 Flashback to 2012 |
McKinleyville, CA → Somes Bar, CA → McKinleyville, CA 220.0 mi (354.1 km) |
 More 2024 Adventures |
I’m back on Squatch Watch, everyone!
Back on May 21st, I gave my first ever PowerPoint presentation in front of a live audience at Nerd Nite LA in Glendale! It was a twenty-minute talk about California’s historical landmark program called Gone Plaquin’: The Pleasure, Pain, and Politics of Building a Historic Register, and it was really well received and led to lots of good questions about history! Some of them came from a fellow named Chris, who happened to be a fan of Bigfoot and happened to be planning a pilgrimage to the site of the Patterson-Gimlin film north of Willow Creek, California! Now, I thought I’d seen all there was to see of my favorite hairy hominid in the Golden State, but I sure was wrong. By Nerd Nite’s end, I’d made plans to join Chris’ adventure!
Unlike the last time I visited Bigfoot Country back in 2012, this adventure was done by plane via Avelo Air, and a good thing too! The fellow at the rental car counter at the Eureka/Arcata airport let us know that we’d arrived just in time for Willow Creek’s 62nd annual Bigfoot Daze festival, a celebration of all things Bigfoot, plus ice cream and 2024’s sub-theme: disco! The festival, he said, had actually been bumped up to July from Labor Day weekend, because fire crews were planning to use Veterans Park as a staging area to fight wildfires, like the Shelly Fire, which has been wreaking havoc northeast of here. Apart from that, it was amazing timing!
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As you’ll remember, Willow Creek is known as the Bigfoot Capital of the World, and has been the setting for movies from found-footage horror, Willow Creek in 2013, to family dramedy, Sasquatch Sunset, earlier this year. Plus, it’s home to the famous Willow Creek – China Flat Museum with its 25-foot tall Bigfoot statue, still standing proudly after—Oh Mah goodness—twelve years but backed by a fresh coat of yellow paint!
 2012 |
 2024 |
At 10:00 AM sharp, the high-pitched wail of a fire engine kicked off the Disco Daze parade, and wouldn’t you know it, the crowd that was gathered to see it was huge! Bigfoot Daze brought in folks from all over Humboldt County and beyond! This festival’s had plenty of time to get a reputation. In fact, when it kicked off on August 25, 1962, just four years after “Bigfoot” was coined, the celebrations filled all three days of Labor Day weekend, with two parades, a beard-growing contest, and the crowning of Miss Susie Getz as the very first Bigfoot Queen!
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Today’s parade was a medley of emergency response vehicles and floats of all sorts, ranging from from classic pickup trucks packed full of Bigfeet to entire disco-decked stages with hirsute dancers to a mind-blowing pedaled contraption that periodically paused and belched fire out of its huge metal pipes! And let the reader not worry: there was plenty of candy for the kids to collect, unlike in 1962 when they were throwing packets of smoked fish into the crowd! Bigfoot Daze really knew how to kick things off on the wild side!
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But being a small town, there weren’t a lot of floats to go around, and the parade wrapped up after about twenty minutes. So Chris and I went for a Bigfoot-sized brunch at the Bigfoot Steakhouse then moseyed over to Veterans Park to see what was happening there. It was a huge event with tons of artists and snack makers, even a tent run by The Bluff Creek Project, the experts in guiding folks to the exact place we were planning to see this afternoon! After getting some helpful tips, we tuned in to the Bigfoot calling contest live on stage! There were kids hooting and adults hollering, “Heeeey Bigfoot! Heeeey Bigfoot!” That was a skill level I was not prepared to match. Plus, it was pushing a hundred degrees, which was giving me flashbacks to a Maine heat dome. All in all, I found enough excuses not to compete against these professional Bigfoot callers and instead focus on the journey ahead.
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After grabbing some refreshments, we set off on Leg 2 of our Bigfoot adventure, motoring up the Bigfoot Scenic Byway through Hoopa Valley, home to the Natinixwe tribe that famously foiled a relocation plot in 1876 and held on to their ancestral land! In and around this valley arose the lore surrounding the hairy “Mountain Boss” they knew as Oh Mah! The last time I skirted the banks of the Klamath, I only made it as far as the mouth of Bluff Creek, about 17 and a half miles from the town of Hoopa. Today, we went way beyond, up Eyesee Road in Orleans, navigating the rough and winding fire roads 12N12 and 12N13 as mapped by The Bluff Creek Project, only the GPS hadn’t caught up to their directions!
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Chris and I sat in the middle of 12N13 for fifteen minutes trying to decide how we were getting directed down a road that was actually a cliff and whether to turn back or press on. By now, it was close to 4:00 PM, so daylight was a big concern. Nevertheless, we decided to press on. Good thing we did, because not far ahead, we stumbled onto an encampment of Squatchers from The Bluff Creek Project itself! Kipp, who was barbecuing hot dogs outside of his motorhome, told us a group was gathering here tonight to head down to the film site the next day, the first trip of the season! Since we weren’t able to spend the night, he charged us with scouting ahead and reporting back on the road’s passibility for cars. So, we parked near their camp and, in true Squatching style, hoofed it down the two-mile dirt road on foot.
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We’d never have made it by car with all the fallen trees over the road, but it was a pretty easy hike. After roughly half an hour, we reached the parking area surrounded by a big dirt berm as directed and pressed on over that berm and onto a trail. It was super green and lush, which made us forget there was a huge fire raging less than 20 miles away. Rather than worry about burning to death, though, we focused on all the tasty snacks growing along the trail, like raspberries, salmonberries, and thimbleberries! Uncontrolled wildfires aside, this place must be heaven for a Bigfoot in summer!
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While there were no signs at all to indicate the start of the right road or the path past the berm, after another mile or so, we spotted a hand-carved sign nailed to a tree, confirming that this was, indeed, the PG Trail. “PG,” of course, stood for Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, the two filmmakers who shared their famous film of a Bigfoot with the world in 1967. We’d reached the bottom of the trail and were now directed to turn right along Bluff Creek’s east bank in the path of some of the world’s most famous footprints!
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To get to the end of the trail, we had to cross Bluff Creek itself, chilly and slippery but oh, so clear! Once we did, it was as if we’d passed into another world altogether. The sun was angled in such a way that the hills blocked it on this side of the creek, bringing us from intense summer heat to cool dusk, and with that, swarms of mosquitoes who were more than pleased to have two hot-blooded explorers walk into their midst!
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It wouldn’t have been very clear at all where the trail resumed on the other side of the creek, but thankfully, there was anoher sign, flagged with orange ribbon, left by one J.S. Presumably, this was Jamie Schutmaat, co-author of The Bluff Creek Project, which recounts how the Patterson-Gimlin film site was lost and rediscovered. How’d it get lost in the first place, you ask? Well, Bluff Creek, like all wild rivers, changed course multiple times since October 20, 1967. New plants grew over the old sandbars, and so it took two years of running interviews, river maps, lens analysis, and plain ol’ hitting the trail before the Bluff Creek Project crew reached their conclusions! Amazingly, they settled on this location July 20, 2012, mere months after I visited Bluff Creek the first time!
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And this was what they had to work with, a shaky, desaturated, mostly sepia-colored clip showing towering trees and a large, open clearing surrounding the creek! All in all, it took just under a minute of footage, in particular the 352nd frame out of 954, to immortalize Patterson and Gimlin, give the cinematic universe a beloved new monster, and elevate the five-year old Bigfoot Daze Festival in Willow Creek to a whole other level!
A quarter mile from the creek, and the trail kind of faded off into the woods. Where we were left standing, nothing looked like the background of the Patterson-Gimlin film! There were two monuments designed to look like stone feet, one pointing inland and another on a wooden platform pointing across Bluff Creek, overlooked by a trail camera! These, we found out, had only been placed here in 2022. The scene wasn’t ringing any bells, and while this site has attracted controversy like the film that made it famous, it was only later that we realized we were standing where “Patty” had walked 57 years ago, not where the camera had been angled!
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Eventually, we had to agree that this was most likely the end of the trail. After all, apart from the two stone feet, there was a trail register rolled up in a water bottle and hanging from one of the trees! That water bottle had an unfortunate leak, and boy, was that paper gross! Wet! Slimy! Stinky! Nonetheless, having journeyed all the way to this remote location, it would have been a real shame not to sign the book anyway!
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So we didn’t really get to recreate Frame 352, the famous “Patty” walk, at the exact angle it was shot in 1967, but we did make and enjoy some sandwiches on the ground where she strolled! Despite the pesky mosquitoes, it was kind of awe-inspiring to be here at such an influential spot! Though we didn’t see any descendants of Patty on this journey, the monuments and the register gave us a chance to etch our names into Bigfoot lore and encouraged us to keep looking, no matter how far our journey takes us!
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As I looked, on the way back up the trail, I could have sworn I found a footprint, but it was a standalone, which would have required some seriously high hops to accomplish. So, rather than report a sighting back at Squatch camp, Chris and I warned them about the fallen trees as more and more Bigfoot aficionados had begun to arrive from Bigfoot Daze. It was kind of a shame not to camp with this fun crew, but we had reservations at another fine spot, Oak Bottom Campground near Somes Bar. It was the first time I’d been camping in ages! So we wrapped up a day of legendary adventures roasting marshmallows under the summer sky and wondering what mysteries still lay in wait just beyond the trees!
Track us later!
Flashback to 2012 |
Total Ground Covered: 220.0 mi (354.1 km) |
More 2024 Adventures |