Bella Bella and the Sasquatch

In the deep, dark woods of coastal British Columbia, there just may lurk a big, hairy animal … that is not a bear …

What's in the woods?

It’s the Sasquatch.

Have you ever heard of the Sasquatch? It is an enormous ape said to walk upright on two feet, just like humans, and rumoured to live in many remote places all over North America. Two to three thousand sightings of the mysterious hominid have been reported over the last fifty years.

The word sasquatch was coined by a teacher named J.W. Burns. It is based on the Sts’ailes First Nations word sasq’ets, which means “wild man” or “hairy man.”

In the northwestern United States, the Sasquatch is also known as Bigfoot. You get exactly one guess why.

Yup, the footprints supposedly left by these critters are BIG. They average between 37 and 43 centimetres in length. For comparison, my footprints are a whopping six centimetres long.

Feet 40 centimetres long, plus the depth of the footprints and the distance between them (the Sasquatch’s stride), let scientists do a bit of arithmetic. The results tell us that sasquatches could be as much as 2.4 metres tall, and weigh about 360 kilograms.

One of the most famous areas for glimpsing sasquatches in British Columbia is Harrison Hot Springs, east of Vancouver.

Another is Bella Coola, close to my own childhood stomping grounds in the Great Bear Rainforest. The misty, forested mountains and deep inlets around Bella Coola give wildlife of all kinds room to wander and thrive.

People of the Nuxalk First Nation have seen sasquatches around Bella Coola since time before memory. They call the creature the boq. To this day, people around Bella Coola also hear sasquatches howling in the woods, and knocking wood or rocks together.

A famous wilderness guide named Clayton Mack saw sasquatches several times near Bella Coola. His stories about them are now online, and really neat to read.

In nearby fjords like Roscoe Inlet and Dean Channel, First Nations ancestors painted images, or pictographs, on the rocks long ago. You can see these ancient pictographs if you go exploring in a boat.

Now, could this amazing pictograph be a Sasquatch?

The pictograph is gigantic.

 It was painted partway up a sheer cliff.

See how the cliff has horizontal grooves? These are deep scratches carved by immense glaciers during the last Ice Age. The whole inlet was once filled with a slow-moving river of ice.

This islet nearby, called Pan Rock, is a mountaintop that now barely peeks above sea level. It too bears deep scratches from the ancient glaciers of the Ice Age. The scratches are called striations (you pronounce that stry-ay-shuns).

Many scientists are fascinated by stories of the Sasquatch … but still not convinced. They call the Sasquatch a cryptid: an animal not recognized by science, because the evidence still isn’t certain enough.

Just think how excited researchers would be if positive evidence were ever found.

For the moment, the lack of undeniable evidence – and yet, the absolute sincerity of most eyewitnesses – tells us that something special is going on.

Even if it turns out that sasquatches exist only in human imagination, maybe it’s because humans need stories like them. Maybe humans need to see reflections of themselves at home in the wilderness. And that is probably a good thing.

What do you think? Are the footprints and sightings proof enough for you that sasquatches really exist?

 They’re certainly no less likely than a blogging teddy bear.

Now, one particular Sasquatch was spotted all over the place during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Allow me to introduce my buddy Quatchi:

Quatchi served as one of the four friendly mascots, or symbols, of the 2010 Olympics.

Like me, Quatchi loves to travel. He wants to be a hockey goalie when he grows up (no one would be able to get a puck past a goalie that size).

Yes, a Sasquatch may just be hanging out somewhere near you …

Story © S. Clouthier

Bigfoot statue courtesy Tony Case / Flickr

Other photos © S. Clouthier and D.Wei