FRIGHTENING Encounter in MONTANA Wilderness with Solo Hiker | Plus Mountain Hike

Hey guys, Chris here. Today I'm in the Sierra Nevada and I have a story about a young man who goes solo backpacking in the Beartooth Mountains of Montana. And there he has an experience with something that does not want him there. Also, after the story we're going to do a hike up to Abbott's Pass. Beautiful area in the mountains here. That's next. Okay, so today it is early in the morning. I came out here last night and we got some fires going on and it was really windy and it just wasn't the right conditions. I ended up going to Abbott's Pass last night. It was amazing. I got this little spot that I've been scoping out on Google Maps, Google Earth, and there's these two buttes up there near the pass that are there's no trail to them and I hiked back in there. It was a really cool experience. Also, we're going to go up there after this story and do a hike this morning and I'll probably make some coffee up there. For right now, I have a sparkling Elani orange water instead of my beer today. So that is going to be something to crack and put in my cup here for our story. So yeah, too early for beer today. But this Abbott's Pass is just an amazing area. There's a lot of cool stuff up there. Carson Iceberg Wilderness is up that way. Some lakes. Incredible volcanic peaks. Great country. So all right, cheers. So this story takes place in 2015. A young man by the name of Travis, 34 years old. He was from Boston. Boston. And he every year would do a solo backpacking trip. This particular year, he decided to go to Montana. He'd never been to Montana and he decided to go to the Beartooth Plateau. And the Beartooth Plateau is just an incredible uplift of mountains and plateaus northeast of Yellowstone National Park along Wyoming Montana border there. The Beartooth Pass goes to 10,700 some feet and Granite Peak is there. Granite Peak is 12,800 feet plus. And the Beartooth Mountains are a mountain range on top of a plateau. It's just an incredible country. I've backpacked there. I've hiked there when I used to work in Yellowstone. Great country. And so Travis was really excited about going here and he spent several weeks preparing, figuring out the maps and getting his food all organized and everything planned for this trip he was going to do to the Beartooth Plateau. And he was going to start out at the Rosebud Creek Trailhead and follow that up on a three, possibly a four-day trip into the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness, which is 944,000 acres that it covers. And it goes into three national forests. It's so big. Custer National Forest, Gallatin National Forest, and the Shoshone National Forest, which are northwest Wyoming, Montana. Check it out. It's worth taking a look at. So Travis made his way out to Montana, went to the Rosebud Creek Trailhead, and the plan was to hike in and follow a series of emerald blue lakes up into the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness. On the second night out he found a camp. He decided to go find some firewood. So he goes off and he finds a small stream. He gets a little distracted by it. There's some wildflowers along the stream and he's just kind of enjoying himself. He gets his firewood and he goes back to camp. And the strangest thing, he immediately sees his tent is up in a tree about 20 feet high. Immediately he's mad, infuriated, that some camper most likely came in and is messing with him. Decided to like prank him and put his tent up in a tree. And then he looked and he couldn't see his backpack. So he starts looking around and he's just pissed off. He finds his backpack. He notices that the pack was open but whoever opened it didn't unzip it and mess with his contents. It was ripped open. The fabric was just torn open. And so now his thought is maybe this was an animal. A bear maybe? A mountain lion? It's the only thing he could think of. And most of the contents were gone in his backpack. So now he's really concerned. He had some freeze-dried food in there that was not messed with. His water filter was still there. He was really grateful for that. But all the food that he planned and packed for this trip was gone except for a small bag of almonds. And so now he's thinking maybe this was like an omnivore that broke ripped into this pack and took the food. So now he's really concerned about his whole trip is just changed instantly like that. And he's thinking at this point I need to get out of here. I don't have enough food to do this three plus day trip. So he decides to leave and before he leaves he tries to get his tent down. He can't get the tent down. It's kind of lodged up between two pine boughs. Like I said 20 feet high and he's throwing some rocks at it. Tried to dislodge it and he couldn't get the tent down. So now he's doesn't have his tent. Lost most of his food and there's about two hours left of daylight. And he's decided to work his way down to the back to the vehicle and this a two plus hour trip back to the car to get out. But the sun is dropping. He also knew that if he climbed up into that tree and tried to work the tent out and he falls he knew he was going to be in serious trouble. Breaks his arm, breaks his leg, breaks his shoulder or something. And that would just be a mess. So he thought okay I got to let this one go. I just got to get out of here. So he's hiking down the trail. He's really concerned about what's happened to him and he's still mad that who knows was it a person? Was this an animal? It was really confusing to him and he had this feeling of being watched. Just a strange feeling of being watched and every time he would look behind him he wouldn't see anything except for the vegetation moving in the breeze. So about an hour later he's at this small lake filling up his water bottle and behind him he hears this chattering. It almost sounds like children and he turns around and says who's there? Really loud. And then he hears footsteps running off like whoever it was did not want to be found and they took off. You could just hear footsteps and it really kind of creeped him out. But then he thought okay this is somebody messing with me and maybe they got a camera and they're pranking me and they're having fun or something. It was very confusing again what was going on. And so he yells out you better stay the hell away from me. Within a few moments he hears from this dense forest behind him a masculine distorted voice from me. And he's like immediately startled and this voice wasn't in the form of a question it was more like a statement. It was almost like a parrot that mimics the owner. Really creepy and at this point he's feeling like this is almost like a warning. He didn't want to make any sudden movements and he decided I'm just going to keep walking and not look back. So Travis resumed his hike. He's just desperate to get out of there. The sun is going down. He's got at least an hour and a half or more before he gets out of there. From about 20 yards behind him where he was just at 15 seconds earlier he's hiking right he hears the same distorted masculine voice me from some trees. He turns and he looks and he sees nothing but the trees and boulders. There's nothing there. So his heart is just racing because whatever this is is pursuing him following him maybe stalking him. He keeps hiking he's very focused but he's very scared. So Travis continues walking and he hears behind him this giggling chattering childlike sound again. And he turns to look and what he previously thought was a wide tree is now gone. And his first thought was am I hallucinating? Am I losing my mind? What is going on? Because it was the only way he could kind of explain to himself logically what was going on. Maybe he's just losing it. He keeps hiking and he can hear again 15 minutes later this kind of giggling sound again but this time it's on both sides of him just slightly behind him like whoever or whatever it was was now flanking him. And he's feeling really distressed. He looks behind him he doesn't see anything doesn't hear anything and he continues walking and then he comes up to this kind of a drop-off ridge goes down in a ravine comes up and there's this ridge with pine trees along it and he decides to just run over to this edge and look down because he can hear something down there and he thinks at this point whatever it is whoever it is I'm I'm at least going to see what's going on see what who they are. So he runs over to the edge and he looks down and his heart just almost stops and he's shortness of breath from what he sees and he looks down and he sees this very large muscular dark shape human-like shape jumping on the rocks and working its way down this steep slope at an incredible rate really fast. He notices that it's super quiet it's almost like it had socks on and it was jumping and it made no sound it had no sound at all just super stealth and super fast and he's just in disbelief but what he's looking at he's watching it just go and then it disappears into the trees at the bottom and then it sounded like it was working its way up the other side he could now hear it in the in the forest. So whatever this was was on two feet it did not look back at him so he couldn't see the face he could just see the shoulders and the small head on it and the back of it as it maneuvered down rock to rock through this boulder field until it disappeared but he couldn't see any facial features he did notice it was about the size of an adult possibly larger much larger maybe he was from above looking down so it was really hard to determine the height of it but he knew it was wide stocky as well as fast and his first thought after all of this is to just run so afraid that whatever this was wasn't showing actual aggression towards him but he felt there was danger like he could die if he stayed there so he ran got back to the trail and just ran not as fast as he could but like this power jog just keep going keep going keep going the sun was now down there's still some after light in the sky but the forest was dark and he was really scared at this point up ahead he notices some smoke coming out of the forest off to the right it's somewhere in this dense forest but he knew he needed to go check it out so he went through this thick forest to see if he could find this person that had this campfire he was hoping that was going to find a person back there with a campfire he went through the forest and he could see up ahead the glow of the campfire and the silhouettes of the trees and a person standing there on the other side of the fire he was relieved he came in the camp a little scratched up from the brush it was thicker than he thought and he said hi my name is Travis and I need I need some help I've had a really bad experience and he didn't really want to explain the whole story at least not initially because whoever this was he didn't know what their response was going to be so there was a man the man that was there about his age similar age to Travis 34 and turns out he was from Quebec Canada had fairly thick accent but he had pretty good English and so he they started talking and initially he was a little mad that this guy showed up at his camp but he obviously saw that Travis was under duress so to speak and he asked him about his backpack he noticed it was ripped did not have a tent and Travis initially said he believed it was a mountain lion that had done this to his backpack and then he later just said here's really what happened this is my whole story explained everything and the guy was didn't didn't doubt him he obviously Travis was under some kind of duress with this situation so he accepted it about an hour later after talking with this man from Quebec this guy goes into his tent and goes to sleep and then Travis stays around the campfire spends a night there feeding the fire he's going to keep that fire going all night he did notice at one point he thought he saw some eye shine between the trees for four or five seconds looking directly at him and at this point because he had the fire he felt a lot more confidence that he was going to be okay he noticed it kind of like turned its head and then it was gone and he just said I'm going to sit here all night I don't care just a crazy day a rough day strange day for Travis so it turns out this man from Quebec was doing the exact same hike that Travis was doing except he was coming from the opposite direction Travis was really grateful he found this guy at that time that exact time he doesn't know what he would have done he's still at at least a good hour to get out of there he stayed in touch with this guy on Facebook turns out the guy had no strange experience as he headed in the direction Travis had come from they stayed in touch on Facebook and the guy would give him tips on hiking and backpacking but Travis never felt comfortable out in the wilderness again by himself sadly because of this experience in fact he never went solo backpacking again after that experience and that is the story for today you guys pretty wild story to be by yourself and then to lose most of your gear and your tent food and then have to get out at night and have something pursuing you wow all right so we are going to go do this hike up at Abbott's Pass and this can be really cool I got a little story about what I found up there last night too very interesting what I found at least what I think I found okay so I am up near Abbott's Pass 8,700 plus feet one of the higher passes in this year I'm just below Kinney Reservoir it's just up the road a little ways and then beyond that is the pass and I found this spot up here along the highway but it's roadless there's no trail back in here there's a really cool pond and these rock formations I'm just loving this and so this is what we're going to check out today so behind me we have sierra junipers they're called and they have these at this elevation they have these really wide trunks like this very dramatic looking trees and they get really big I'm really surprised at first I thought they were some form of a cedar tree because of the trunk here check this out see look at that trunk it looks like a cedar tree or almost even like a redwood and it's kind of got this hairy texture to it really amazing it's kind of spongy or something so this is what first caught my attention when I was checking out the maps this butte behind me here the thing is a lot larger than it looks on camera here it is really cool and I got some dramatic pictures of it last night I was really happy with that let's go check out the pond okay so this is the pond that I saw on the map and it looked tiny when I saw it but now it's it's a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be it's pretty cool I love this fantastic old sierra juniper here these things get really old not sure how old but they get really old I think they're very slow growing looks like a chair up there isn't that cool I've never sat on the side of a tree before that's pretty cool all right you guys I appreciate you guys watching I'm having a lot of fun out here got more stories to come if you haven't subscribed and you like stories about the strange unexplained and things that go bump in the night you're in the right place please subscribe and as always we will see you on the next one keep hiking