MonsterQuest: CHILLING SNOWBEAST PREYS ON LOCALS (S3, E6) | Full Episode | History

[Music] there's a frightening snow beast that's been stalking the colorado rockies i'd never seen anything like i saw that day eyewitnesses claim that the massive creature has a bellowing scream and no fear of the humans this thing comes at you you may only have one shot the monster is said to be hunting elk and other animals in the area one claw mark on one horse drew blood now monster quest launches an expedition using cutting-edge technology to determine the creature's identity it's unknown to me of any type of animal that lives in this region that would

make those types of tracks there's no bears in this area that would go eight hundred to a thousand times all in an effort to reveal the predator who seems to be stalking these mountains it's like something's been in here in the recent past witnesses around the world [Applause] on monster quest this wilderness paradise is dominated by the rocky mountains the world's largest elk population and something else a large terrifying hairy creature set to prowl these majestic mountains looking for prey i know what the animals sound like here and this is nothing like i've ever heard

once i saw the tracks i started to get that feeling like something might be watching me i mean this thing raised up out of the beaver pond stood on two legs and looked right at me you know there are things in this world you can't have put a scientific explanation to and this is one of them eyewitnesses report seeing a seven to ten foot tall creature that walks upright with long massive arms and hands the animal is tucked away between 600 and 800 pounds leaves massive tracks and most shocking is similar to a historical beast

that was thought to hunt at similar elevations there are persistent stories about a man like gorilla-like creatures in the woods kathy lell has been a newspaper reporter and historian in colorado for over 36 years she has researched stories of the creature throughout its history the earliest date back to the 1880s reported in mining camp newspapers out of lead bill [Music] a couple of miners out working in the mountains they heard a strange moaning noise they went to investigate climbed a pile of rocks to see what it was when one of the men crossed to the

top of a pile of rocks he had a frightening encounter what he reported was an incredible story of coming face to face with a large furry creature a half man half beast unlike anything he'd seen before the newspaper described the frightened minor as pale as death and frightening so badly he could barely speak to to explain the story of what he had seen [Music] each story describes him slightly differently it's always a cross between a man and a gorilla-like creature taller than a man much larger like in the 400 to 800 pound range hairy very

long arms very long legs the history of sightings hasn't stopped others from being skeptical of the creature's existence bill heiker a biologist with the colorado division of wildlife points to the lack of solid proof if there was such a creature as people bigfoot sasquatch whatever you want to call it there'd be some physical evidence there would be you know what do they feed on we'd find kills we would find bones we would find uh even if they're vegetarians as some people claim you would find where they're feeding for hiker the infrequency of sightings only adds

to his doubt you would run across these creatures all the time or signs of where they had been but it is the encounters themselves that have led to many being convinced that the creature exists researcher keith foster has followed sightings in the area for over 15 years surprisingly in colorado we don't have a lot of sightings from the inexperienced camper the sightings seem to be by people that are spending an inordinate amount of time in wilderness areas and so that lends some credibility to the sightings themselves foster has catalogued over 100 reports of the creature

the largest concentration of which are centered near pikes peak a part of the rocky mountain range 50 miles from the population center of colorado springs these photos were taken on the mountain at about 10 400 and 11 000 feet they're part of a rash of recent sightings in the area the tracks themselves are very large and the step links are between four and seven feet long and so they're they're easy to identify because nothing else leaves tracks like these in nature foster believes that these could be the tracks of the elusive beast it is here

that monsta quest will launch an expedition to determine the identity of the predator the team will head to 11 000 feet to conduct an aerial search for evidence that may lead to the creature's hiding place [Music] the most efficient way to find a creature like this in the mountainous terrain we're going to be going to is by helicopter veteran wildlife photographer paul drexler will be responsible for capturing photographic proof of the creature for this expedition he selected two cameras attached to gyro stabilizer mounts one is a high definition video camera and the other the latest

in thermal camera technology we're looking for heat signatures left behind by any type of creature that'll leave a track and we're doing that with the micron thermal camera this advanced thermal camera shows heat from not only anything within its view but also residual heat left from any recent activity this means that heat signatures from recent tracks could show which direction the creature is headed and will provide the team with new leads up on the mountain when it starts snowing sometimes uh sometimes you just gotta land not die the dangers of flying at such a high

altitude will make the expedition tricky even with a veteran pilot high altitude flying gives us a couple problems one is that the winds can be really severe today we have a wind shear a regional jet already reported light to moderate turbulence which will equate to a lot of turbulence for us the other issue at high altitude is that we have less air less air molecules and so it makes flying more difficult we have to push more air use more power we have less reserves the team will be flying aboard a westland gazelle helicopter which is

capable of great maneuverability even at this altitude we're able to get right down into the action we'll be able to follow anything that we can find out there we'll be able to stay with it it's got the power to be able to hover and leave us there one x razor cleared for takeoff all right temperatures and pressures are in the green power check we are ready to go they start to feel turbulence as drexler scans the wilderness below his only protection from the wind and a fatal fall is a harness the temperature is dropping adding

another element of danger the team heads to some of the areas where tracks have been spotted in the past it looked at me and it knew i was there jeff deisinger has been a professional guide in the area for over 15 years while scouting for elk he says he came face to face with the creature i hiked up to where i thought the elk would be so i ended up sitting on this high spot that overlooked a drainage i heard a bugle down by one of the beaver ponds so i really you know i was

really focusing on this spot intently and um and that's when i saw it i mean this thing raised up out of the beaver pond stood on two legs and looked right at me now i was about 200 yards from it i got to be honest with you my first thought wasn't you know what is this or whatever you know with my military experience my first thought was if this thing comes at you you may only have one shot my first gut reaction was pack your stuff and get out and so that's what i did keith

foster believes it is not coincidence that the creature was seen near the elk we have quite a few indications that sasquatch are actually a predator and that's a niche that is open on in colorado a predator of elk would naturally follow the elk and have to prey on them but still stay away from them enough not to run and run their food source completely away foster contends that the creature migrates with the elk throughout the rocky mountain range he says that this is why the tracks appear to move seasonally however to date no solid research

has been done they're very interesting to take a look at the number of sightings that he's been able to document chris markisson is gis manager for pueblo county colorado and will use the science of computerized mapping called the geographic information system or gis it will allow the team to clearly see citing patterns what we're able to do with gis is to take complicated amounts of information essentially in database form and project that in a three-dimensional view or a map-based view to allow us to do informed decision-making and identify geospatial relationships between seemingly disparate objects there

is a history in colorado of difficult to detect species specifically the grizzly bear and the wolverine are two animals that have consistent sighting reports but it's been very difficult to document them wildlife biologist bill gibbon knows it is difficult to track even known species in colorado due to the scope of wilderness areas he has brought animal data from the colorado division of wildlife that will be compared against the data of the sightings and will lend his expertise to the search so bill what we did is we took the data from keith and just you and

just plotted it on the map here and what you can see is the red dots basically represent each of the alleged sightings yeah clearly the species is concentrating in the mountain areas especially in that central area is really the highest wilderness areas in colorado there is a little bit of spread to the west onto some of the more high plateau areas that are also still very remote by running a density analysis they are able to define the areas that are citing hot spots it would appear that up here in route county as well as down

teller county and then a little bit down in the san juan mountains there those are all wilderness areas but what's interesting is it's towards the edge of the wilderness so that would make sense because you'd have more people in those areas that might have sightings but yet there's enough remote area that sightings would not be frequent the initial analysis reveals that half the sightings fall between october and april this would seem to rule out one plausible scenario of what could be preying on the elk misidentified bears people were mistaking bigfoot sightings for bears there's a

bit of an issue if they're seeing them during the winter because bears should be hibernating well we're fortunate in colorado to have more elk than any other state this is the most plentiful food source for large mammals and as you can see it's pretty much the western two-thirds of the state of colorado which would encompass all of the sighting areas that we're seeing here the idea that the snow beast is following the elk's migration pattern would mean sightings would occur at lower elevations in winter in examining the average elevation they determine that the winter sightings

range from 7 300 to 9 000 feet while in summer the median elevation range is 1000 feet higher this clearly shows a species that's using high elevation sites and and interestingly migrates during the different seasons going from high elevation and summer to lower elevations in the winter the data seems to suggest that the snow beast is indeed hunting the elk on pike's peak that's the really important thing for consideration here because as as we saw through bigfoot sightings there's an elevational change from the high to the low with the seasons and that would correspond with

here because the elks are important winter food [Music] the monsta quest expedition team plots likely areas to search where the elk are known to seek water many will be in wooded areas so a part of the team sets out to look at likely locations this area back here because it's so rugged and primitive on both sides of this valley actually could easily support a non-native species back here another predator could be back here in the area the ground team is led by kim sourbre a military trained tracker who has worked in the area for over

30 years today we're going to travel up this valley this is part of cathedral park in the pike national forest and we're going to go into an area that's we call the lost cabin he will work with other trackers to search the southwest slopes of pike's peak that is a known ambush area for other elk predators such as mountain lions and wolves and that's kind of what they look like the steep area for them they get back in there same with the mountain lions it offers them safety and security they're getting that dark timber steep

train it makes it harder for a predator to get to them during the winter months the elk tend to feed at the snow line located at about 9 500 feet it is here that the search will begin so we're going to tie off our stock down here because our train gets real narrow deep some steep areas and we're going to actually do most of our searching and looking up in this area on foot the mountain ravines of the area are perfect rain for both the elk and their predators the predators like it here they can

get high it's dark they can get in close before anything can really realize that they're there and a lot of places for them to den up and hide it's an excellent area from the ambush the high elevation is taking its toll on the team but the early results are promising they find signs of activity but they're not fresh but they find other evidence that an elk herd has recently been in the area he's just tore this ground up for summer he was here for a long time the giant animals use trees to scrape the velvet

off their horns or to help shed their antlers there's no mistaking the bull did this the team is encouraged by the evidence of elk it seems they will stand a good chance of getting a look at the snow beast the bigfoot if they were in this area eating and feeding and hunting the elk as it's been theorized you should see some tracks in here kim saubre and his team of trackers have discovered an old mine and are about to investigate it is too dangerous to explore without some way to see what is inside the dark

tunnel the reason you don't want to go in there well one is you don't know what's in there and then the other is the fear of cadence yeah stay out and stay alive and we can see it looked like some bedding had been pulled down some trees some tree branches leaves pine branches and claw marks where something had clawed that climbed out toward the dirt up as it came out of the hole saubre makes the decision that it is too dangerous for the team to proceed without specialized gear tomorrow what we'd like to do is

maybe put together a camera rig and explore in there see maybe there will be something there the team has brought a thermal camera recording system that they will mount facing the entrance in case there is activity in the area overnight we should score some good activity and get some good film the animal's coming in it's a real narrow point and we'll have to come through should be able to get a good picture it's getting near dusk the animals are getting ready to move we're going to be moving pretty quick we're going to be going up

in here located and get out here really quick the camera records to a tape deck eliminating the need for a team member to stay behind and monitor the cave overnight this will ensure that the creature will not be scared away by human presence all righty i think we're about set the camera looks like it's focused good on the two access points if we can get out of here real quick before we get caught we should have a good chance to catch something on camera tonight the team returns to camp to bed down for the night

while the search on the ground has led to some interesting finds at lower elevations the helicopter reconnaissance has also uncovered a line of tracks in the snow paul drexler uses the specialized thermal camera to check for evidence that the tracks are freshly made he sees no heat signature [Music] the closer look reveals something unexpected [Music] [Music] the team is encouraged by the sighting and knows they're looking in the right area these tracks known as the eagle river tracks were photographed in april of 2000 by bill bryce who's an area fisherman i had never seen anything

like i saw that day bill bryce uses fly fishing as a way to relax after work i had worked my way up to a fairly remote spot on the eagle river that i fished a lot the day i saw the tracks i waded upstream to a remote part of the eagle river that i used to fish very often and i had just moved out of the river onto the south bank to tie on a new fly when the tracks caught my eye they were large human-looking footprints bigger than any track that any animal in that

area would leave and deep in the river material so i knew whatever it was had to be big and heavy you know i started looking around in the brush and wondering if something like that could still be hanging around so it was pretty unnerving so i just i just wrapped it up and went home after returning the following day to photograph the tracks he showed the evidence to local wildlife and law enforcement officials i can't tell you what created those impressions that bill bryce has a picture of it's not a bear i don't think it's

a human bill heiker is a biologist with the colorado wildlife division he says that after 32 years of working in the wilderness he has not seen anything like these eagle river tracks i i really don't think he was perpetuating hogs i think he really and truly found these tracks and he hasn't he thinks they're bigfoot i believe eagle county sheriff's deputy bill kaufman was also asked to help identify the mysterious tracks it's unknown to me of any type of animal that lives in this region that would make those types of tracks the depths of the

impression were remarkable we knew it had to be a rather heavy type of creature to be able to make those impressions and through my resources we estimated it's time to be anywhere between four and seven hundred pounds to make that type of depth and that type of soil the place where he found these tracks are some is a location where you would not expect anybody to go there's no roads there's no trails the only easily way to access it is crossing the river you need waders the eagle river is one of the slipperiest rivers i've

ever been in it's kind of treacherous to wade it's not real deep right right here but it's not something you would normally do and it's if somebody was perpetuating a hoax making tracks you wouldn't you could wait decades for somebody to find them over there [Music] there is another type of analysis that might help to determine whether the snow beast made the eagle river tracks in bryce's photo first thing i do tracks is rate the quality is it a good trick ecologist dr jim half penny is an expert in forensic technology and has taught professional

snow tracking for the last 20 years we can then take photographs or casts that come to the field and compare them to an enhanced plaster cast or we can compare them up on a photographic screen computer monitor path penny is frequently called in to analyze unidentified tracks using the techniques he teaches he has seen many cases of misidentification but there are some instances that he simply cannot explain then there are a set of category of tracks that have only two possible solutions to them they are either made by a creature not documented by modern science

or their fakes [Music] monsta quest will perform several experiments to determine the identity of the predator hunting the elk of the colorado rockies bill hiker will conduct an experiment on the same soil where the eagle river tracks were found to determine the weight of the creature that made them this will hopefully provide another clue to the identity of the predator to my knowledge nothing like this has been done before the monster quest team has used photos of the eagle river tracks to replicate them really good photographs the head measurements taper tape measure right beside it

indicated length you can figure out width you could figure out depth of the track the footprint replicas are attached to a wooden frame which has been built to support thousands of pounds of weight sandbags will be added until the impressions match those in the photos all right the team will also utilize a time-lapse camera to determine if the weather could be responsible for changing tracks over time resulting in misidentification we're trying to see how much tracks will distort change over time the camera captures one image every two minutes allowing the team to see how the

changes in weather patterns can affect tracks this process could help to further determine the predator and it's suggestive that it could be a big footprint we're building a fire to have a little barbecue and it was just before dark we heard clacking like rock clacking we heard the horses over here wrestling they came up from the field running full blast towards us and they were all wide-eyed and everything they were spooked and that's when the first yell came and it was just a short yell and then the second yell came just a few seconds later

and it probably lasted i'm guessing four to five seconds the terrified couple left immediately not noticing that their horses had claw marks from their ribcage back to their hind legs they couldn't identify a predator that would have made the marks then another horrifying encounter my dad came out out to help me water water and feed the horses early in the morning our dog that we had is used to when you open the door he's used to running through the fields here and he's not afraid of nothing and uh at that time he went over towards

the corrals here and uh the dog seen something my dad seen something at the same time the elder trujillo spotted a large eight to ten foot dark colored creature walking on two feet through the trees when they tried to get closer the beast ran out of sight dog made a beeline back into the house the dog actually got scared we couldn't even get the dog outside the house for two hours in the search for new evidence the monster quest team has hiked deep into the forest in search of the creature they have uncovered what they

believe to be a promising area for further exploration we're going to find this large predator this is the ideal spot to be looking for everything he needs is here the food the water the animals are traveling through here his prey the area also has an abandoned mine which reveals visible signs of predator occupation they believe it could be the home of the snow beast particular camera we're using today that we're shoving in there we put on a wide-angle lens so we get a nice big view inside the cave we feel confident with the pole being

able to extend about nine feet we should be able to see all the way in the cave see if anything's inside the initial investigation of the mine reveals that it is currently empty that does not take away from the fact that a large predator of some kind has made its home inside something's been down in here bedded for a while it is large enough though for a nice large predator to make a nice home or habitat out of jim half penny's examination of the four sets of photographs of the creatures tracks have provided some useful

insight we have a list of criteria for each of the different mammal species and i'll go through and evaluate the criteria to see if a given photo fits in a particular species category once i've done that then i'll try to decide was this track made by a wild animal that's normally around or could have been made by bigfoot the first set of tracks were photographed in niwat colorado which is 100 miles from pike's peak this looks initially like it could be a primate track maybe a bigfoot track and it's very clear their toes i've got

some ponderosa pine needles here that help me scale the toes do not form a smooth arc just think of the toes your own foot they have a smooth arc whereas here you've got a couple of toes maybe three and then these are displaced up above this is a pair of toes from a different track all three of these criteria toe shape the arc of the toes and the inner digital pads suggest strongly of a large cat probably a cougar they appear to be similar to the next set of tracks which are from pikes peak well

my initial reaction to this set of photos looking at it um because of the straight line and groups of tracks would be a galloping pattern or a hopping pattern if the creature walks on two feet the track should have a left-right displacement track displacement or the distance between the tracks when measured side by side is a key factor in understanding what left the impressions the pattern is basically straight with no displacement the faster an animal moves the less the right left displacement but when we're talking about an animal purported to be a sasquatch which is

several hundred pounds has very broad hips uh is not able to um really get a super fast speed up where tracks might come one right in front of the other even a running sasquatch and from other evidence that people have found would intend to be a definite right left right left displacement i think it's a galloping coyote next half penny turns to the eagle river tracks that have stumped the colorado wildlife department and local police for years that's an interesting set of tracks they're in the dirt not the snow i seem to have a little

bit of a straddle there we've got a context photo that shows over a distance the tracks coming gorgeous and then close-ups of each of the photographs which is a much better way to reproduce or document your scene the tape measure in the photograph shows the print was 18 and a half inches long but there is also what looks to be a possible heel depression at 13 inches down in colorado all we've got is black bear and we if you just look at what we call a maximum outline measurement this could be a big black bear

conceivably with a little movement within the track within the dirt but the track itself 13 by seven and a half is big for a black bear period it could be the hind foot of a black bear but that would still be very very big so 13 by seven and a half by size really rules out a bear uh and is suggestive that it could be a bigfoot footprint [Music] monsterquest is conducting an experiment to determine just how heavy the snow beast that is stalking the area may have been one more i got it after stacking

300 pounds of sandbags the team checks the impression that the added weight makes yeah an average uh male black bear is probably under 300 pounds but 300 pound black bears good size bear but not huge well there is actually the heel comes back around here comes up but that's pretty interesting it's going to take a lot more weight they add 240 pounds bringing the total to 540 pounds the prints made are still well shallow of the three-fourths inch impression seen in the eagle river photos 540 pounds that'd be a huge male black bear and i've

got the heel back here going in but i don't uh i really don't see the the footprint is not uniformly going in let's put on another oh let's put another four bags on there you know that's a 540 be 780 pounds that'd be the equivalent to the biggest black bear ever found in colorado the aerial search is again being affected by the weather high winds and snow are forecast for the area meaning the attempt to fly will be extremely dangerous you'd be uh you'd be extremely hard-pressed to uh find anybody else to go and fly

and film in snow or anywhere close to these temperatures and conditions the crazy people do the storm keeps the team below the 11 000 foot elevation that they were hoping this is well below the current snow line and the area where the elk are likely to be grazing this means locating credited tracks will be almost impossible releasing helicopter one x-ray zulu is inbound we're gonna scout here to the north just a little bit see if we can find a good spot over there we're having a real hard time finding uh finding good snow and track

out here with the weather getting worse the team gets a break there have been over a hundred reported encounters in colorado they have been mapped by christopher markusson and bill gibbon who are analyzing them to see if the beast is fleeing the advance of modern civilization so i used the date of the sightings to show where things were beginning in the earliest sightings were and how they progressed over time so it would appear to you that the sightings have moved further into the wilderness area as if it's moving away from the population center of humans

that's exactly what i want to do to take a look at and see is you know as colorado springs has grown the number of sightings that that people have seen seem to correlate directly with going further into the forest yeah and that would certainly correlate with the historical range of the grizzly bear that we looked at recently as people moved across colorado the bear receded until it finally disappeared and this suggests a similar movement pattern the study of the reported sightings suggests that the creature is moving west as its wilderness habitat decreases i would suspect

that really any wildlife species that is in being encroached upon by you know new development or human impact there's going to be some sort of conflict between the two the weather that has plagued the aerial search is also beginning to become a worry for the ground team they have found a cave that they hoped may be used as the creature's resting place and have deployed a thermal camera weather today is not looking good we have a storm coming in right now and we're looking at either snow or rain and we're down in the valley where

it's a little difficult to get out if we get either the team begins to disconnect the thermal camera so they can see if an image has been captured on tape so hopefully we got some good video on here i still don't see anything moving in the background i feel there could be something out there that we have the habitat here to support creature and feel there could be something out there [Music] the track testing continues the time lapse images have been downloaded from the cameras and brought to dr jim halfpenny's lab in the time lapse

experiment in the snow the radiation effect is dramatic and impressive tracks joining tracks to become one huge track individual footprints enlarging to become a huge bigfoot track while we experimented the tracks we used some elk some bear tracks and human tracks it was very easy to see how bear tracks could change into a bigfoot light track and human tracks could elktrack's not so easy to make into a bigfoot but the environment can easily change barren human tracks to look like a what a bigfoot track halfpenny determines that mistaken identity seems to account for the tracks

found in snow he cannot say the same about those found in dirt and what i've got here on the screen is a frame of the time lapse from the very beginning of the frame of the time lapse at the end and these sets of tracks were made in sort of a soft dirt whereas in snow we get shape and size change here they sort of disintegrate and you lose quality more than change size the experiment has demonstrated that very minimal change occurs over time to impressions found in dirt this suggests that these prints cannot be

explained by mistaken identity the other part of the track experimentation also seems to point to the existence of a large snow beast creature that is currently unknown to man [Music] we're over the biggest recorded black bear the weight needed to replicate the prince has reached staggering levels even at 780 pounds the impressions still do not match the photographs the team adds more weight okay you got 900 pounds i can definitely see the toes kind of going into the ground i think uh i think that's what it's gonna take okay let's tilt her up oh yeah

yeah there's definitely a a track there you make out toes you can make out a heel uh on yours definitely a heel on mine boy you can really make out the ball of the foot coming across here the toes are definitely distinct i think that's pretty similar to what uh the photographs show this is 900 pounds so but it's stationary weight too it's not doesn't have that dynamic movement of a person or an animal moving and weight shifting so um i think you're we're in the realm it could be you know 800 to 1000 pounds

it would take to create a track the impression similar to bill bryce's this test has made one thing clear the tracks could not have been made by a known native predator the helicopter search team has located a line of tracks that is of interest i think i saw something right here they make another pass to get a closer look but the tracks appear to have been made by coyotes the team seems to be finding some interesting leads but the storm rolling in is working against them that was where i was [Applause] wow [Music] the monster

quest team has been able to determine that the beast stalking this area is bigger than any known native predator they've also concluded that the beast seems to be stalking the local elk migration the team also ruled out misidentification of bears as the possible explanation so while photographic proof of colorado snow beast remains elusive the search has yielded some positive results we did cover about 60 miles of terrain and we learned through that what we can see down below and what kind of conditions we need when we're flying in the helicopter and the technique is going

to work well in the future and so we look forward to trying this again one of my hypotheses is the bigfoot could exist but does bigfoot exist that's still an open hypothesis that hasn't been proven perhaps it does people are seeing something in the forest whether that's bigfoot or not i i can't speculate to say that but i would say that they're probably seeing some sort of animal that they're not familiar with i can tell you what it wasn't i know it wasn't a bear now mountain lion you know something like that as a scientist

you also have to keep inquiring mind and realize that species that you don't know much about can be hard to detect and we are still discovering new species in remote locations around the world you