Drone Captures Bigfoot Guiding Search for Missing Rescue Workers
Posted Saturday, September 05, 2026
By Squatchable.com staff
Alright, fellow squatchers, buckle up because this one is a doozy. I just came across some footage that is absolutely blowing my mind right now, and I had to share it with you all immediately.
So here's the deal. A drone pilot by the name of Ethan Cole, who works as a terrain survey specialist for mining companies and rescue teams in Washington, was assigned a pretty routine job. Map a sheer cliff face near Mount St. Helens using his drone. Standard stuff, right? Except what his camera captured was anything but standard.
When Ethan rounded a protruding spur of rock on the cliff, his screen lit up with something that made him sit straight up in his chair. Six figures clinging to the vertical rock face. Not climbers. No ropes, no helmets, no brightly colored jackets. Just dark, hair-covered bodies with shoulders broader and limbs longer than any human should have. And they were moving across cracks so narrow the camera could barely capture their handholds.
Now, here's where things get really interesting. One smaller individual started falling behind the group and slipped downward. Ethan braced himself, expecting the worst, but the largest one in the group immediately turned back, lowered its body, and pulled the smaller one up to safety. A coordinated rescue. On a vertical cliff. By creatures most of the world still refuses to acknowledge exist.
But the moment that really got under Ethan's skin was when the largest individual stopped, lifted its head, and looked directly into the camera lens. Not scanning the sky like an animal searching for a sound source. It locked eyes with the drone as if it understood exactly where the observer was. Then it lifted an arm and pointed toward a crack in the rock behind it, where something red was caught between the stones.
That red object turned out to be the backpack of Daniel Reeves, a rescue worker who had disappeared 17 years earlier along with two colleagues during a mountain operation. Their bodies were never recovered, and the official assumption was that they had fallen from unstable terrain.
Ethan reached out to Marcus Hail, a former ranger who knew the area had once carried access restrictions, and the two of them secretly returned to the site. What they found behind the cliff was a hidden cave system containing human belongings and the final footage recorded by the missing rescue team years before. And here's the part that flips the entire narrative on its head. The creatures had once helped injured people. The real danger all along had come from a group of humans who wanted to hunt them.
When Ethan and Marcus discovered fresh human footprints inside the tunnel system, they realized the Bigfoot's guidance had been a deliberate warning. These beings weren't the threat. They were trying to protect something, or someone, from the people who wanted them dead.
Ethan eventually released part of the footage publicly but kept the cave's location concealed. And the question that haunted him afterward shifted entirely. It was no longer about whether Bigfoot existed. It was about why they had deliberately allowed humans to see them.
Honestly, this story hits on so many levels. The physical evidence of six individuals navigating a sheer cliff with the kind of coordination and care that suggests genuine social bonds. The direct acknowledgment of the drone. The deliberate pointing toward evidence of a 17-year-old mystery. And the deeper revelation that our kind may have been the aggressors all along.
For anyone who has spent time in the Mount St. Helens area, this region has long been a hotspot for sightings. The blast zone from the 1980 eruption created a unique environment where dense regrowth mixed with old-growth remnants, providing exactly the kind of cover that large, reclusive beings would need to thrive away from human interference. Researchers have noted for decades that the Pacific Northwest, and Washington State in particular, consistently produces some of the most compelling encounter reports in North America.
If you have not seen this footage yet, do yourself a favor and go track it down. The visuals alone are worth it, but the story behind what Ethan Cole uncovered is what really makes this one stick with you. Drop your thoughts in the comments, and if you have ever experienced anything strange in the woods around Mount St. Helens or anywhere else for that matter, this is the place to share it.