Snowcat Operator Reports Four-Fingered Hand Reaching Over Windshield in Idaho

Okay, this one stopped me in my tracks. A snowcat operator on a closed ski mountain in the Idaho panhandle describes what can only be described as a direct, close-range encounter — and the detail is what makes it hit different. The video, posted by the YouTube channel Watchtower Files, features Reed Lawson recounting a night shift grooming run at North Fork Ridge. He's 13 seasons deep into operating tracked grooming equipment, so this isn't some rookie spinning a tall tale. He knows his machine, his mountain, and the feel of the snow beneath the tracks. What he describes that night doesn't fit any category he was trained for. Here's what gets me. Lawson is parked on the summit aid bench, parking brake set, direction control in neutral, blade and tiller settled. He's done his checks twice. Then snow slides off the roof — not from the sky, but from above the windshield. And then a hand folds over the upper edge of the glass. Four thick fingers. Dark hair along the back of the hand, brown where the roof lights catch it. A forearm comes into view before it withdraws. Four thick fingers. That detail alone is worth sitting with. The classic Sasquatch hand descriptions almost always emphasize the thick, heavy digits — and here we have an operator describing exactly that from less than a cab-length away, in the dark, on a closed mountain. What makes this account even more compelling is what came before the roof encounter. Lawson had been noticing disturbances in his freshly groomed corduroy. At Culvert Bend, a dark break crossed the lane from west to east — like something had dragged across the finished snow. The ribs were flattened in one patch, broken in another. No branch, no wind pattern that explained it. He radioed it in as a "surface disturbance, no visual on the cause." Then at Cedar Cut, another mark. This one didn't cross the lane — it entered at an angle, disturbed three or four yards of the finished pattern, and turned uphill. Aligned with the center of the lane he'd just made. Continuous timber connected both locations on the east side. Something could have paralleled his route through the trees, staying just out of sight, and crossed when it wanted to. And then there's the moment he caught movement near the tree line — high enough to look like a person standing between two trunks. For anyone familiar with the long history of Sasquatch reports coming out of the Pacific Northwest and the Idaho panhandle specifically, none of this is surprising. The region has deep roots in the subject. The Boundary County area and the Selkirk Mountains have produced credible sighting reports going back decades. A closed ski mountain in winter, with groomers running heavy equipment through the night, is exactly the kind of environment where a Sasquatch would have both reason and opportunity to investigate. The machines are loud, they leave fresh tracks in the snow, they disturb the terrain — and a curious Sasquatch might want a closer look at exactly what's moving through its territory. The fact that Lawson stayed still beneath the hand rather than trying to move is also telling. He understood that any sudden movement could have created a hazard he couldn't control. That's not panic — that's a man thinking clearly about a situation that had no playbook. This is the kind of first-person account that deserves attention. The video is worth your time — the pacing, the detail, and the way Lawson walks through his decision-making makes it feel less like a story and more like a field report. Watch it. Then come back and tell me what you think that hand was doing on that roof.