The Valley Has Been Keeping a File

BEFORE THE COFFEE GETS COLD

Moe Pass came by Wednesday evening and asked what I was writing this week. I told him I was writing about the thing nobody around here talks about out loud but everybody has a story about.

He sat down without being asked.

There are places up on these trails where the light goes wrong in the late afternoon. Where something moves at the edge of what you can see and by the time you turn your head it is already gone. Most people who have spent real time in these mountains have had a moment like that. Most of them do not file a report. Most of them do not tell anyone.

Some of them do.

Larimer County has eight filed reports with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. That is eight people who saw something, or found something, or heard something, and decided it was worth putting their name on a document. A doctor. A local property owner. A family hiking with binoculars. A camp guest at the YMCA. A woman alone on Storm Mountain who followed a sound she could not explain.

None of them were looking for this.

Bigfoot Days is coming to Estes Park on April 24-25. Before it gets here, it seemed like a reasonable time to go back through the record and see what this valley and its surrounding country actually has on file.

Moe put down his coffee and said he was going to need a refill for this one.

SIT DOWN. THIS ONE'S GOOD.

Eight Reports

What Larimer County's documented Bigfoot record actually says, and why it is more interesting than you might expect

What Is the BFRO and Why Does It Matter?

The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization was founded in 1995 and maintains the largest database of reported Bigfoot sightings in North America. Every report is investigated, verified for credibility, and classified. A Class A report means a clear sighting under conditions that rule out misidentification. A Class B report means indirect evidence: sounds, prints, or something at the edge of visibility that could not be confirmed.

Larimer County, which includes Estes Park and the surrounding Roosevelt National Forest, has eight reports on file. What follows is what those reports actually say.

1971 — Rawah Wilderness, Roosevelt National Forest

The earliest documented report from this area dates to 1971, filed as BFRO Report 513.

A man who later became a physician was in the Rawah Wilderness in Roosevelt National Forest with two other people. They found footprints on a trail. The prints were large enough and unusual enough that the witness remembered them clearly enough to file a formal report decades later.

No creature was seen. Just the prints.

That detail is worth sitting with. A future doctor, two witnesses, a trail in the Roosevelt National Forest. The prints were there. They filed a report. Nobody official ever followed up.

1990 — Roosevelt National Forest, Northwest of Fort Collins

BFRO Report 1367 comes from 1990, about 25 miles northwest of Fort Collins in Roosevelt National Forest — the same forest that backs up against the Estes Park corridor.

Local property owners — not casual visitors — were watching an open field when they observed a large creature in broad daylight. They had binoculars. Multiple family members saw it. They watched it long enough to be certain it was not anything they recognized.

The BFRO classifies this as a credible account. The witnesses knew the land. They had spent years on that property. They knew what the local wildlife looked like.

2007 — Estes Park: The Holder Video

In 2007, a man named Jim Holder and his son Shane were walking near Estes Park when they filmed something on a cell phone.

The footage shows what researchers describe as an auburn-colored figure taking twelve steps through the trees. It became one of the more discussed pieces of Colorado Bigfoot footage in research circles. Researcher Adrian Erickson later purchased the footage for $20,000 before it was pulled from public circulation.

Twenty thousand dollars is a specific number. It tends to focus the mind on whether someone genuinely believed what they were looking at.

The footage has never been definitively explained.

2013 — Elm Road, Estes Park

This is the best-documented local report and the one with the most specific physical evidence.

In early 2013, local resident Ken Collins was hiking above Elm Road with a friend, looking for firewood. They came across a snowbank with three unusual footprints.

Collins took plaster casts. The prints measured 14 inches long and 10 inches wide. The stride between them was five feet.

He called the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. Investigator Dennis Pfohl drove to Estes Park and conducted a three-hour investigation with Collins. He brought a trained search and rescue tracking dog named Lakota. Hair samples were collected.

Pfohl's assessment: credible. He told Collins that just days before, a Bigfoot-like creature had been reported along the roadside near Glen Haven and Drake. He also mentioned a previous sighting by campers inside Rocky Mountain National Park that had never made the local papers.

Collins told the Estes Park News he had been a skeptic until that morning on Elm Road. He said: "Up until a week ago, I was a skeptic too. I believe this now."

A 14-inch print. A five-foot stride. A trained tracking dog. A BFRO investigator who drove from Colorado Springs. That is not nothing.

2014 — YMCA of the Rockies, Estes Park

BFRO Report 44401 is brief and specific.

A guest at the YMCA of the Rockies campus in Estes Park reported a possible nighttime sighting and heard unusual vocalizations echoing across the grounds. The report was filed, investigated, and published in the BFRO database.

The YMCA of the Rockies sits at the base of the mountains on the south side of Estes Park. It is a Christian conference center and summer camp that has operated there since 1907. Thousands of people pass through every year.

One of them filed a Bigfoot report.

2015 — Green Mountain Trail, Rocky Mountain National Park

In July 2015, a hiker on the Green Mountain Trail on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park found what appeared to be an unusual footprint on the trail. The find was reported to the BFRO, investigated, and logged as Report 49243.

Green Mountain Trail runs through the Kawuneeche Valley on the west side of the park. It is remote, heavily forested, and lightly traveled compared to the east side trails. The kind of place where you could walk for hours without seeing another person.

2019 — Storm Mountain

The most recent and most detailed local report is BFRO Report 62929, from May 2019.

A woman and her husband were hiking on Storm Mountain, about ten miles outside Estes Park, on a clear mid-afternoon. She heard what sounded like a child's voice coming from the trees. She moved ahead of her husband with a walkie-talkie and followed the sound.

She became disoriented. She took photographs of the area around her before finding her way back to her husband.

When she reviewed the photos later, one of them showed what appeared to be a crouched figure in the trees. She had not noticed it when she took the picture.

BFRO investigators Mark Taylor and Jack Wieland traveled to Estes Park for a follow-up investigation. They met the witnesses in person. The report was published.

The woman followed a sound that seemed like a child's voice into the trees alone and came out with a photograph she could not explain. That is either a very unlucky afternoon or something worth taking seriously.

What Does It All Add Up To?

Eight reports. Spanning 54 years. Filed by people who, in most cases, described themselves as skeptics before the encounter.

A future doctor and two witnesses on a trail in 1971. Property owners with binoculars in 1990. A father and son with a cell phone in 2007. A local man out looking for firewood in 2013. A camp guest in 2014. A hiker in the park in 2015. A woman who followed a strange sound in 2019.

Not one of them was on a Bigfoot expedition. Not one of them had gone out that morning looking for evidence. They were hiking, or looking for firewood, or staying at a Christian summer camp, or walking a trail they had walked a hundred times before.

Larimer County is one of the most visited counties in Colorado. These are not remote wilderness reports from places nobody goes. These are from trails people use every week.

Moe finished his coffee and said, "That's eight more reports than most counties have."

I told him that was technically true of most things.

He said, "What do you think is out there?"

I told him I had spent a lot of time on these trails. I have heard things I could not explain. I have seen shapes at the edge of the light that were gone before I could look directly at them. I have never filed a report.

Most people who live up here haven't.

That might be the most interesting data point of all.