A Midday Roadside Bigfoot in Washington’s Wind River Country

Old-growth forest in the Wind River Experimental Forest, Gifford Pinchot National Forest. USDA Forest Service photo, public domain. Generic place image, not the sighting location.

What happened

At about noon on Friday 8 May 2026, a driver heading south on Wind River Highway in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest saw debris falling from the roadside bank and a large boulder in the ditch. Looking up the embankment, the driver saw what the report calls “a reddish brown furry figure standing at the edge of the embrankment” [sic].

The driver submitted the account to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) on Sunday 10 May. BFRO published it as report #80159, Class A, its category for sightings where the witness says misidentification is unlikely. BFRO founder Matthew Moneymaker then interviewed the witness and added a follow-up.

There is no photo or video. The report is the only evidence. BFRO’s page publishes personal details about the witness. We leave them out: the person is a private individual, and those details have no bearing on what was seen.

Timeline

• 1 April 1969: The Skamania County Board of Commissioners passes Ordinance No. 69-01. It makes the “premeditated, willful and wanton slaying” of a Sasquatch a felony.
• 1984: The county amends the law with Ordinance No. 1984-02, which repeals the felony provision, declares the county a Sasquatch refuge and reduces the penalties.
• 1995: Matthew Moneymaker founds the BFRO.
• 8 May 2026, ~12:00 PDT: The sighting on Wind River Highway. The witness reports clear weather and about 65 °F.
• 10 May 2026: The witness submits the report. BFRO later adds the investigator’s follow-up.
• 4 November 2026: This rewrite re-checks the report.

What believers claim

The witness is firm: “it was standing upright and definitely not human or a bear.” In the follow-up, Moneymaker writes that the witness “sees big wild animals like elk every day” and said it “was definitely not an elk or bear or human.”

Moneymaker goes further. He suggests that the creature may have pushed the boulder off the embankment in reaction to the jogger. The witness, he writes, thinks it may have been a juvenile because it “was not super tall and massive.” The witness had written: “My original instinct was that the bolder had been pushed down the embankment” [sic].

Skamania County’s reputation adds weight for believers. The county has legally protected Sasquatch since 1969.

What the research found

1. It was a fast, brief view at highway speed. The witness writes: “I was traveling about 50 MPH so the viewing was very brief.” At 50 mph a car covers about 73 feet per second. The closest view, about 40 feet according to the follow-up, would have lasted well under a second.