MOUNT VERNON – Howling like a foghorn, Jason Valenti sent out a call into the night to any sasquatch that might be passing by. The 34-year-old Valenti’s cry echoed down a remote mountainside in eastern Skagit County.
As the sound faded, the rush of a stream in the distance broke the dark night’s quiet.
Valenti’s friend and fellow Bigfoot aficionado, John Andrews, commented on the overcast sky and remoteness of the location at the end of a rough logging road.
“It’s a beautiful night,” said Andrews, a 62-year-old Camano Island resident who has been searching for sasquatch for 40 years. “It’s a perfect sasquatch night.”
For many, the large, apelike sasquatch is a creature of legend. Cryptozoologists, those who study hidden creatures, would like to prove sasquatch is a real creature.
The search
For Andrews, Valenti and other aficionados, finding proof of the reportedly shy creature is a calling, one that borders on addiction.
“It’s like a drug,” Valenti said.
Andrews and Valenti say there is something out there, and they want to know what it is. They network online and attend conferences, sharing tips and sasquatch sightings.
And at least once a month, Valenti and Andrews head to the hills of eastern Skagit and Whatcom counties in search of “the ‘squatch.”
They say the magic hour to find sign or sound of Bigfoot falls between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.
The two men load Andrews’ Subaru with equipment including a container of hot chocolate, a camcorder, an aluminum baseball bat and a tape recorder. The bat is to strike rocks and trees in hopes that Bigfoot will respond by pounding on trees or rocks. They also keep wood and other camping gear just in case the car breaks down and they are forced to spend the night outdoors.
The recorder’s microphone is attached to a parabolic dish designed to gather sound. Andrews’ recordings of what he believes to be Bigfoot calls are available on Valenti’s Web site: www.sasquatchresearch.com.
Valenti, who lives on the Lummi Reservation in Whatcom County, has organized a sasquatch symposium. He said he is putting together a nonprofit corporation and hopes he can get funding to study sasquatch full time.
Andrews works for the Snohomish County road department, and Valenti owns his own computer company and works for the Organic Press, a Skagit-based publication.
Traveling to the remote mountain May 13, Andrews and Valenti explained the lure of the simianlike sasquatch – it’s all in the anticipation.
“We usually have a pretty boring time,” Andrews said. “When you hear something, it’s like you won the Lotto.”
They agreed to take a reporter and photographer to a location that Andrews said has a history of activity, provided the site was not revealed. Andrews and Valenti said they fear hunters or others could disturb or harm Bigfoot.
The two men pick the places they stake out by culling locations from sightings reported to them directly, as well as from various sasquatch-related Web sites. Andrews said he doesn’t screen the reports but looks for patterns instead.
The Bigfoot bug
Andrews has been looking for sasquatch since he read about Bigfoot in a Boy Scout publication. Something about the possibility of the mysterious creature captured his attention.
He chuckled over the memory of himself as a teenager, naively walking up to property owners in the Rocky Mountains Front Range and inquiring if they had seen very tall, hairy men.
Andrews said he has never seen sasquatch.
Valenti caught the Bigfoot bug in 1996 when he and an acquaintance took a wrong turn while driving near the Apalachicola National Forest near Tallahassee, Fla. He said he and another man saw what he describes as a female sasquatch.
One look was enough. He’s been hooked ever since.
Valenti and Andrews are willing to speak publicly about their search for Bigfoot, but many seekers of sasquatch are reluctant to discuss their pursuits.
When Valenti and Andrews stopped the Subaru in Sedro-Woolley to meet a woman who had borrowed their recording equipment, she told the reporter: “No names.”
Her reticence is understandable.
Some in the sasquatch-seeking community believe Bigfoot has psychic powers, is associated with UFOs or is capable of intradimensional travel.
Andrews and Valenti are careful to say that anything is possible, but they say they haven’t experienced anything resembling a UFO, except for the time when Andrews saw sparkling lights in the night sky.
For many Americans and most of the scientific community, sasquatch is very much part of the paranormal, and therefore, not worth investigating.
Skeptical scientists
“There aren’t many scientists who are open-minded about the prospect,” said Jeff Meldrum, a biologist specializing in the evolution of primate locomotion. “There is such a stigma unfortunately attached to it that a lot of scientists haven’t stopped to ask themselves the very questions of what would it entail. They say it can’t exist; therefore, it shouldn’t exist.”
However, there also are a few primatologists or biologists employed at universities who have considered questions such as: If Bigfoot exists, what would it need to survive? Or how might it have evolved?
Some scientists say they have concluded that there isn’t enough forage in North America for a giant ape to live.
Meldrum, who teaches at Idaho State University, disagrees. He says it would be possible for a large primate to survive in North America, especially if it ate meat.
Does that mean Meldrum believes in sasquatch?
“It’s not a matter of belief,” Meldrum said. “It’s ‘does the evidence justify a serious consideration of the question?’”
Meldrum said he has investigated tracks, casts of tracks and collected enough anecdotal reports that he is convinced scientists should consider investigating what is causing these sightings and tracks. He fits his own investigations into a few weeks each year between other research.
Meldrum is careful to say that he hasn’t ruled out the existence of Bigfoot nor has he proved that such a creature may exist. He was one of the speakers at a recent sasquatch symposium in Bellingham.
Laymen and scientists who question the existence of a Bigfootlike creature ask, with all the people in the backcountry and all of our technology, why hasn’t one been found yet?
Meldrum said it’s possible for species to escape detection. It is estimated that just 8 percent of the fossil record of primates is known.
“‘The absence of evidence isn’t the evidence of absence,’” Meldrum said.
Back on the mountainside, Andrews and Valenti explained they believe Bigfoot stands between 7 and 12 feet tall and weighs between 1,200 and 2,000 pounds.
Based on reports to various sasquatch Web sites and laymen researchers such as themselves, the men believe if such a creature were to exist, it would live near fresh water anywhere from sea level to about 2,000 feet.
There’s a lot of speculation about what it would eat. Andrews said he is convinced it migrates along the west side of the Cascade Mountains.
The search continues
Suddenly, something caught Valenti’s attention.
“What’s that?” Valenti asked. “Quiet.”
After a few moments, he broke the silence.
“Did you hear that?” Valenti asked. “It sounded like a high-pitched scream.”
Andrews said he didn’t hear it.
The night grew chilly as the men continued calling and talking about sasquatch.
Around midnight, a light, cold rain began to fall, and Valenti considered their likelihood of success.
“I don’t think we’re going to get much tonight,” Valenti said. “The wind’s picking up. The best is a quiet, quiet night.”
They pile the gear in the back of the Subaru and Andrews used a flashlight to check the area to ensure they have left nothing behind.
On the ride down the mountain, Valenti held a camcorder to his eye as Andrews drove. People have reported encountering sasquatch crossing logging roads. Valenti said he wanted to be ready.
On the drive down the mountain, the men talk about their experiences, past conferences and the upcoming event.
Andrews and Valenti don’t seem to mind that they didn’t hear their quarry. In the mountains of northwestern Washington, quiet, overcast nights are common. And they will be out again soon, banging on trees and calling out to Bigfoot from a mountain.
For sasquatch aficionados, the fun is in the possibility that the next trip might yield a sound, a track or even a sighting.
“If you ever hear a sound, it makes it all worth it,” Andrews said.
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