-dusk, we’re in the tent tired and she just kind of passes out and I start to fall asleep around 6:30 p.m.; but all of sudden I hear these quick faint sharp jumps or hops as something hops to right above the tent and I’m petrified, speechless, no body control whatsoever, facing upwards, can’t see through the opaque tent but know something large is right there within 3 feet.

I’m unable to speak, move, say a word to my girl to warn her. It wasn’t terror as much as forced immobilization. Sh*t, it was terror. A minute later a few sounds sounds like it jumped/sneaked away, and the fear washes off of me and I start up the Sony DAT recorder.

One minute later farther down the beach in the dark comes a human American Indian like yell, “Hey, hey, HEY!, that I audio recorded and still have. I think I found the large athlete I’d been tracking on that island or it found me, more like. The last HEY sounded like he turned my direction and gave it much more emphasis. Hey back, I think now. So, I got all the way out there to have an encounter, and could do nothing to get a photo or video.Rip Lyttle

Rip Lyttle with the Bluff Creek Film Site Project members, Louse Camp on Bluff Creek, 2010

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Read the full Rip Lyttle interview on Bigfoot’s bLog.

Filed under Bigfoot, Bigfoot's bLog, Cryptotourism, Cryptozoologists, Cryptozoology, Expedition Reports, Eyewitness Accounts, Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, Sasquatch