Category: Bigfoot

An Ape-tley Named Legend: 99 Years of Ape Canyon

Ape Canyon is a gorge near Mount Saint Helens, Washington, USA. And if you’re wondering how it got such an intriguing name, on a continent with a distinct lack of apes (at least officially), then you’re in the right place.

This blog marks the 99th anniversary of the Ape Canyon attack, which either took place on 16th July 1924, or was reported on that date via an issue of The Oregonian, depending on the source.

Either way, in July 1924, a group of five miners were taking overnight shelter in their hand-built cabin deep within the canyon. As they settled down for a meal and coffee, and perhaps something stronger, the cabin began to be pelted by sizeable stones and rocks. The miners described their attackers as ‘mountain devils’, and it didn’t take long for the band of men to realise they were surrounded.

Image Credit: Unknown – please contact, as various sources found.

Being hardy folk, and well used to the everyday threats they faced working in the wilderness, the men were armed – and they returned the rock showers with volleys of rifle fire. Each time they did, the sasquatch-like creatures would slink away into the treeline, only to resume their attacks minutes later. They also must have been very close to the makeshift cabin, as it is detailed one of the creatures reached through a hole in the wall and tried to steal an axe, only to be stymied before it could retrieve the weapon fully.

The attacks continued relentlessly until daybreak when the men finally felt able to leave the cabin. Fred Beck, one of the prospectors taking shelter, described seeing one of the creatures in the distance, at the edge of what is now Ape Canyon, and fired at it. His aim is apparently true, as he describes watching it tumble back into the gorge.

Beck would later write a book, titled ‘I Fought the Apemen of Mount St. Helens’. This was published in 1967, amidst the bigfoot furore of that period. 

Sceptics, including William Halliday, Director of the Western Speleological Survey, claim that the assailants were in fact local youths. A fireside story, shared by generations of counsellors at the nearby YMCA Camp Meehan on Spirit Lake, was that it was young campers absentmindedly throwing pumice stones into the canyon, not realising there were miners camped in its bottom. He suggests that looking up, the miners would have only seen moonlit figures throwing stones at them, and the narrow walls of the canyon (as little as 8 feet/2.5m at one point) would have distorted voices into something unrecognisable and frightening. 

Mount St. Helens Today.

However, this does not take into consideration the eyewitness accounts, including the shooting of a creature, and that hairy hand coming into the cabin. 

Perhaps the more sinister alleged encounter involves the disappearance of Jim Carter in 1950. An accomplished skier and mountaineer, Carter was part of a group of 20. The story appeared in an August 1963 issue of the Longview Times by Marge Davenport, titled ‘Ape Canyon Holds Unsolved Mystery’. It was then also included in Roger Patterson’s (yes, that Roger Patterson) 1966 book ‘Do Abominable Snowmen of America Really Exist?’. 

An abridged version of the story is below.

‘Carter’s complete disappearance is an unsolved mystery to this day,’ declared Bob Lee, a well-known Portland mountaineer… ‘Dr. Otto Trott, Lee Stark, and I finally came to the conclusion that the apes got him,’ said Lee seriously… On the way down the mountain, he [Carter] left the other climbers at a landmark called Dog’s Head, at the 8000-foot (2400 m) level. He told them he would ski around to the left and take a picture of the group as they skied down to timberline. That was the last anyone saw of Carter. The next morning searchers found a discarded film box at the point where he had taken a picture. From here, Carter evidently took off down the mountain a wild, death-defying dash, ‘taking chances that no skier of his calibre would take unless something was terribly wrong, or he was being pursued… He jumped over two or three large crevasses and evidently was going like the devil.’ When Carter’s tracks reached the precipitous sides of Ape Canyon, the searchers were amazed to see that Carter had been in such a hurry that he went right down the steep canyon walls. But they did not find him at the bottom… ‘We combed the canyon, one end to the other, for five days. Sometimes there were as many as 75 people in the search party ….’ After two weeks the search was called off.

However, again, there is some debate over the exact facts. The Madera Tribune edition of 23rd May 1950, features a small column, announcing a search for a Joe Carter, aged 18. Whereas the 25th May edition of the San Bernardino Sun of the same year (see below), seems to confirm both that Carter’s first name is Joe and ages him at 32. It is in this article Carter is described as an experienced mountaineer, but also suggests he is diabetic. It’s also where we find the link to the original Ape Canyon legend. 

The San Bernardino Sun, May 25th 1950 describes the search for Joe Carter.

You can see there are discrepancies in the details and even the location reported some 13 years after the event.

It is well known that an employee based in a ranger station enjoyed leaving fake tracks along the shore of the aforementioned Spirit Lake. Patterson too has also been long-suspected of pulling off perhaps the best executed hoax in bigfoot lore – and at the very least, I don’t think it’s unfair to suggest he wouldn’t let the facts get in the way of a good story, as here with Carter. 

Therefore, it’s difficult to lift the facts from the legendary lore of Ape Canyon. I cannot find any reliable reference as to what Ape Canyon was known as before, or when exactly it took that name – but it joins countless others across the USA associated with bigfoot legends. Today, ever changed since the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, there is a popular hiking and mountain bike trail making the area much more accessible, and a local scout brigade use the Ape Caves as a hangout. But maybe, just maybe, a more sinister troop of unknown creatures still lurks down in the canyon that takes their name. 

The Curse of Portlock – An Alaskan Killer Bigfoot

There’s a forest in Alaska that sits on a remote, hard to get to peninsula. If you were to visit today, you’d never know that seventy years ago, a small town thrived there, built upon a booming salmon fishing industry.

Portlock, also known as Port Chatham, has been the subject of numerous documentaries, stories, and investigations. The intrigue is real. The legend, perhaps equally so.

In 1785, a Captain Nathaniel Portlock landed in a secluded bay, on the Kenai peninsula of Alaska. Whilst surveying, they found the remnants of an abandoned native village. Nobody could fathom why they would have left such a prime area, full of untouched game, fish, and shellfish. But, as members of his party grew sick and scared, they began to beg their captain to depart. Little did they know, just six years before, Spanish explorers had trodden the same soil as them. But they too had fallen sick. Some even died, and those that lived, lived in fear. Fear of what had driven the original native settlers to leave too. Horrible, morose cries would be heard in the night, edging down the mountains towards them. As with the Spanish before them, Captain Portlock’s party begged him to leave, and so they did, only leaving his name to bear on what they saw as cursed ground.

The sickness felt by the explorers could be attributed to infrasound – a low-pitched frequency that can’t be heard by humans, but the effects of which most certainly can. Several mammals use it for communication, including elephants, whales, and rhinos. Tigers though, use it to stun and disorientate their prey when they roar. Exposure to infrasound can cause inner ear imbalances, vertigo, nausea, vomiting, and bowel spasms. It can even cause resonances in inner organs, such as the heart. And it’s also been attributed to a creature of legend.

But the story really begins in 1867. A new community of nomadic Sugpiaq set up a camp in the bay of what was to become Portlock. They were amazed by the abundance and size of the clams and other bounty they found on the shoreline. No doubt, it signalled to them that this was a place they could spend the winter and never be without food. But their joy was short lived. Within a month, they were attacked. What they described as cannibal giants began to raid the village, almost nightly at times. They fought with an animalistic savagery the Sugpiaq have never encountered before, and they named the giants Nantiinaq – or the hairy man. At first, the people fought and were unwilling to give up their new home. But as the months turned into years, the attacks did not stop. Whenever game became scarce, the cannibals came. And they showed no mercy. The San Francisco Chronicle famously reported on the events, stating ‘the giants rip people to shreds in the streets every time they need a square meal’. In 1905, the village is abandoned, and the Sugpiaq leave.

Then, in 1921, a small community of Russian-Alutiiq are attracted to the bay for the same reasons as the Sugpiaq. But this time they have 20th century industry with them. They build a cannery to process the salmon, a post office, and a school. But they very quickly implement strict rules. There is a curfew at night. Armed guards patrol the streets, and especially the school and entrances to the cannery. And nobody, ever, ever goes out in the fog or into the forest. It seems that they know… the forest belongs to Nantinaq, and in the fog, it will stalk the streets of town too.

Cannery at Cordova

The rules worked… for a while. But as the community grew bigger and more successful, perhaps they became overconfident and let their guard down. Whatever happened, in 1931, a man named Andrew Kamluck, ventured out into the forest to log some trees. They found him with his head caved in. It was said a piece of equipment, heavy enough to have been hauled there by Kamluck’s dogs, had been the murder weapon. The dogs too were found torn to ribbons.

After that, the rules weren’t enough to save Portlock. First, a few gold prospectors disappeared. Then the Dall sheep and bear hunters. Each time, a little closer to town. Something was moving in on them. They all felt it. Occasionally, a body would wash up in the bay with strange bite and claw marks, or worse, beyond recognition. Twice, on the foggiest of nights, something broke into the cannery. On the second occasion, it caused enough chaos and damage for it to burn to the ground. One day, they found a man that had been missing for months. His body had been swept down the mountain by the Spring rains and into the lagoon. The remains were torn and dismembered in a way no bear was capable of. Official reports list fifteen people as having gone missing during that time, but the Alutiiq say it’s far higher. The community describe themselves as being terrorised by the creatures, and in 1950, almost overnight, they finally abandoned the town.

And it doesn’t end there. In 1968, a goat hunter is stalked and chased by a creature making horrendous screams as it followed him through the woods. Then, in 1973, three hunters take shelter in the remnants of the village during a storm. All night, their camp is circled by something that growls at them and utters unintelligible, threatening sounds. Each swears it walked on two feet. More recently, in 1989, a native paramedic attends an elderly man who has suffered a heart attack after returning from a walk in the woods. The native is an Alutiiq, and he knows the legends. He asks the old man if he saw it, if it bothered him. The old man nods, looking terror stricken towards the treeline. He dies in the paramedic’s arms. And until this day, the Alutiiq know to stay away from the forest, and to never go out in the fog.