Original subtitles

Previously on expedition big foot

I believe big foot are here in Washington in large numbers.

We're investigating this fork

because it's the perfect natural choke point.

And if this trip wire works like I think it should...

Nothing, and I mean nothing, will be able to get through

without us knowing about it.

Right now, the objective,

get down to where I saw that thermal,

see what I can find.

I wanna get on a trail while it's hot.

Whatever moved through here, kept going.

In northern California, we believe

they went to the lost coast to give birth,

but here in Washington,

they might be looking for mates.

- Something's moving towards us. - -Something's coming.

What was that?

Jeez!

Something came up here

and pushed its hand up against there.

That is massive.

That's a building, bro.

It's a logging cabin.

There's an old trestle.

Biko, did you hear that?

Yeah, I did.

It's like a very high-pitched whistle.

Yeah.

What is going on right now?

While pursuing a creature

that moved through their camp just a few days ago,

Dr. Mireya mayor and biko Wright

have begun to hear strange noises

coming from the opposite side

of an abandoned, crumbling bridge

teetering over a river hundreds of feet below them.

Can you see it?

I can't see it.

God, that's frustrating, isn't it?

- There's something over there. - Yeah.

And I kind of have that eerie feeling again.

Like I did the other day.

We have to try to make it down on the other side

so we can get across.

Looking at the height of this bridge,

it's obvious that there's a very steep drop.

We're in the middle of nowhere,

and nighttime is no time to try

and explore how to get down.

It's just not safe.

Let's come back during the day.

We gotta find a way across tomorrow.

Rolling here.

Mireya interview cdf cam.

Earlier today, biko saw something on the top of the hill,

and right now, we are making it our mission

to try and see what direction it went in, to see if we can identify it.

And that has to do with...

What was that?

Are you hearing that?

It sounds like there's a back and forth.

Okay, is biko hearing it?

What is that?

Were you guys hearing that at your interview spot?

I could hear something, too, from where I was.

What did it sound like to you?

Nothing I... nothing I've heard here yet.

Same.

Do you wanna take a walk in

- and just see if we see anything? - Might as well.

Now it's, like, eerily quiet.

The woods go quiet when a predator is around.

It's back.

That sounded like almost like an animal got injured.

It sounded like it was a shriek of death.

No, something's moving there.

Is that something?

I swear that sound reminded me

of that moment where an animal's just...

Gone, and it's basically just in pain.

In this part of Washington,

the only animal species that I know

that hunts in packs are wolves and coyotes.

So, I'm not really sure what mireya and I are hearing.

But I know that whatever it is,

it's coming from that other side of the river.

And now it's so quiet

that I'm wondering if whatever it was is gone.

I don't see anything.

All right, I'll carry the sat phone.

We should be in good shape.

Four miles away from mireya and biko's position,

Russell has decided to turn an old logging cabin

into a temporary base camp

while in pursuit of a thermal signature

that he believes could be big foot.

You got all your gear?

Yep.

Last night in the darkness, I lost the trail.

But the good news is I found this cabin.

It kind of gave me an idea.

I'm gonna use this cabin

and stage some of my heavier equipment here.

I'll be able to cover a lot more ground that way.

Something has moved through here.

I can tell that there's a lot of animals

moving around the area.

So, what I wanna do at this point is set up

a perimeter of trail cams around this cabin area.

I don't ever get a chance to use these things

'cause we're on the move so much.

So, maybe we'd get a payoff on this one.

One of the things that's made me

I find success out here as a researcher

is I'm on the go.

It comes through...

And it goes back through.

Being able to work out of this cabin,

once we set them up, we can leave one area,

go research another area

while these cams are actively researching for us.

A pretty good, broad view here.

We're covering a lot of forest coming this way,

and we can cover anything coming this way.

Now that I have set up trail cameras around this perimeter,

I'm gonna try to get back on the trail of whatever it is

that I was tracking last night.

Do you ever get the feeling they're watching us right now?

I do.

At the command center in the southernmost point

of the target zone,

Bryce continues to monitor the seismic trip wire

the team deployed.

This trip wire will alert Bryce of any big foot

moving through the area.

Looks like there might have been a couple deer that came through,

but nothing walking upright and on two legs,

which is when the system will alert me.

Now we just wait for, wait for our quarry to come in.

The team placed the seismic trip wire

at the northernmost point of the target zone

in order to take full advantage

of the fork's natural choke point.

And I just turned the device on.

How's that, copy?

All right, Russ, I've got you right here.

The ground team has experienced

lots of possible big foot activity.

So far, none of it has occurred

in the vicinity of the seismic sensors.

So, this is the 3D scan,

that mireya and biko took

when they went back to that hillside.

Here we go.

This is the most powerful scanner

that we have ever used out in the field.

Looking pretty good.

He's pretty sure it was a big foot,

but, we can't, you know, jump to conclusions.

So, I've set up a call with Dr. Emily splichal.

She's a forensic podiatric

who we've spoken to in the past.

During the northern California expedition,

Dr. Splichal examined a potential juvenile print

found near the possible big foot nests

the team discovered.

The fact that they're very well-defined

makes me think that there's more

of an effortlessness in the movement.

And that's something that could suggest

that it was a younger animal that made that imprint.

Fascinating.

I was only able to send her 3D scans,

but just by looking at this thing,

she'll be able to tell if it could have possibly come

from an upright-walking creature.

Hey, Dr. Emily. How are you?

I'm doing amazing.

Were you able to get those files I sent you?

I did, I did.

I'll pull them up right now.

When I looked at the 3D scan,

there is a lot that you can tell

- just from an imprint. - Man.

You could still see the toe articulation,

the shape on the inside

and the outside of the imprint,

which is essentially indicating

that there are these arches,

so that shape is called a plantigrade foot.

Which is very homo sapien-like.

That is incredible!

But, Dr. Emily, could you sort of explain to me

the relationship between that arch and the physiology

of whatever made that footprint?

What the arches would indicate in a footprint

is the way that the individual would be moving.

- Wow. - Along the inside of the foot,

we have what's called a medial arch

or the inside arch,

and then you have a similar one on the outside.

And those arches

allow the foot to create what's called a lever.

And a lever position of the foot,

if you imagine doing, like, a calf raise

and you lift your heels up,

that's one of the most important changes

of a human gait pattern,

is that we have forward propulsion

through this lever.

Is that something characteristic solely of humans?

It is, so it's very characteristic of bipedal gait,

and there's a lot of theory around

the evolution of the human brain,

being large and advanced with the neocortex,

correlating with a bipedal gait.

Incredible.

I had no idea there was a correlation

between bipedal movement

and the highly evolved brains that we have as humans.

But if you think about it, it makes perfect sense.

I've always believed big foot to be more intelligent

than the other primates,

and its ability to walk upright

may just be the reason why.

You know, it's funny that you talk about movement,

because we actually captured something

moving through our base camp on our lidar array.

What's that?

Something's coming.

- Something's moving towards us. - Something's coming.

Zoom in.

Do you see it?

It just ran away.

Just by looking at this movement,

is there any way we can make a correlation

between what left those footprints

and what this thing is?

Yep, I definitely see some movement on that upper left.

And if you don't mind playing that back again?

Sure.

Okay, yeah.

If you don't mind playing that back again?

Sure.

- With the help of forensic podiatrist Dr. - Emily splichal,

expedition leader Bryce Johnson is attempting to determine

if the team's lidar cameras recorded a big foot.

My god.

Although it was a little bit hard to discern,

I'm seeing what looks like arms swinging.

That drives the pelvis to rotate in a certain way,

very unique to bipedal upright standing movements.

Wow!

So, do you think that those footprints

that we sent you could correlate

to whatever creature seems to be walking through this base camp here?

So, upright stance,

walking on two feet, arms swing

correlates with a foot that can support

that structure and that movement.

So, seeing the consistency

between what was sent to me on the 3D scan

and with the movement that we're observing,

I would believe them to be a similar being

that made them.

Wow! It's incredible.

And thank you so much, Dr. Emily.

Always a pleasure.

These old logging roads give me a chance

to cover some distance pretty fast.

Back inside of the target zone,

Russell is employing a new tactic.

By utilizing an old cabin

as a temporary base of operations,

he is able to cover more ground in pursuit

of a mysterious thermal signature

he saw the night before.

Yeah, there's a lot of game through here.

Here, we got elk tracks.

Good news is, where there's game,

that means there's food.

Finding this old logging road is great.

I've been able to cover a ton of ground.

Whatever that thermal was,

it's got a pretty good head start on me.

But I think I can stay on the trail

and make up some ground if I hustle.

You know, this wouldn't be a bad place

to set up the parabolic at night.

Look at all this vast region we can at least listen to.

But with the thermal, we'll be able to see a lot of this stuff, too.

There's a couple open fields down here below.

The...

The thermal and the parabolic will let me see things

at night that I probably wouldn't even see in the daytime.

Having this vantage point is perfect.

I can monitor this entire valley from right here.

All right, let's stay on course.

Wow.

Holy crap!

It looks worse than the daylight, doesn't it?

Yeah, it really does.

4.5 miles from Russell's position,

mireya and biko have packed up

the temporary camp they made

near the dilapidated bridge they discovered last night.

They are determined to find a way across

after hearing strange noises

on the other side of the river.

I mean, you can see where entire pieces have gone down.

Yeah. I mean, some of those look like

with the littlest bit of weight, we'll just crash through.

So, look like there's a decent way down over there?

I mean, this side looks pretty nasty.

I've got a rope in my bag

if you wanna try and tie it off,

so we have a little extra security

to hold onto on the way down.

I think tying off the rope is a really good idea.

- Let's do that. - Okay.

It's really amazing to me

how the sounds that we were hearing

carry through the valleys here so well.

And seeing how steep

the terrain is on both sides of the river,

I'm not really surprised that we could hear what sounded like

an animal conversation coming from across the river there.

I'm still not sure what we heard

last night, but it wasn't anything

that I've heard before in these woods.

Really steep incline down here.

All right, I'm off the rope.

I mean, that's very loose.

Crap.

Made it down.

The sounds were definitely coming from over there.

We definitely can't get up that.

It's too sheer.

What do you think?

What we could do is we can actually use the waterway.

When I say use the waterway,

I mean literally get in it and let it take us around

till we find an area that we can start hiking in.

So, the plan is for biko and I to get into the water

and use the river itself.

We have dry bags in our backpacks

that we can use to keep all our gear dry

and, simultaneously, use these as flotation devices

to help us navigate through the river.

All right, let's do this.

A little overcast, not bad.

Four miles from mireya and biko's position,

Russell has returned to his cabin

in order to retrieve his parabolic microphone

and thermal camera before he makes his way back

to the vantage point for tonight's stakeout.

I know that's not us moving through here.

It's been over 10 hours since I set up

that perimeter around this cabin.

And since then, there's been clear signs

that something is moving through this area,

which means that we'll have that on camera.

It went right around those cameras.

Look at this, but they went that way.

They went around. Look at this.

But they walked around right through the ferns.

When I start checking my cameras, there's a problem.

There's nothing on any of them.

That tells me that whatever's coming through here

knew where the cameras were and was avoiding those areas.

They walked all the way around my cameras.

So, I'm thinking, "are they hearing these things?"

Do they smell the camera?

"Or is there something else?"

I think I got an idea.

These things have an ir light.

We can't see it.

What if they can see the ir light on this?

Infrared or ir light is a type

of light wave outside the visible spectrum,

making it invisible to the human eye.

Ir cameras, like military night vision goggles

or home security systems,

use ir light to illuminate areas that appear pitch black.

Some animals, such as pit vipers and certain insects,

can sense ir, enabling them to track warm-blooded prey.

And many big foot researchers believe sasquatch can detect ir light.

We gotta figure a way to cover that ir.

I've got an idea that might work.

All right, turn around, let me get these in your backpack.

Something came through here and avoided all my trail cams.

There's only one thing out here that I can think of

that's smart enough to do that.

It's time to turn the tables.

Game on.

- That's cold. - That is cold.

3.5 miles from Russell's position,

mireya and biko have devised a bold strategy

to cross the river

in order to continue their pursuit

of what sounded like multiple predators hunting.

All right, biko.

Let's go.

I got no idea where this river is leading to.

I don't know what kind of rapids

are gonna be down the river.

But it's really the only choice

we've got at this point to get on that other side.

In order to safely reach

the other side of the steep ravine

and continue tracking the sound

they heard the night before,

mireya and biko will travel downriver

in hopes of finding a portion of the river

that isn't surrounded by impassable sheer cliffs.

Once they find a flatter portion of the river

that allows them to cross to the other side,

they will double back on the West Side of the river,

making their way back to the bridge in the area

where they heard the strange noises.

You good?

I think we should keep looking for another spot.

- This still looks pretty steep, man. - -Yeah.

There's gotta be a better way in there.

When you're walking through the forest,

you are somewhat in control of where you're going.

You don't have that ability in the water.

The river is in complete control.

We have no idea what's coming around the bend.

Seems like the current's picking up a little bit.

Careful.

There's a rock!

Let's keep going.

There might be a flat area up there.

We can stop for a minute.

There were areas in that river where the current

was going full speed and just pounding us.

And then suddenly we see this piece of land

where we could get out of the water

and walk into the forest because it wasn't sheer cliff.

It seems like there might be some trails up now

that we're out of that steep canyon area.

But before we do that, let's make a fire and just dry off.

That sounds good.

I'm gonna grab rocks to make a fire ring.

All right. I'll go find some firewood.

As a hunter, you always want to be one step ahead of your prey.

And there's no doubt in my mind

that whatever we were dealing with last night

was not expecting us to float downriver,

cross the stream and get up that other side.

After we dry off, we're gonna double back to the bridge where we were last night,

and I believe we have the element of surprise.

It feels great.

It's gonna take a minute, but let's get this stuff set up.

Four point five miles away

from mireya and biko's position,

Russell believes a creature is intentionally avoiding his trail cameras

because it can detect the infrared lights they emit.

To outsmart it, Russell has devised a plan.

One slightly that way, one slightly this way.

Nothing can get through here without being seen.

Okay, I won't turn that on yet.

These things were avoided on purpose,

and my theory is, what if they can see ir light?

I want nothing in the way.

So I want to build something that will mask those ir lights.

I want to have the camera set up

and put something in front of them

that they can't see that ir light.

And I'm going to cover each of those trail cameras around this perimeter.

If I hang these here and cover those cameras,

there's no ir light to be seen.

But the problem is, how am I going to get

any kind of picture of something moving if they don't see the motion?

So I have to get creative.

So if something allows these things to drop

that exposes that... Anything moving out this way.

You get seen.

The plan I've put together is set up a trip wire,

a basic standard trip wire that if you pull the wire,

it makes something heavy drop and unmask these trail cams.

Go underneath this.

Voila.

Okay, if you look right here,

the face of this trail cam is covered.

There's a visible ir light that's covering it.

Same with this side over here.

What happens

is this tripwire pulls the bottom of this.

This log will come down, which pulls this down,

which triggers that, both of them will drop.

Works every time.

Now that this is set up, I'm gonna head to the high ground

above this whole area and set up my parabolic mic.

But tonight, anything walking to or from this area will hit that wire.

The log drops, we'll get pictures.

All right? Moving on to the next one.

Man, it's pretty late. I've just been driving all night.

Just outside of the target zone,

Bryce is en route to a witness who has been experiencing

unexplained events at his remote residence.

He believes these incidents are connected to big foot.

After finding that handprint on the command center last night,

I just keep thinking about how brazen these big foot in Washington seem to be.

Are they just curious or is something else going on?

That's why I'm excited to speak with Matt

because he's been having a lot of activity on his property.

But not only that, working as a corrections officer for decades,

he has been trained as an observer

and has an awareness that a lot of us just don't have.

- Thank you for coming. - Yeah.

Sounds like you're having some unwelcome visitations.

Well, me and my family, we're from east Texas,

and four months back, we moved in and stuff started to happen here.

How long ago after you bought this place did stuff start happening?

Almost immediately.

Put up a couple of flood lights

and, the flood lights between 12:00 and 1:00 would always go off,

and we'd get this kind of strong, overpowering smell.

Wet dog kind of must... Just a must like wet animal.

And it came out one morning and I noticed that I had

these giant footprints in the grass,

about 17 inches in length.

The thought of sasquatch or big foot was

starting to enter our mind.

So I put up cameras.

Shortly after that, the most scariest thing that happened

involved my daughter.

I came into the kitchen to get a glass of water one night.

And then my daughter comes running out of the bedroom.

And she goes, "I know you're trying to sneak on me."

And I said, "what?"

She said, "you're right outside the bedroom window."

So your daughter thinks that you're like

playing a joke on her, trying to scare her.

- But you're like, "not me." - Yeah.

So I came over here into this room.

This house was a real fixer-upper project.

The bedroom window was actually busted out.

So, we had a piece of cardboard up over the window.

The cardboard was being pressed inward into the house,

and so I'm just standing there watching this take place.

It's almost like something's standing right outside.

But whatever it is, it's got to be massive

because it's blocking the whole window whole window.

Taking up the whole window.

The whole thing just moved and went back to black.

Whatever was standing there was watching her.

I'm a father, too. It's one thing for me to sort of experience

something strange,

but when it starts to involve my family,

- then it... it gets personal. - Right.

It definitely does.

And, I look at the cameras,

and when I did, we caught something on film.

Matt, do you have that video?

- I do have that video. Yeah. - I'd love to see it.

Okay, I see movement.

Hard to make out what it is.

You can see something starting to come around.

What is that?

What is that?

- Right there. - Right there.

Dude, I just got chills, man.

And a hand right there.

Dude.

Dude, I can see it clearly.

That's like this mass moving around.

I keep seeing that face sort of peer around the corner.

I'm kind of speechless, man.

I can see why you're, concerned.

Where was this?

This was taken just right here.

- Can we see where... Where this is? - Sure, yeah.

To me, that video confirms that these last few months,

Matt and his family have been terrorized by a big foot.

I mean, typically, you hear stories about big foot avoiding people,

but it sounds like here in Washington,

people like Matt, myself and my team,

are experiencing similar behaviors

where big foot is intentionally approaching structures or spaces

that humans are using.

Are these sasquatches just curious,

or are these those rogue sasquatches that I keep hearing about?

And are they viewing us as a threat?

You have these travelers, loners.

They're those sasquatches that we call rogues.

These rogues, they don't settle down. They don't find mates.

They were settled down, and then something snaps.

Like I say, fear the rogue.

I put the camera, positioned it right here where this plant is now.

- Right. - And it was facing right down here.

What's crazy is, like, so from that video,

the thing, the face comes out like, right, like hereish.

Yeah, it does.

And, if you look in the video,

you can see that the knees are slightly bent it looks like.

And this roof is nine foot off the ground.

So whatever it is is probably closer to 10 foot in height.

- That's disturbing. - Yeah.

Just being here with my back to the forest,

I can tell you we don't come out after dark.

This looks like a pretty good spot.

Right here.

After drying their clothes by a fire,

- mireya and biko have backtracked 1. - 2 miles up the river

on the opposite side of the downed bridge,

where they set up a temporary camp the night before.

Now they are on the same side of the river as the strange noises,

which sounded like a possible big foot hunting party.

Biko and I are out here just basically trying to stake out this area.

Last night we heard a sound that was coming from across the river.

Now that we're here, we're trying to pick back up on that trace

and look for whatever made that sound.

We thought this could be an ideal place

to really see if anything is moving through here.

We'd be able to see it on the thermal and biko's night vision.

To me, the noises we were hearing sounded like a big hunting party.

Biko, did you hear that?

There was all these aggressive vocalizations,

and then all of a sudden,

there was this loud blood-curdling scream

like a prey animal just got killed.

I don't know what's out here making all these sounds,

but it feels like in my gut there's some

unknown predator hunting out here in the pack.

I don't see anything on the night vision.

I'm not getting anything on the thermal, either.

Listen.

What was that?

That is really strange.

That did not sound like any bobcat I've ever heard.

That was the same sound we heard the other night, though.

Whatever we just heard was the same thing we heard last night.

The only difference is now we're both on the same side of the river.

Okay.

It's a calm night.

A little bit of clouds, but pretty much clear.

So if it's clear it'll be getting more light.

That will bring the animals out to start feeding.

Five miles away from mireya and biko,

Russell has returned to the vantage point he discovered earlier,

determined to pinpoint the current location

of the creature he's been pursuing.

Using his parabolic microphone from this position

will allow Russell to track anything moving through this area.

The cabin's out that way.

We've got the parabolic setup.

I'm gonna turn on the thermal.

We'll start scanning.

I feel like whatever I've been tracking is sort of toying with me.

But at this point, I'm now one step ahead of it

because I've set up trail cams.

And here, with my parabolic mic and my thermals,

I have that tactical advantage.

I've been doing this for a lot of years.

And so far in Washington, I've heard some strange sounds I've never heard in my life.

Not seen anything yet.

There's something moving out there.

I can hear it.

There's something out there moving.

Look at that. Hey. Hey.

Watch.

Are you hearing that?

Listen.

Holy crap.

I've spent three decades in search of elusive and rare animals,

and when I set out to a destination,

I've really always relied on the local knowledge

on a particular expedition in Venezuela,

I was going village to village

and asking, "where was the last time you've seen this uakari",

this monkey that we're in search of?

I went to the first village.

They had seen it some months before.

Then the next one, some weeks before.

And finally got to that one village that had seen it that day.

So when you're planning an expedition,

it's not really until you go boots on the ground

that you really hone in on that target zone.

Holy crap.

There's something out there.

I can't believe what I'm hearing.

I'm hearing those same clicking sounds I've heard several days ago.

It's a very unnatural sound that I've never heard before.

I believe this thing is communicating with something else.

Where are you?

Right out in that direction.

I heard it.

No, you've got to be kidding me.

Suddenly, the clicking stopped,

and I can still hear movement down below me.

And I don't know how far it is away from me.

But at this distance, any variation or movement

from that parabolic mic to the left or right,

I'll lose that sound altogether.

It's going away.

I can hear it. It's going away.

It was headed straight for where we set up the trail cams.

Let's pack up our gear. We're going that way.

We've been out here all night, and we're about an hour from sunrise.

But I know exactly where this thing is headed.

It is headed right into my trap.

I heard that thing moving away from us, those trail cams.

There's definitely been animals coming through here.

The way this is matted down.

While Russell pursues the source behind the unexplained sound,

5.

5 miles away, mireya and biko are hot on the trail

of what could possibly be a big foot hunting party.

I think we're getting close to where that sound was coming from.

As we were weaving our way through the woods...

Look at this.

Something caught mireya's eye.

This is what got my attention.

What the is this?

Look at this.

- Those are roots. Yeah. - Sticking up like that.

- That is weird. - Like an upside down tree.

Definitely not natural.

The way these things were leaned up against the tree,

it was obvious that something had manipulated them.

I don't see any cut marks from tools.

We're looking for tool marks, saw marks, cut marks.

We couldn't see any.

All the branches were snapped, broken off.

Do you think that is a way of marking territory?

I don't know.

That's when we were in norcal.

Bryce.

We found several of these, all in a straight line...

Whoa!

And it led to a massive, massive tree structure.

Holy.

I just got the chills.

Look.

- There. Look. - There's a little... there.

- There's another one. - Yeah, it's massive.

There's a bigger structure.

Once again, upside down.

That one long piece that is over 25 feet tall.

How did that get placed there?

The fact that something hoisted a 25-foot tree trunk high into a tree...

Yeah, that's heavy.

Was just adding to my suspicions

that these things were put here by a big foot.

I mean, this definitely looks different than what we found in norcal.

How so? Was it

the fact that there's two so close together?

Yeah.

I mean, we can't really presume that it means anything at all.

But it also could be that the same thing is being communicated

in a different way.

As in like a different language.

But what we're talking about is still hypothetical.

Any time culture or language comes up in regards to the animal kingdom,

you have to be really careful not to force meaning into it

from our understanding as humans.

We know that animal communication can be really complex,

and there's still a lot that we don't know.

So it's important to keep an open mind.

I wonder where these things are leading?

Only one way to find out.

There's another structure.

Holy.

These are definitely all lining up.

Look at this.

Animal fur.

There's more fur.

There's some pieces all attached together.

What the?

That is woven, tied off like you would a shoelace or a ribbon.

That is one of the strangest ones I've ever seen.

That's freaking creepy.