Searching For Bigfoot: NEW MEXICO 05/08

NEW MEXICO 05/08

Check out the New Mexico, KRQE news coverage of our recent visit;

The areas of interest for the Searching for Bigfoot team, on this visit, were a bed and breakfast inn just outside of Farmington New Mexico, on the San Jaun river, and up in the Lukachukai mountains just over the border in Arizona.

Being in the “Four Corners” region of the United States, we could easily run between Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. We spent the majority of our time in New Mexico working with our good friends; Leonard Dan, JC Johnson, David Ortiz, Jonny Lee, and Raymond Malhman of the Crypto Four Corners research group.

We were very excited to be back with our Dine’ friends in this beautiful part of the world. The Navajo Nation (Diné in Navajo language) is a Native American homeland covering about 26,000 square miles (67,339 square kilometres, 17 million acres), occupying all of northeastern Arizona, the southeast portion of Utah, and northwestern New Mexico. It is the largest land area assigned primarily to a Native American jurisdiction within the United States. The Nation encompasses all things important to the Navajo people: the land, kinship, language, religion and the right to govern themselves. Members of the Nation are often known as Navajo (or Navaho) but traditionally call themselves Diné (sometimes spelled in English as Dineh) which means Navajo people.

The 2000 census reported 298,215 Navajo people living throughout the United States, of which 173,987 were living within the Navajo Nation boundaries. 131,166 lived in Arizona and 17,512 of these lived in Maricopa County, which includes the city of Phoenix. Because the Navajo Nation encompasses land in three states, its Division of Economic Development extracts census data for the Navajo Nation as a whole, and sends a representative to the Census Board. Another group lives on the Colorado River Indian Tribes reservation along the Colorado River in California and Arizona. The reservation also completely surrounds the Hopi Indian Reservation; the Hopi tribe is also known as “Navajo Land Island”.

We began our expedition by interviewing a few of the local people about some recent sightings in the area. The first place to visit was the: Silver River Adobe Inn B & B http://www.silveradobe.com 3151 W Main St, Farmington - (505) 325-8219
Owned and operated by David Beers and Diana Ohlson.

One of our contacts, Jim Jasso Jr. and his partner Kimber Badoni had shared an encounter with JC Johnson who writes: “I’ve guided on the non-commercial non-populated sections on the San Juan River for over six years now. Over the years we have witnessed many a strange situation in and near the river involving our furry friends. Our prospects of having a thriving river running outfit were dashed on the rocks when we had regular visits from furry upright walking homonids in our river camps. Many a guest of ours went home with memories of a sleepless night, and feelings of terror. This is not something beneficial to print in a brochure, or to drum up business.

It came as no surprise to me, when a friend of mine (Jimmy) and his wife reported that they had seen something large, black, hairy, and upright, standing in the middle of the river near a sand-bar behind the Bed and Breakfast!

’We were not looking for anything. We were just driving by, and saw this massive thing standing in the water and looking up-river.’ said Jimmy.

Here is Jimmy telling his story to Anne Mc Cormick of KRQE-13 News

I then told Jimmy; Take these binoculars, go back and give the area, a real good once over. I wanted them to be sure of what they had seen. When they returned, they informed me what they had seen was gone.”

The Searching for Bigfoot team went to the point up on the highway to see the area that Jimmy had seen from the road. Next, we headed on down to the B&B to look at the river closest to where Jimmy had his sighting. There we met with the owners of the B&B to get permission to film from their property.

The view from the road and our hosts from the B&B

David and Diana, the owners, were more than gracious and not only gave us their permission, but offered to take us to their property on the other side of the river to aid our investigation.

We all loaded up in the trucks, our team, the local news, David and Diana, and even David and Diana’s grand kids to check things out from the far side of the river.

The bottom, possible haul out, and the B&B thru the bushes

On the other side of the river, we could clearly see the area Jimmy had described. We had a view of the B&B and found a clear patch of river bottom where it appeared that the creature might have been heading.

Keeping our eyes open and checking for game trails, we finally found what appeared to be a “haul out” site.

JC and JavaBob giving the "grandkids" some pointers on what to look for... imprints at the "haul out" point... and where something came out of the game trail away from the river!

Although we did find a lot of physical evidence that would suggest that there had been some type of bipedal creature coming up out of the river, verifying Jimmy's sighting, there were no prints or other evidence that was clear enough for us to make a positive decision. Jimmy's sighting was, by now, a week old. We decided to move on out to our next sighting in the area.

We decided to go back out to the Lukachukai mountains and investigate the area where a few short weeks ago, our own TJ Biscardi saw something high up on a ridge, that he could not identify.

We thanked our hosts and packed up, heading towards Arizona and the mountains.

Lukachukai, a Diné, (Navajo), word translated as "Many White Reeds" is the birth place of our good friend, “Chief” Leonard Dan. (We refer to him as “Chief” because of his wisdom and tracking abilities). We headed on out to Leonard's family land to attempt to find a way to get up to the area of TJ's possible sighting. (See our last visit at: NEW MEXICO MARCH 08 )

TJ and Steve Kulls checking out the area where TJ had his unusual sighting on our previous trip to New Mexico

Chief Dan told us that some native sheep herders had filled in some of the wash-outs going up to the “saddle” where TJ’s possible sighting took place. He said we may be able to get up to it if we were lucky and if our vehicles could hold up. We made the decision to give it a try!

Before heading up we though we should make a quick stop and check out the cave we had found the corn husks in on our last couple of visits. The KRQE-13 News crew went on along with us to document what we might find at the cave and also, what we might find in the mountains, if we could make it that far up.

We drove out to the cave area and our team and the KRQE-13 News crew hiked up to the entrance of the cave to check it out. It was a very dry and hot day and hiking in this area was not easy, especially for someone hauling up the heavy equipment needed to film what lied ahead. However, Louis (the camerman) and Anne of KRQE-13 had no issues with following Tom Biscardi and his crew up the hills and into the cave!

The team climbing up.. meeting just inside.. and coming out the other side of the mountain..

While at the caves, we discovered a few more corn cobs that had been carried inside to be eaten. Although there was not much evidence inside the cave, we did find some very telling signs outside and near by. There had been a recent rain that left the steep sides of the dry mud covered mountain sides streaked by water run off and clear of any other markings. It was on these freshly "erased" sides that Rex Houdyshel of the Searching for Bigfoot team, found some of our most compelling evidence.

Tom and Rex pointing out the new climb marks and footprints found in the mud!

With a weather front moving in, it was time to leave the cave and attempt our climb up the Lukachukai to the area Chief Dan calls the "Saddle". We parked the trailer and packed up all we might need into the truck. The News Crew packed their equipment into their four wheel drive mini SUV and we headed off to the mountains. Our thinking was that if we could get to the area by late afternoon, we would be able to stay until early the next morning. We kept a close eye on the weather via our GPS systems.

We had to drive from the desert floor to over 9000-ft up the mountain!

TJ and Annie Mc Cormick on a "cool down stop"

About two thirds of the way up, Rex Houdyshel caught a quick glimpse of something large and grey that disappeared down a ravine as we drove past. We stopped the truck and got out to investigate the area, but were unable to find enough physical evidence to verify his sighting. We did find a possible hand hold at the edge of the ravine, but not clear enough to be positive, so we continued our climb.

After several more hours of "white knuckle" four wheeling, we made it to the "Saddle". An area just at the base of a sheer wall of vertical volcanic rock formations that harbors the only permanent water source for many miles around. The "Saddle" is a small, flat area with many trees and clearings at the base of the rock wall.

Once there, we set up a base camp and began to investigate the area. TJ and Rex Houdyshel headed up towards the rock wall to investigate some small caves and other possible areas of habitation. The rest of us monitored his progress from the base camp.

TJ and Rex where only a short way up towards the rocks when Tom Sr. and a few others noticed a large black animal of some sort, in a tree near TJ and Rex. What ever it was, was clearly monitoring TJ and Rex's progress. We radioed up to TJ and Rex so that they could get a closer look.

What ever was up the tree, climbed down and quickly disappeared into the underbrush. TJ and Rex kept searching for at least another 1/2 hour, but found no sign of it. By now, the rest of us had started up to help in the search. Several of the team began finding large prints in the soft powder like dust that covered the rock hard soil beneath it.

We found at least a dozen partial prints and several full prints as well. They were all intermingled with elk prints in the same area. We marked some of the prints with rocks and climbed back to get a camera.

One of the better full prints we found! ... Note the radio for size comparison..

The print we show above measured 20" long and 9" wide across the splay of the toes. We measured a stride of over eight feet!

As we were checking for more prints, we got an alert that the weather front had moved into our area. We wanted to stay, but safety comes first and we knew if we got caught in a storm up on the mountain, we could not get back down for several days. We packed up and headed back down towards town. We knew we would be back again, but had to head out towards Alabama for our next mission.

LUKACHUKAI MONSTER... YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST OF US YET!

Written by JavaBob and JC Johnson - posted by JavaBob

GO TO OUR NEXT STOP; ALABAMA 05/08 or NEW MEXICO 06/08 or the TABLE OF CONTENTS or RETURN T0; HomePage

Departments

Bigfoot Articles
Bigfoot Headlines - Comprehensive list of news stories about Bigfoot
Bigfoot Webpages - Growing list of various Bigfoot sites around the net
Bigfoot Quotes
Bigfoot State By State
Link To Us

“BIGFOOT LIVE”

(RADIO SHOW)

Listen to Tom live every Wednesday at 7PM pacific time at “www.bigfootliveradioshow.com”

CYBERSIZZLE

Hola!

WANT FREEDOM?

NEW MEXICO 05/08

Check out the New Mexico, KRQE news coverage of our recent visit;

LUKACHUKAI MONSTER... YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST OF US YET!

GO TO OUR NEXT STOP; ALABAMA 05/08 or NEW MEXICO 06/08 or the TABLE OF CONTENTS or RETURN T0; HomePage

Departments

Copyright Searching for Bigfoot Inc., © Searching for Bigfoot Inc. 2005-2006-2007-2008-2009

Elapsed:0