High Sierra Topix

balzaccom wrote:

Mine is the mountain biker...

What's your beef against mountain bikers????

cmon4day wrote:

balzaccom wrote:

Mine is the mountain biker...

What's your beef against mountain bikers????

Beef?

how punny.

I liked the Water Bowl.

rlown wrote:ok.. so you can actually see the mapping of the "sightings" or reports, I found the KMZ maps for Google Earth.

http://www.bfro.net/news/google_earth.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Feel free to load the KMZ. I haven't yet. I had it once and read some of the reports linked in. It works a lot like links to photos and other such stuff in GE.

Anyway.

Russ

Thank you Russ for taking the time to load that up and check it out for me. My friends actually run that site. I hope there were no hard feelings about my frustration.

Here's a great video interview from National Geographic with naturalist John Mionczynski about studying sasquatch
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/c ... n-footage/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There's a lot of hubbub going on right now about a rumor/story/ongoing investigation into this hunter/poacher who supposedly shot and killed a mother and juvenile sasquatch up above Sacramento in 2010. As with most of those rumors, I didn't expect it to pan out to anything but he apparently obtained samples and they have been submitted for the Oxford DNA tests that are happening as we speak. I'd completely blow it off as farce if I didn't personally know some of the folks that have been investigating and they seem to think there might be something to it. Time will tell if it's a hoax. If the guy is telling the truth then it's a pretty terrible situation.

http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2011 ... ing-story/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.thebigfootreport.com/2012/07 ... th_16.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have seen and experienced enough crazy things in my life that the word impossible has been replaced with the word unlikely.

According to Nepalese folklore, yeti is a shaman diety. Future shamans are abducted by the yeti and teaches the ways of the shaman via induced visions. Shamanism is a worldwide phenomenon and most involve the use of psychedelic plants. Shamans were part scientists part healers part spiritual teachers for early man. We survived didn't we? If tribes were getting ******** advice from some wacko on psychedelic plants spouting whatever, shamans wouldn't have remained a sucessful fixture throughout human history. I say the shamans worldwide were onto something.

I am not anti science at all, but science can be a slippery slope, just like spirituality. People live and breathe and preach science or materialism, and anything outside it is ridiculed. Sounds like mindless fundamentalism to me.

yes I am a self proclaimed nutjob

I think Snowy put this emoticon out there. anyway, it's appropriate. One good authenticated picture or the body. If there was DNA or blood evidence it would be bigger than sequestering it off to Oxford for a DNA test. DNA tests take 3 weeks.

If Bigfoot existed, it would be only a matter of time before one was caught on a critter cam. These have caught some of the more elusive animals out there like fishers, wolverines, and that famous wanderer, OR-7, the wolf from Oregon. If you have a likely spot, put one out. You may not get a Bigfoot, but you might be surprised what you find.

I too come from a sober family of mountain people. We have a lost gold mine, but no tales of Bigfoot. Good luck with your research.

AlmostThere wrote:Even porcupines, which no one ever seems to see either.

I didn't know it is rare to see porcupines. Here is one found two years ago here. Sorry for a blurry photo (appropriately for this topic), that's all I managed in the dark forest in a hurry (0.5s exposure).

Well good news:

http://news.msn.com/science-technology/ ... f5495138e6" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If you listen closely, though, I think you'll find it's a coyote (maybe two).

A slow day, so I started reading this thread, which I'd been avoiding.

Bigfoot can't exist because you say they can't and have never seen any evidence to that point. You've also never heard any stories or seen any evidence so there isn't any. Thanks for setting me straight and saving me from untold hours of futile searching and embarrassment.

In the sense that you can't prove a negative, you're right. However, the number of people telling you they've never seen, heard of, or come across evidence of a large and otherwise unidentified critter that might go by the name of bigfoot is worth respecting. That's, cumulatively, decades of backcountry travel and observation by the members of this community. I'll add my own: over 40 years as a backcountry ranger, snow surveyor (where, presumably, it would be easy to see bigfoot tracks in winter) and ski ranger. That's probably 20 years of cumulative time spent entirely in the backcountry. Not a single instance of anything I couldn't otherwise explain or understand from known species existing in the Sierra.

The old "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is certainly true, but you'd have to explain where bigfoot fits on any evolutionary line; how (as has been mentioned) a large animal would survive -- what does it eat, where does it live; there have to be enough that they could mate and reproduce -- so it's more than one**; and, of course, how it exists yet has no confirmed sightings or credible evidence. Every other large mammal has a good record of sightings, study skins, scat, tracks, long-term history etc. etc. How has a large animal somehow not been subject to the usual rules of wildlife behavior? That's called science and has to be central to how you approach this. Otherwise you might as well be pursuing stories of leprechauns. After all, there's centuries of sightings of them.

You can't reasonably expect to seek stories only of the existence of bigfoot but reject any discussion of why it can't exist.

George

**And this is a huge point. Population dynamics requires a viable number of individuals -- likely at least 100 -- for a species to survive. This has been well studied.

Operators are standing by:

http://news.discovery.com/human/bigfoot ... 21127.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.thefrisky.com/2012-11-27/bad ... d-vermont/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It's a simple matter of Ockham's razor.