The Footprint in Alaska

By Tom Neal
Bigfoot Trails Basecamp | Independent Adventure Media

I never truly believed in Bigfoot.

I mean, I believed in the lore. It was fun stuff to talk about, especially around a campfire, but I never really thought there was actually something out there wandering around the woods. Then we went to Alaska, and I found a footprint that made me reconsider that a little.

My family and I were docked near Hoonah Alaska, and we rented rented a couple trucks to explore the island with.  After driving through some of the most beautiful part of the country I have been through in my life, on what the locals considered “roads”, more trails back home we came upon a turnout to go down to a lake.  We had left the trucks and walked down toward a lake, probably300 to 350 yards. We had bear spray with us because we'd been warned about the bears. I'm familiar with black bears from around home, but these were the coastal brown bears, and they can get pretty damn big. Not Kodiak big, but still a hell of a lot bigger than what I was used to. So I wasn't walking around completely oblivious to what might be in the woods.

After coming out of the woods, we came to the lake itself, the place itself was beautiful, one of the most amazing places I have been. Not a soul around for miles, no garbage anywhere, just peace, solitude, tranquility. We got down to the shoreline and there was an old rowboat sitting there that looked like it had been abandoned for a decade or more. My family was down around the water, we messed around by the abandoned boat and just having a good, relaxing and enjoyable time. Then I wandered up into an open pasture area to take a piss. That's where I saw the footprint, although I didn't really understand what I was looking at right away.

There was a muddy section in the ground, almost like a little brook or seep running through it. What made that unusual was how dry everything else was. It had been an incredibly dry summer, and the ground beyond that little muddy section was hard and dry. But right there, there was enough soft mud to leave a good impression.

My first thought was bear. That's what you think about when you're walking around out there, but I didn’t take too long to look at it, I had to piss!  I went up toward the clearing, and as I was standing there doing my business,  I got this strange feeling that I was being watched. I don't mean that I heard something or saw movement. I just had that feeling. That eerie feeling, the hair standing up on the back of your neck.  Some say I’m paranoid, and maybe they’re right, but something was watching me, I know it! The tree line was probably twenty or twenty-five yards away, so I started looking through it, thinking maybe a bear had seen me. That was the logical thought. We'd been warned about bears, we had bear spray, and I knew they were out there.

I didn't think cougar. It didn't feel like I was being hunted. It wasn't that kind of feeling. It was more like something was simply aware of me and watching what I was doing. I stood there looking toward the trees for a while, and then my mind went back to that footprint. 

I went back to the foot print I saw, and looked at the print and pretty quickly realized it wasn't a bear track. There were no claws, it wasn't wide like a bear's foot, and it wasn't a deep, heavy impression. It looked like a bare human foot. You could see the toes.

The other thing was the size. I wear a size 13 boot, and this print was smaller than my boot. If I had to guess, I'd say it was more like a child or adolescent. And the more I looked at it, the more I wondered who the hell would be walking barefoot through that country. There were sharp rocks and devil's club everywhere. You'd have to be crazy to just decide to walk around out there with nothing on your feet.

But I didn't immediately think Bigfoot. Honestly, the thought didn't even cross my mind at first. I went back toward the family and called my son over to take a look. Then, my five-year-old granddaughter came over too, and before I even thought about pulling my phone out to get a picture, she put her foot right in the middle of it and stomped it. I was a little upset, mostly because that was the ONLY print I found in the area and wanted to identify it.

I looked around afterward, but there was nothing. Just my own boot prints. The one print I had seen was headed away from the lake and toward the clearing where I'd gone to take a piss, but there was no obvious trail coming from it or continuing beyond it. Just that one impression in the mud.

Then I immediately thought, What the hell am I thinking?

I went back and looked at the spot again, or at least what was left of it. Human-shaped foot. Toes. No claws. Smaller than my size 13 boot. One soft patch of ground surrounded by hard, dry ground. And no other prints that I could find. That's when the thought finally came into my head: Holy fuck, was that a Bigfoot track?

I still can't explain it.

Maybe somebody really was walking around out there barefoot. Maybe there was something about the mud that made the print look the way it did. Maybe I simply missed another print. I'm sure there are explanations I haven't thought of. The problem is, I was there, and none of those explanations have ever really made sense to me.  

We eventually made our way back to the trucks, my mind wandering the whole time about critters in the woods, what I saw, the possabilities. Nope, no explanations.

We got back in the trucks, to drive back toward the boat, about 15 miles down the “road”, we saw a huge brown bear with two cubs. That was about fifteen miles from where we'd found the print. So there was no question that big bears were in that country. I knew what I was looking at when I saw the footprint, and I had already considered the obvious answer.

It wasn't a bear track.

I still don't know what it was.

That's the part that has stuck with me. I went to Alaska thinking Bigfoot was just a fun piece of folklore, and I came home with one stupid little footprint stuck in my head. I don't have a photograph of it. My granddaughter made sure of that. I don't have a series of tracks to examine or some incredible encounter to tell people about. I have one footprint that I saw, one footprint I can't explain, and a strange feeling I had while standing there looking toward the trees.

The whole thing still creeps the fuck out of me when I think about it.

And yet, now I want to go back.

Not because I suddenly think I'm some Bigfoot hunter. I don't even know what I believe. I just want to find that place again. I want to walk back down to that lake and find that little muddy section. I want to stand in that clearing and look toward the treeline twenty-five yards away and see if being there again brings any of it back.

Maybe I'll find nothing.

Maybe I'll finally figure out what made that print.

But there's a part of me that wonders what I'd do if I walked into that same muddy spot and found another bare footprint.

I honestly don't know.

And I think that's why, after all this time, I still want to go back.

About the Author

Tom Neal is the founder of Bigfoot Trails Basecamp and an independent adventure journalist. He doesn't go looking for stories. He goes out on adventures, and the stories usually find him.

His writing covers motorcycles, road trips, racing, off-road adventures, travel, Basecamp projects, and the occasional questionable decision. His work has also appeared in Quick Throttle Magazine and the Freedom Newsletter.