Bigfoot Traps Radio Technician Atop 160-Foot Tower

Posted Monday, July 13, 2026

By Squatchable.com staff

Okay, this one stopped me in my tracks. A radio technician named Gavin Dwire was doing routine maintenance on a 180-foot communications tower at Hawthorne Ridge when something straight out of a nightmare started climbing up the same structure toward him. The way he describes the encounter is genuinely chilling, and the detail is what makes it hit different. Gavin was clipped into the upper antenna frame at 160 feet when he felt an unusual load enter the tower through the leg beneath his left boot. His ground technician, Talia, immediately keyed the radio and told him not to come down because something was inside the tower. What he saw next was a broad hand wrapping around an exterior brace, dark wet hair lying flat over the wrist, and fingers testing the steel one at a time before taking weight. A face rose into the open panel beneath the service band, looking straight up at him. What stands out about this account, and what separates it from a panicked animal encounter, is the deliberate, controlled movement. Gavin describes the pattern as hand, foot, pause, hand, foot, with the creature holding each new position before choosing the next piece of steel. This wasn't an animal fleeing or thrashing. This was something methodically working its way up the lattice, panel by panel, getting closer to him with every move. The backstory adds even more weight to the encounter. Before the climb, Gavin and Talia had inspected the compound and found the rear fence corner damaged by a fallen limb. But below the bent rail, the mesh had been pushed inward, and mud marked the lower wire where the limb never touched it. Dark hair was caught in one twisted section of chainlink. Gravel behind the generator enclosure had been pushed into shallow troughs leading from the fence corner straight to the tower pad. Something had entered the site before Gavin ever left the ground. This kind of behavior, approaching and even entering human infrastructure, is actually well-documented in Sasquatch reports across the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Researchers like Dr. Jeff Meldrum and the late Grover Krantz have noted that these beings often show curiosity toward towers, antennas, and equipment shelters, particularly in remote ridgeline sites. There's even a long history of reported encounters at fire lookout towers and radio repeater sites throughout the Cascades, where witnesses describe similar deliberate approaches and even vocalizations from below. The Hawthorne Ridge account fits that pattern almost perfectly. The tension in the story builds as Gavin realizes his usable space is only six feet of wet steel around an antenna mount, with no cab, no roof, and no second ladder. The ladder face was blocked. The rescue bag they had hoisted up earlier, which felt like routine procedure at the time, suddenly became his only other route. For 38 minutes, Gavin was stuck up there while the creature continued its slow, measured climb. The video itself is worth every minute. Gavin tells the story with the kind of calm, technical precision you would expect from someone who has spent a decade working on public safety radio systems, and that restraint actually makes it more unsettling. There is no dramatic music, no reenactment theatrics, just a man describing what he saw from 160 feet up while his hands were still shaking. If you have not seen this one yet, do yourself a favor and go watch it. It is one of the most grounded, detailed tower encounters I have come across in a long time, and it raises a lot of questions about how comfortable these beings are getting with the infrastructure we keep building deeper into their territory.