Fly Fisherman Spots 7-Foot Sasquatch on Idaho's Upper Priest River

Three Face-to-Face Encounters in Idaho's Remote Kaniksu National Forest If you're a fan of detailed witness accounts, a recent video posted by Base Camp Chris on YouTube is absolutely worth your time. Chris shares three separate stories from the Kaniksu National Forest in Northern Idaho, all involving close encounters with Sasquatch. The video has that campfire storytelling vibe, with Chris sipping a Sierra Nevada Torpedo IPA while breaking down each account in his laid-back style. The Kaniksu National Forest is a massive 1.6 million acres of wilderness spanning the Idaho panhandle, western Montana, and eastern Washington. It borders Canada and gets hammered with rain and moisture, creating the kind of dense, old-growth forest that Sasquatch researchers have long considered prime habitat. The forest is loaded with old-growth cedar, hemlock, and white pine, and the name "Kaniksu" comes from the Kalispel Native American tribe, meaning "black robe," a reference to the Jesuit missionaries who arrived in the 1840s. The area is also home to Priest Lake and the Priest River, which sets the stage for the first story. The first account comes from a guy named Mike, an avid fly fisherman who was dying to explore the Upper Priest River. Mike grew up fishing small streams and loved using them as trails into the wilderness. As he was gearing up at a pullout near the bridge, a local logger in a passing truck rolled down his window to chat. The logger mentioned something that stuck with Mike: it was his last day working in the national forest because he never once felt alone out there. He told Mike that even when surveying the forest by himself, he always sensed something else was out there watching him. Mike headed into the river and worked his way upstream about two miles, catching cutthroat trout along the way. About two miles in, he reached a small meadow that funneled back into dark, thick forest, and that's when the feeling hit him. He was being watched. It was the same primal sensation he'd felt once before while elk hunting, when he turned around and spotted a bobcat sitting in the grass staring at him. Mike pushed through the area quickly, caught one more trout, a 14-inch cutthroat, and started heading back downstream. When he reached that same stretch of forest on his return, the feeling came back even stronger. He was overcome with vulnerability and fear. He had a handgun on him, but he still needed to pass through that area to get back to his truck. That's when he spotted what he thought was a tree burl, a bulbous growth on the side of a large tree, sitting in the shadow of the forest behind it. He took a couple steps forward, trying to figure out if it was a burl or maybe a bear. He shifted to his right to get a different angle, and that's when the shape slowly moved around the tree. Mike was hoping it wouldn't move at all. He wanted it to be a burl or a bear. But it moved, and then it slowly started to stand up. It got taller and taller until it reached about seven feet tall. In the shadow, Mike could make out shoulders that were three to four feet wide, a dark brown, almost black body, and a flat face. It stared at him for about 20 seconds. Mike was frozen. Then the creature's shoulders pivoted, its head moved with them, and it walked off into the forest in absolute silence, taking long, deliberate strides until it faded into the trees. Mike bolted straight to the riverbank, pushed his way downstream, and ran as fast as he could back to his truck. He never returned to that forest again. The second story features David, a deer hunter from Bonner County who was hunting in an area called Brooks Marsh one mid-October morning. The marsh is swampy with thick vegetation, and David was following a four-mile route around it before breaking off into the forest to find a quiet spot to sit and wait for deer. He came across a log laid flat in the woods and planned to sit on it with his rifle. But on the log, he noticed a turtle shell that looked like it had been cracked open and placed there, as if something had broken it apart and eaten the turtle inside. It appeared to be two or three days old. Curious, David looked across the forest about 20 feet away and spotted another log with another turtle shell sitting on top of it. The discussion cuts off there, so you'll have to watch the video to hear how that encounter unfolds. The third story involves a man collecting firewood in the same national forest, and Chris gets into that one in the full video. What makes these accounts stand out is the consistency in the details. Mike's description of the seven-foot height, the broad shoulders, the dark coloration, the flat face, and the absolute silence of movement lines up with countless other witness reports across the Pacific Northwest and beyond. The fact that the logger had a similar feeling of never being alone adds another layer to the story. And the turtle shells placed deliberately on logs in David's account is the kind of behavior that researchers have documented anecdotally for years, with some theorizing it could be a form of communication or territorial marking. The Kaniksu National Forest is exactly the kind of place where you'd expect these encounters to happen. It's remote, it's vast, and it's loaded with the thick old-growth cover that Sasquatch is believed to favor. The Priest River area, in particular, has a long history of reports. If you want to hear all three stories in full, including the firewood collector's encounter and the rest of David's turtle shell story, definitely check out the video on the Base Camp Chris YouTube channel. Chris does a great job setting the scene and letting the witnesses' words speak for themselves.