Solo Female Hiker Reports Sasquatch Vocals and Knocks in Oregon

An anonymous solo female backpacker posted on BFRO that she had heard strange vocals and wood knocks while backpacking at Timothy Lake near the town of Ripplebrook, Oregon on August 11 and 12, 2023. This is near the Mount Hood National Forest. The Ripplebrook area has been the location of odd lights and the mysterious disappearance of Berg and Nann Gillingham in 1916. The Gillingham’s ran a campground and went missing in October of 1916 and were never heard of again.

Said the woman in the report: “I backpacked around Timothy Lake in Oregon. I took it easy and did it over the course of a few days and 2 nights. I do not sleep great in a tent and wake up periodically when I roll over. Both nights I happened to wake up like this around 3 am and both nights I heard this crazy howl/yell coming from the other side of the lake. It sounded like it was coming from really far away.”

The woman continued in her report: “The calls repeated, almost identically, for what seemed like several minutes. It almost sounded like some sort of alarm or something, except that when it was nearing the end of the yelling each time, the howls stopped sounding so identical and began ending in a sort of gutteral yell. 

“I could definitely hear vocal chords. I just lay in the tent in amazement! It had to have been insanely loud to be coming from such a distance.  Then on the second night, immediately after the howl/yells ended, just to the south of me, and not terribly far away, I heard the resounding CRACK of a clear wood knock. I am still kicking myself every day for not trying to find my phone to record it. For some reason I felt like if I moved it would stop.  Once I got home I looked up a map of Timothy to try and figure out what direction the calls were coming from. The weird thing is that both nights it sounded like it was coming from the opposite side of the lake from where I was.”

Said the report: “I did clearly hear something get into the lake right outside my tent the first morning. It caught a fish, and got out of the water. I heard the fish flapping against the water as it was pulled out, and I clearly heard water dripping off of fur after it got out of the water.  In the lake it was probably no more than 15 feet from me, and when it got out it was probably something like 20-30 feet away.  It stood there for a bit, and when I rolled over on my loud ultralight pad, it heard me and ran off. It was really early in the morning, just as there was starting to be light out.” (bfro.net, 21 Oct 2023)