Ape Canyon Cabin Found?

[Guest]

Ive been hearing rumblings that the mountain might be slowly waking up.  I would hate another eruption, it would just totally devastate that awesome area again!  Boo!  I was going to spend about 10 days prob on the East side or at least in the GPNF....maybe I should rethink?

 

James

[daveedoe]

I don't think an eruption would be as devastating as the May 18, 1980 eruption. Most likely be an inside the crater event. But then there could be a lot of ash if the eruption went for awhile. I would go and just stay in touch with latest updates on the volcano. Might have to leave in a hurry though.

[SWWASAS]

Mt St Helens is the most heavily instrumented Volcano in the world.    Just about 2 weeks ago they set off a series of explosions around the mountain to do deep seismology to get a better idea of what is going on in the magma chamber.    Magma is filling the magma chamber again.   They claim to have a good handle on the harmonic tremors that preceeded the 1980 eruption but they were caught off guard then.      The main issue forecasting an eruption is bulging so if that starts,  get out of the area.      I have a neighbor that worked in the Vancouver USGS volcano center.     If the eruption had happened an hour later he would have been on Johnsons Ridge and it would be named after him.   He was driving there to replace Johnson when the mountain blew.      I live 23 miles away from the South Flank.    Because of the 1980 eruption any subsequent ones would probably sent blast debris to the North.   Where all the tourists are is the dangerous side.     But with the normal Westerly winds at altitude, significant ash fall is normally heading East.    When I put in my sprinkler system the area was formerly forest but the ground pretty much undisturbed below the surface away from the house.    At about 12 inches below the existing surface there was a 2 inch layer of gray ash.    Sometime in the past, South of the mountain, had gotten a significant ash fall. 

 

Right now the most dangerous place in the country with respect to volcanism is Yellowstone.   It is bulging at a fast rate.   Several asphalt roads recently melted and were closed.    Previously quiet lakes are now boiling.   For anyone that does not know it is a super volcano and when it erupts it makes Mt St Helens look very small.   The reason there are no cone shaped mountains there is because the eruptions are so violent they blow everything away. 

 

Again that canyon topography diagram above is just the where the creek runs and only a small part of the total Ape Canyon area.   Most people do not even venture off the loop trail that runs through there.      BF in the area would just be looking down and watching the humans on the trail for entertainment.    The ridge that diverted the lahar looks like prime BF habitat to me.   It extends forested area and suitable cover well to the West up on the mountain.    It is one of those quiet places where you might expect BF to be watching you.   The place has my hair standing on end very often.   

Edited October 2, 2014 by SWWASASQUATCHPROJECT

[Explorer]

I was so curious about the capability of a human to free climb Ape Canyon that I wrote the author of the 2011 canyoneering report.
I asked him if a human could free climb the canyon and to speculate on whether a BF could.
 
He was kind enough to reply.  Below is his reply:
 
"I would be extremely shocked if any person could free climb even one of the big waterfalls we encountered, at least while there was water in the canyon. Most of the drops were overhung, and the rock was very slippery. On top of that, the rock was very rotten in some areas--when my friend Sam tried to climb it at one point, pieces broke off in his hands. Even if Big Foot could somehow climb the wet walls without slipping, it would probably fall because of its hand holds breaking off the wall."

 

If BF was real and participated in this 1924 incident, I really doubt it came from Ape Canyon.

 

It must have come from the surrounding areas at the top-end of the canyon (as SWWA Sasquatch Project suggests).

 

I hiked a portion of Ape Canyon trail this summer but did not have time to get all the way to Ape Canyon (I wish I did so that I can better appreciate the rappelling story told above). 

What I hiked was easy and forested.

 

 

[OnlyASize12]

In post #28 by CrowLogic, are the two pictures supposed to be of the same building?

I do no believe they are.  The finishing of the corners of the walls appear quite different and the steep hillside behind the cabin in the 2nd picture doesn't seem to fit with the 1st picture.   the 2nd picture honestly reminds me of a picture from an In Search Of episode or something similar.    Another detail, I'm sure I've read in the past that the cabin in question had no windows?  I supposed those could have been retrofitted in later, but does anyone else remember the store as I do?

Tim

[daveedoe]

In post #28 by CrowLogic, are the two pictures supposed to be of the same building?

I do no believe they are.  The finishing of the corners of the walls appear quite different and the steep hillside behind the cabin in the 2nd picture doesn't seem to fit with the 1st picture.   the 2nd picture honestly reminds me of a picture from an In Search Of episode or something similar.    Another detail, I'm sure I've read in the past that the cabin in question had no windows?  I supposed those could have been retrofitted in later, but does anyone else remember the store as I do?

Tim

 

I agree, earlier I shared a link, there is a picture from a newspaper article. I believe it shows the original cabin. It looks more like a shack or lean to. I have always thought the original cabin was either up above the deep gash seen from the trail or way down where the deep part of the canyon opens up. 

 

http://bigfootevidence.blogspot.com/2011/10/rediscovering-famous-bigfoot-attack.html

 

Back in the 70's I hiked from Spirit Lake across the plains of Abraham to Ape Canyon. Spent the night camped next to a Forest service shelter that use to be there just past Ape Canyon near the Muddy river at about the tree line. I think the old shelter was washed away in a lahar during the eruption. Was kinda creepy staying there knowing the story of the miners. 

here is a link to the shelter I mention. It was called Jack Pine Shelter, may have been closer to Pine Creek. This was not the cabin from the story just near the area.

 

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/64434878

Edited October 3, 2014 by daveedoe

[bipedalist]

I don't think an eruption would be as devastating as the May 18, 1980 eruption. Most likely be an inside the crater event. But then there could be a lot of ash if the eruption went for awhile. I would go and just stay in touch with latest updates on the volcano. Might have to leave in a hurry though.

 

It is the temblors, movement and slide that predicts what will happen, Volcano crumble sometimes before blowing there lid (just like MSH the first time).  Everybody doesn't get a free pass just because they don't see steam vents and cones.  A lesson learned with MSH 80 for sure.  I was up there looking down on the cones last October and I counted at least 7 active steam vents, who knows how many I missed?   

Edited October 4, 2014 by bipedalist

[SWWASAS]

That Volcano that just erupted in Japan seemed to catch the scientists by surprise.     Supposedly it is very well instrumented too.    Just when science thinks it has a handle on stuff, nature lets them know who is in charge.   There is an upcoming talk on the finding of the Cabin in the Portland Hopsquatch calendar coming up.     I know it is one of the coming events but I cannot remember what month.     Anyone near Portland Oregon should check it out.   When they post the date I will let you know here.   

 

Every spring I spend a lot of time on that Lahar.    If a BF got caught and buried in the ash fall from the 1980 eruption, the bones might just wash out some spring.    Every spring the runoff cuts more and more into the ash.    I figure that is probably the most likely place on the planet to find BF bones.    The trick is to get in, grab the bones, and get out before some ranger catches you.    The temperatures on the North Side in the blast zone were high enough to burn bone.    Unlikely anything would turn up in the blast zone and you would surely get caught off trail there. 

Edited October 4, 2014 by SWWASASQUATCHPROJECT

[MarcMyrsell]

Hi Fellows. Thanks for the thread. A lot of good points brought up. I just wanted to add a couple more cents.

 

1) Fred Beck's narrative with his son Ron, along with a couple of other sources, noted that the Venderwhite Mine (the a/c mine) was in the Mt. St. Helens Mining District. It actually wasn't. The south boundary of that district is quite a distance to the North. The librarian at the State Geology library in Olympia helped me out a lot on this, although she didn't have a record of the Venderwhite itself. The Venderwhite Mine is in an area that has no mining district. Thereby, records and indexing are more spotty. being held in Skamania County with no section-township-range index. You have to know the mine name or who filed it. Nontheless, the only other mine, possibly nearby that I could find a record of was filed by Marion Smith at an undisclosed location. All the other mines were to the North, around Spirit Lake, mainly commercial quartz operations. 

 

2) The whole Boy Scout theory that Gifford Pinchot puts out is kind of an amalgamation of 2 or 3 pieces of history. For a while the forest service was putting out that the Indians perpetuated the attack. I think that became too un-PC. So they laid it at the feet of the Boy Scouts. When the rangers or hand out tells you that it was the Boy Scouts, I think that they are trying to say the YMCA boys camp at Spirit Lake, about 7 miles to the North of AC. This is a point that confuses a lot of people in that Harry Reese, a long-time forest worker from Cougar, ran a Boy Scout troupe in the 1950's. Harry, knowing a ton of cave locations on the mountain. took the guys caving a lot. The troupe named itself the St. Helens Apes, after the A/C incident 25-30 years before. The Boy Scout troupe gave the name to Ape Cave, but of course, not Ape Canyon. 

The claim that the "Y Boys", the YMCA campers staged the attack came out about 9 or 10 days after the incident. Yes. the Y Boys were at Pummice Butte. However, the evidence against the claim is an article published in the Oregonian 2 days after the attack, stating that the Y Boys were all back in camp at Spirit Lake on Thursday night when the miners were bombarded. The Y Boys were at Pummice Butte and may have met the miners, but they were not there Thursday night.

 

3) My regrets, but neither of the two photos in post #28 are Ape Canyon. One was attached to the story by Ape Vidal from 1966, but is not the AC cabin. The other photo is the screen capture from the Sasquatch Movie reenactment, which actually stuck with me since I first saw it when I was seven or eight years old. I was able to interview Bob Gimlin last November as I had heard that he and Patterson had visited the cabin. He said that he had in 1963 or 1964 and that the cabin was sort of falling in an itself and decomposing. The cabin and mine is near the timberline, so it gets tons of snow every year and the weight just slowly crushed the cabin.

 

Anyway, I guess that this is more than 2 cents worth. Sorry. Thanks again for the topic!

 

marc

[Guest crabshack]

Thank you for taking the time to research this event Mr Myrsell.

 

[daveedoe]

thanks Mr Myrsell. I found a good read here is the link. Not sure if this has been posted before but I love the stories because I visit all the area frequently. 

 

http://feedback.pdxradio.com/topic/native-americans-reveal-secrets-of-bigfoot-1924

[MarcMyrsell]

You fine fellows! It's MARC. Although Mr. Myrsell is okay too. Thanks.

 

Jorg Totsgi is actually a side-line research project off of Ape Canyon as he was a premier writer/editor for the Real American. The RA was quite the avant-garde paper for its time, much less today, dealing exclusively with Native American affairs. It was mostly West of the Rockies, but a few stories from the East coast too. I found the paper in the State Library in Olympia. The last edition on the microfilm was July 17, 1924. The headline read "Apes Declared to be Seeah-tik Indians". The first paragraph gave a brief description of the attack. If one read further, you could read how the elusive band of Seeahtik Indian were actually described as being 7 to 8 feet tall and covered with reddish-brown hair. I feel that Jorg's intent was to educate the reading public about this unknown tribe. But what stuck was that "the Indians did it". 

Jorg was a man of letters, a high-end promoter of the culture and was a competition trad. dancer. I can only think that, if he could see the modern day results of this headline, that he'd be rolling in his grave, like "Why did I write that headline???!! Didn't they read the whole article"?!!

Earlier in the papers history, a great article came out, relating to BF stuff, that a "Whistling Indian Tribe is Discovered" in Northern Cali; an elusive tribe that can speak with birds and other animals. 

In Hoquiam, even though the paper was published out of there, the library didn't know about Jorg or the paper. I'm working on getting the library a copy as Totsgi was an important contribution to the town and to the groundwork of the modern Indian Nation. 

 

marc

[Guest]

what is more believable, bigfoot or an injun tribe that can talk to animals?

[Bonehead74]

Or both.

[Cotter]

what is more believable, bigfoot or an injun tribe that can talk to animals?

well, I think the tribe that talks to animals is more believable.  I mean, I see people talking to animals nearly every day.  Heck, I talk to my dog all the time.

Now, if the animals started talking back.........

 

;-)