Steelhead and ‘squatch have something in common. They range in areas dry of major development and soaked in mystique. And those pursuing both have appetites that go way, way beyond scientific benchmarks for sanity. Sasquatch occupies wide spaces in the imagination department. Steelhead, too… but at least we’ve got more than a couple grainy old photos pinpointing their existence….
“For millennia, Bigfoot has evaded capture and definitive conclusion. Despite myriad monster hunters, top-secret DNA evidence and a $2-million bounty, the creature has been found nowhere, except in the minds and souls of the beast’s sect.”
Kootenay Mountain Culture’s, Kevin Brooker, follows one scientist who’s certain he’s hot on the scent. Great read about the beasts we’ve yet to hold and the most talked about game of hide-and-seek since Jimmy Hoffa exited stage left.
“Possessing tremendous night vision, they are largely nocturnal and intensely territorial; they are particularly sensitive to the incursions of man, against whom their warning behaviours include the throwing of boulders and snapping of trees in a distinctive spiral twisting manner, the same way they sometimes fatally wrench the throats of mammalian prey. They are at least as intelligent as great apes and almost certainly have a language, although they tend to spend much of their time alone. They fashion remote domiciles from moss and branches and post sentries on high mountains. They practice some form of burial, perhaps ritually. And they stink.
“What is less clear is whether or not they are capable of laughter. But if so, they have to be chuckling their furry asses off that it’s 2012, and in what amounts to a millennia-long game of hide-and seek, they’re absolutely slaughtering us.”
Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.