Shadows in the Gifford: Searching for Bigfoot and Brotherhood in the Pacific Northwest

The forest sounds empty, but it is a landscape teeming with the unseen evidence of a wild, interconnected ecosystem. Earlier in the day, a trek along the lakeshore revealed the telltale signatures of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest: deep-set hoof prints of elk, the silent press of a cougar track, and the weathered remains of coyote scat. As night falls, the transition is absolute. The towering Douglas firs and western red cedars turn into jagged black silhouettes against a sky dominated by a full moon struggling to pierce through a thick layer of Pacific Northwest clouds. Deep within the 1.3-million-acre wilderness of Washington state, the silence is so heavy it feels physical, punctuated only by the rhythmic thumping of one’s own heartbeat.

No creature in this high-altitude sanctuary is giving its location away. In the wild, noise is a liability, yet there is a profound sense of being watched. Standing on the edge of a lake whose waters are as dark as obsidian, the shadows between the trees seem to shift. It is here, in the quietest hours of the night, that the line between folklore and reality begins to blur. Beside me, Tanner Hoskins raises a high-resolution thermal scope to his eye, his movements practiced and methodical. He scans the tree line, looking for the telltale orange glow of a heat signature that shouldn’t be there. He pauses, his frame tensing as he sweeps toward the far corner of the lake. “I think I’ve got something moving,” he whispers, the adrenaline of the hunt cutting through the freezing air.

For the last six years, Hoskins and a tight-knit group of friends have dedicated their weekends to searching the rugged terrain of the Pacific Northwest for an answer to a question that has haunted the region for centuries: What else is out there? This isn’t just a hobby; it is an obsession rooted in a series of inexplicable events that transformed a group of military veterans and skeptics into some of the region’s most dedicated amateur researchers.

The origin of this particular search party dates back to a July night in 2020, at a dispersed campsite tucked into a grove of ancient pines about two miles from where we now stand. Kelly Stolp and Mike Palagi, friends who had served together in the Army since 2005, were enjoying a typical camping trip with family. Stolp, a man who grew up on a 35,000-acre ranch in Montana and has decades of experience hunting and navigating the backcountry, is not easily rattled. He has encountered grizzly bears in his camp and handled the stresses of military life with composure. But that night, as the fire died down, he heard something that defied his extensive catalog of wilderness sounds.

From the darkness came a loud, guttural howl—a sound Stolp describes as resembling a car engine struggling to turn over. Then came the footsteps. They were slow, steady, and heavy—more of a "stomp" than a "step." Stolp could feel the vibration in the earth through his tent floor. Most importantly, he knew with absolute certainty that the creature was bipedal. He listened, paralyzed by a rare surge of primal fear, as the creature brushed against the huckleberry bushes just feet from his head. The next morning, Palagi—a former defensive lineman with a penchant for skepticism—dismissed the story, pointing to an empty whiskey bottle as the likely culprit. However, the following night at 3:00 A.M., the heavy thumping returned. This time, Palagi heard it too. The two men, trained as military snipers, cleared the camp with weapons drawn, finding nothing but the lingering sense of a massive presence. They spent the rest of the night in their vehicles, a first for two men who had spent their lives mastering the outdoors.

This encounter led to the formation of the Pacific Northwest Bigfoot Search. Hoskins, who worked with Stolp and Palagi at Shriners Children’s Hospital in Portland, took the lead. While Stolp and Palagi remained grounded in their skepticism—often trying to "debunk" their own findings—Hoskins leaned into the possibility. Growing up, his great-grandmother had told him stories of "hidebehinds," mysterious creatures blamed for the disappearance of loggers in the Idaho panhandle. To Hoskins, the stories weren’t just myths; they were part of a larger, unexplored biological mystery.

The search for Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, is a pursuit steeped in both Indigenous tradition and modern fringe science. The name "Sasquatch" is an anglicized version of "Sasq’ets," a word from the Coast Salish people of British Columbia. For generations, various tribes have described a large, hairy hominid that serves as both a physical inhabitant of the woods and a spiritual guardian. In the modern era, Bigfoot has become a cultural phenomenon, fueled by the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film and thousands of reported sightings. According to the Bigfoot Field Research Organization (BFRO), Washington state leads the nation with over 700 documented reports.

While mainstream science remains largely dismissive due to the lack of a "type specimen" (a body), the phenomenon has attracted the attention of serious academics. The late Dr. Grover Krantz, an anthropologist at Washington State University, and Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, a professor of anatomy and anthropology at Idaho State University, have both argued that the consistency of footprint morphology across decades suggests a real, biological entity. Even the legendary primatologist Jane Goodall has expressed an open-minded view, noting that the existence of similar legends across nearly every continent is a compelling piece of anecdotal evidence.

Hoskins’ group, however, isn’t just looking for a monster; they are looking for people. In 2021, after being contacted by a family whose loved one had vanished in the Gifford Pinchot years prior, the group launched the Pacific Northwest Missing Persons Project. They realized that their specialized skills—tracking, thermal imaging, and the ability to navigate off-trail in dense brush—were perfectly suited for cold-case searches. Hoskins has since compiled a database of over 500 missing persons across the West Coast. Their mission is to pick up where official Search and Rescue (SAR) operations leave off, often due to budgetary constraints or the passage of time. For Hoskins, who was born with severe scoliosis and had his right leg amputated as a toddler, these searches are a way to fulfill a lifelong desire for service that was thwarted when he was denied entry into the military and law enforcement due to his physical disability.

The Gifford Pinchot National Forest provides a hauntingly beautiful backdrop for this dual mission. Covering over 1.3 million acres, it includes the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and the dark, rugged corridors of the High Cascades. It is a place of geological instability and dense biological diversity, home to the infamous Ape Canyon—where gold miners reported a battle with "ape-men" in 1924—and Skookum Meadows, where a controversial body imprint was discovered in 2000. The terrain is so synonymous with the creature that Skamania County passed a 1969 ordinance making it a felony to kill a Bigfoot, a law that remains on the books to this day.

During a weekend search, the group’s methodology is a blend of high-tech surveillance and old-school woodsmanship. They deploy audio recorders to capture "vocalizations"—the screams, whistles, and wood-knocking attributed to the species—and use plaster of Paris to cast any unusual tracks. On this trip, the group discovered a large, ambiguous depression in the mud near the lake. Hoskins, ever the pragmatist, noted it could be a "deer butt" or a partial print, but they cast it regardless. "Our first step is always to try to debunk it," Hoskins says. "But you have to ask: who is walking around out here barefoot in this terrain?"

Beyond the search for evidence, there is a deeper, more human element to these expeditions. For these men, the forest serves as a sanctuary for mental health. Stolp, who manages multi-billion dollar construction projects, and Hoskins, who has faced a lifetime of medical hurdles, view these trips as a "brotherhood." In a world dominated by digital noise and professional stress, the Gifford Pinchot offers a space where they can discuss grief, hardship, and the "really hard stuff" around a campfire. "The news is garbage, social media is garbage," Stolp says. "The only thing that feels real is being in the woods with my buddies."

As the weekend draws to a close, the results are characteristically inconclusive. The thermal scope picked up movement that could have been a black bear or a large elk. The plaster cast revealed what Hoskins called an "unidentifiable blob." Yet, the lack of a "smoking gun" does not deter them. To the members of the Pacific Northwest Bigfoot Search, the value lies in the search itself. It is a rejection of a fully mapped, fully explained world. Whether Bigfoot is a flesh-and-blood primate, a relic of the Pleistocene, or a shared cultural projection, the act of looking for it keeps the sense of wonder alive.

In the early morning mist, as the group packs up their gear, the "weird energy" of the Gifford remains. Palagi, the group’s resident skeptic, still looks up into the canopy, not for monsters, but for the very real threat of cougars. He may not believe in the legend, but he believes in the mystery. As they drive their rigs back toward the paved roads and the reality of Monday morning shifts, they leave behind a forest that continues to guard its secrets. For Hoskins and his crew, the search for what else is out there is ultimately a search for meaning, proving that in the vast, shadowed stretches of the American wilderness, there is still room for the unknown.