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Do Sasquatch Turn White in the Winter?
By Wendy Bush
What scares you? We all have a different threshold of fear. I’ve locked eyes with a grizzly bear 15 feet away—and laughed. Yet a wood tick instigates near hysteria. Sweat-dripping, heart-racing fear freezes us, even as curiosity and wonder impel.
My hunt for Sasquatch began years ago. No big game stalker I, it is evidence and lore I pursue. Proof is wanting. Photographs? Remote and blurry. Hair? Debunked as gorilla by DNA test. Footprint casts? Inconclusive. But the stories…locals’ tales of Sasquatch encounters abound. Consider: until one washed up in1877, the giant squid of the North Atlantic was just a Newfie legend. Ken Jones, Canada’s first native-born Alpine Guide, swore to me that, back in the 1930s, he saw Sasquatch footprints in the muddy Kinbasket Lake shore. In the 1980s, three Canmore skiers reported seeing a tall, bipedal, hairy something at Wonder Pass.
It was late evening, November 20, 1993. Dawn and Jim looked out to see the snow flying and the trees tossed by rising wind. Seduced by the wildness and beauty of the storm, they drove to the uppermost parking area at Whistlers Gondola, Jasper. The deserted pristine lot was too much of a temptation—a few quick donuts were in order before Jim straightened out the truck to admire fairy-lit Jasper below.
“Wait Jim, back up!” Dawn exclaimed. Perhaps 20 feet away was an eight-foot-tall, dark, hairy.... “Do you see what I see?”
“Uh-huh.”
They watched for about 15 seconds before it disappeared downhill. Once it was gone, Dawn’s terror hit. But Jim went to examine the tracks. Dawn demanded he return. It might come back. This thing had no hump—just a smooth line from neck to shoulders and a human stride.
Later, fear in abeyance, Dawn reflected, “I’m glad that my husband and I saw him together...it’s a special experience we can treasure forever.”
Earlier that year, a savvy backcountry sojourner, Arnie, glimpsed an animal, running upright, on the Highway 93 south to Radium. “I know what I seen, and I never seen nothing like this before.” Bigger than any grizzly he’d ever hunted or photographed, he had a body rush of panic he never before felt—he knew it was no bear.
In 1996, a tip sent me to a home just east of Exshaw. Apparently a Sasquatch had stolen a delectable bag of garbage, first opening the latched enclosure. An eight-year-old boy at the scene gruffly denied seeing it, but as he turned away to play in the sand, he remarked, “Sasquatch sure smells bad.”
Said Tom Snow, a Stoney descendant of the family who showed Lake Louise to Tom Wilson: “The difference between your culture and mine is—you must see to believe. We believe. And then we see.”
Perhaps we need to let our curiousity and awe overtake our dread, and then we’ll see too.
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