EXPEDITION 4, 24-27 JULY, 2008.  MITCH WAITE, PRESTON SMITH, STEVE SLAYTON, ALEX HEARN

We arrived a Base Camp campground and set up camp.  We were in Campsite 1.  Nothing unusual happening other than a large rock hitting my trailer and putting a hole is the side.  It was a sizable rock, and my trailer was some distance from camp.  It appears that my trailer was the intended target.  The rest of the camp area is sheltered by trees, and throwing rocks at intended targets would not be very accurate due to the trees and leaves. 

After setting up camp, we decided to go check our Duct Tape hair traps we had left three weeks earlier.  We did use a trout as bait dangling from a string 12 feet up.  The trout was surrounded with duct tape in hopes that if anything reached for the fish, any hair would get tangled in the sticky part of the tape.  It had worked.  Our trout was eaten completely with exception of the head.  There were three hairs left on the duct tape.  We bagged it all up for further lab analysis.

We separated and started searching the area for any further signs of activity.  The first find was a pile of scat.  I dawned my latex gloves and pulled out a zip-lock bag from my CSI backpack and proceeded to bag the scat four later analyses.  It seemed to have the same plants and contents as the previous Scat we collected two months earlier. 

A short time later we located a bed of sticks under a very large Spruce Tree.  The Spruce tree was very thick and acted much like an umbrella.  A 3 foot tall pile of sticks were neatly placed for bedding near the trunk of the tree.  These sticks looks about the same age as the stick we found on the first expedition which still had their leaves on them.  The earlier find of tree limbs was in the same area, but laying all over the forest floor as if they had been harvested out of the trees to be gathered later.  All sticks were small with leaves.  The tree limbs in the shelter were the same size which leads us to believe limbs from our first find was harvested to make the bed.  However, not all the leaves had fallen off the branches. 

In this same area we found many teepee type shelters.  Some seemed to be more sun shelters or hiding spots because they would not offer any protection from the wind. 

We soon ran out of daylight and headed back to camp.  During the evening, we could hear movement all around our camp.  Preston and Alex headed up the mountain with some cameras and night vision, but were unsuccessful in catching any movement.  It seemed as if they were being lured or played with.  The noises would be just out of sight.  At one time, I was able to catch some eye shine from our camp.  They seemed a bit too red and too tall to be deer or elk.

The next day we decided to check out the area the locals called the Pools.  It was a series of water pools and slides connecting them--A very nice place to spend a hot summer day swimming.  Of course, it was crowded with hoards of humans.

We started back up the mountain to the falls.  It was very impressive.  180 foot fall of water into a pristine pool at the bottom.  We went on up to our hot zone and found a bed right next to the trail we had established when we were putting up the trout, duct tape trap.  There was a huge bed of pushed down ferns and grass.  Something has followed us back to the vehicles and then laid in the grass watching us getting ready to leave on the day before.

We decided to go up and visit the lookout tower on the highest peak.  We stopped at the Forest Service Emergency cabin to look about for a while.  Steve and I were walking down the cabin drive when he found a foot print much too large to be human.  However, it was too washed out for any detail. 

We continued on up towards the lookout tower, but stopped at the caves where I had spotted the Mogollon Monster on the first expedition.  We went into the Apartment complex and took a good look at the leaf and grass mat matt built on the cave floor.  We did not find any hair at that time.

We went on up to the lookout tower and found a Forest Ranger named Red.   A very likable guy and had a lot of stories to tell.  But, not any about the Mogollon Monster.  That subject still seemed to be a bit off limits.  However, I did notice that the Lookout tower was made with an iron door that separated the upper cabin area from the steps.  It did look as if it was used quite regularly.   I suppose that he closes the door at night when he gets ready to retire for the evening.   I couldn’t help but wonder if a Mogollon Monster could swing out around it and get on top of the deck.  I wouldn’t, but a primate might.

Our day was coming to end, and it was time to head back to civilization. 

Some comments about the expedition:   I searched for a lab to do some work on the hair and scat, but since the Bigfoot scam with the rubber suit in the freezer; none would do any work for me.  Most said they would only for species identification if I was from a law enforcement or academic agency or organization.  They would not do private work.   Therefore, I bought my own laboratory quality microscope with a camera capability.  As I removed the hair from the Duct tape, I thought for sure I would break it a dozen times because of the adhesive on the tape.  Much to my surprise, the hair was extremely resilient and did not break.  I took several pictures at 400x which clearly showed that the hair had no medulla and was not split in any way.  I got on the net and googled  bigfoot hair samples.  Low and behold, my picture matched the pictures from Maryland, Northern California, and Oregon.   All of these places claimed their hair to be authentic bigfoot hair.   I compared the hair to bear, wolverine, mountain lion, raccoon, skunk, possum, deer, elk, and any other animal hair I could find on file with nothing close to matching my hairs.  Proof enough that my hairs were from a bigfoot.

Something tossed a rock the size of a softball hard enough to break through my Trailer side which was made of 3/8 inch plywood.  All expedition members were accounted for, and there were no other campers in the area.  Access to the campground by automobile is from one direction only and is fully visible by the campsites in the area.  There was no way someone could have came down the road and threw a large rock without being seen. 

More expeditions to come