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Apes in the Canyon, a Skier Who Disappeared, and the Sound of Splitting Timber
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In 1924, near Ape Canyon on the slopes of Mount St. Helens, a group of gold prospectors claimed they were attacked through the night by towering, ape-like figures that hurled rocks and battered their remote cabin, an incident that became one of the Pacific Northwest’s most enduring wilderness legends. Decades later in 1950, experienced skier Jim Carter vanished on the same mountain after leaving his climbing party to take a photograph; rescuers found only a film box and a set of frantic ski tracks plunging toward the canyon before disappearing without a trace. Could these incidents be connected?
Side quest - In 2018, another mystery unfolded when more than 100 massive trees were suddenly snapped and toppled near Lake Quinault in Olympic National Park, with no immediate clear cause. Was it a weather event, aliens, trolls? You tell us!
⚠️ Content Warning: This episode includes references to abuse, trauma, and death. Listener discretion is advised.
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Transcript
Introduction to Murder, Mysteries, and Mayhem
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Beneath the Evergreens, where murder, mysteries, and mayhem lurk in the shadows of the Pacific Northwest. I'm Jess. And I'm Anna. From haunted forests and unsolved disappearances, to true crime cases buried deep in the moss and the mist, we're digging into the dark secrets hiding under the evergreens. Each episode will explore real cases, eerie encounters, and the legends that keep the Pacific Northwest up at night.
00:00:27
Speaker
So grab your flashlight, lock your doors, and join us on Beneath the Evergreen.
Light-hearted Banter and Cryptid Debate
00:00:55
Speaker
Anna, hello. Hi. Jessie, hello. Hi. How are you? I am doing well. How are you? I'm doing fantastic. Wonderful. As previously stated, i'm in love.
00:01:07
Speaker
Oh, yes. Give us the tea. I want to hear it all. Dracula. That's all I have to say. Dracula. ah Fantastic. My new obsession henceforth and forevermore for in the next 400 years. And for those who know, well, no, you need to watch the movie really is true love right here. I'm so happy be a part of this.
00:01:28
Speaker
I'm so happy that you're a part of it too. I will invite you to the wedding. Yay. It'll be at night. We can wear costumes on Halloween around Halloween requirement. Yeah. Beautiful. Okay. Yeah.
00:01:41
Speaker
Yeah. Uh, have you ever fallen for a fictional character character? At some point in my life, yes. I feel like that's normal. Especially, well, especially like when you're a young adult.
00:01:52
Speaker
yeah I don't know. feel like teenagers. Yeah. I feel like now it's a bit odd. But, you know, all in it. That's okay. Do you have your own? Yeah. If you're happy, I'm happy, Jess.
00:02:04
Speaker
That is the goal in life, right? You just got to be happy. That's all that matters. Exactly.
00:02:10
Speaker
Have you ever heard of people that actually like fall in love with cryptids? I mean, it does not surprise me. I feel like people fall in love with just about anything. This is valid. I feel like I've heard of people in love with like a plate.
00:02:25
Speaker
This is true. I mean, I'm in love with a fictional character, so I cannot judge. One in particular. So that got me thinking down the road of like, who is the hottest cryptid?
The Legend of Ape Canyon
00:02:37
Speaker
Okay. Just follow me. There's a method to this madness. And it's either Mothman or Bigfoot. Okay. i I thought that's what you were going to say, yeah but I want to hear your reasoning why.
00:02:54
Speaker
I feel like Mothman just has this like man energy. You know what mean? um I can't say that I do, but I i really am loving hearing this explanation.
00:03:08
Speaker
I have to cut this part out. I'm a little embarrassed now, but no, i feel
00:03:15
Speaker
I feel like of all of the cryptids, if you have to like really look at them, you've got like the squonk, which is like supposed to be disgusting and it cries because it's so ugly.
00:03:26
Speaker
Oh, gee but that could be so ugly. It's cute. You never know. Or it's a teenager that's crying because they're so ugly, but they're actually beautiful. And they just can't see it. There's that. There's that.
00:03:37
Speaker
Or there's like jackalopes or there's flush pedestrians or there's, you know, the not deer. All of these don't really sound humanoid, quite frankly. I feel like the only humanoid ones would be Mothman and Sasquatch.
00:03:55
Speaker
That's fair. I feel like my husband kind of looks like Sasquatch, so I guess that's probably the the one that I'd go for. I've always wanted to fly, so maybe Mothman's my vibe, but I don't know.
00:04:08
Speaker
Yeah, depending on whether I'm going to i'm gonna take this out or not. Anyways.
1924 Encounter with Humanoid Figures
00:04:17
Speaker
I don't even know why I brought that up, quite frankly. So today going to tell you about a story. Would you like to hear what I'm going tell you about? Always. Yes. Okay. I'm going to tell you about Mount St. Helens. Okay. Ooh, but specifically canyon or gorge on Mount St. Helens named Ape Canyon. Have you ever heard of this? Oh my God. Yes. almost tried to hike around Ape Canyon, but I went in the wrong time year and it was like snowed in. So had to go all the way around the mountain to go to a different park to hike there. Ended being one of the beautiful hikes I've ever been on though.
00:04:50
Speaker
Well, I'm glad it worked out. I have never been there. I now want to go after researching it. i now want to go. This is going to be kind of ah a shorter story. So I might have a side quest at the end, but we're going to go through with it.
00:05:05
Speaker
So on the southeast shoulder of Mount St. Helens, there's a steep shadowed gorge that is known as Ape Canyon. Do you know why it's known and known as Ape Canyon? I don't know. Fantastic. I'm about to tell you right now.
00:05:21
Speaker
That's why we're here after all. That's how you tell story, folks.
00:05:28
Speaker
Oh, man. Okay. So this is a place where geography and legend are have intertwined o for more than a century. Interesting. The canyon slices through a volcanic rock in a series of tight bends and sheer drop-offs, and it's very, very narrow. In some places, it's only feet across.
00:05:47
Speaker
Oh, interesting. Okay. Mm-hmm. Sound ricochets really well, obviously, because it's a very, very shallow canyon. It goes all the way through and it's very unpredictable. And there's a lot of stone corridors. There's a lot of loose rocks. So sometimes you'll hear really weird stuff because something will fall and then it ricochets everywhere.
00:06:07
Speaker
Whoa. Kind of a spooky vibe. And I love it. Yeah. Dracula lives there for sure. Well, actually he doesn't. There's somebody else that lives there. ho do doo-doo thunderun And then obviously as you're going through this canyon, visibility collapses rather quickly. okay Because as the sun drops, you're in this very shallow and narrow gorge. Like the once the light isn't directly coming in, you're kind of pitch black.
00:06:37
Speaker
that sounds horrifying i really agree yes and so before modern hiking trails you know trace this rim of the canyon it had already earned a reputation as one of pacific's northwest's most unsettling wilderness sites who and i'm going to tell you why because in july 1924
00:07:01
Speaker
What's going on in 1924? a lot. But most specifically in this area, mining. Mining is a huge thing still. People are prospecting. They're trying to get their gold where they can.
Night of Terror and Skepticism
00:07:13
Speaker
When five gold prospectors Fred Beck, Gabe Lefevre, John Peterson, Marion Smith, and Smith's son Roy reported a violent encounter near Spirit Lake while working remote claims. And Spirit Lake is very close to Ape Canyon.
00:07:30
Speaker
So according to their accounts, they were very deep in the forest. They were working at different prospecting sites, but all very close. So they were all staying at the same camp. Okay.
00:07:42
Speaker
It was getting towards night. It was starting to get really dark. So they all start to head back towards the camp when all of them start seeing these humanoid figures in the forest that were reportedly around seven feet tall.
00:07:57
Speaker
And they were lurking just out of sight. So you could see the shadow, but you couldn't quite see what it was.
00:08:08
Speaker
But with that came some odd smells and some weird behavior. What? Yes. feel like smell isn't one you normally hear about. like It's always something like visual or auditory, but like I feel like very few creatures or spooky stories come with a weird smell.
00:08:25
Speaker
I totally agree with that.
00:08:29
Speaker
Except for daemons. They come with like that sulfur egg smell.
00:08:34
Speaker
Of course, of course, of course I would know this. The expert I am. Anyways, okay, so they're seeing these figures kind of upward striding upright through the trees as they're walking back to their camp. They're kind of creeped out, but they're not really too freaked out about it at this point.
00:08:53
Speaker
But then as they converge on their, you know, spot for the night, these figures start kind of circling their camp. oh and they're huge they're they're the men are describing them as massive beings that are powerfully built covered in long dark hair moving with an eerie and deliberate gait what the heck and might i remind you these are five gold prospectors in 1924
00:09:22
Speaker
I feel like to be a prospector in 1924, you have to be, you have to have grit. Like you're not going to be some flimsy, namsy, pamsy situationship. You know what i mean? You're going to have to like, i don't know. Absolutely. You got like competence. Like you can, you can handle yourself. You can handle unknown situations around you.
00:09:42
Speaker
Yeah. And you're used to being like in the woods by yourself. And so for, for these men to say something that was massive and moving eerily with a deliberate gait, I feel like that's that is extra disconcerting to me.
00:09:57
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. In fact, they were so scared that Beck, Fred Beck, claimed he fired his rifle and struck one of the figures multiple times.
00:10:08
Speaker
Oh, my God. Which eventually sent it tumbling and it fell off the cliff into the canyon. Oh, whoa. Well, that really pissed off the other things, other Sasquatches, whatever it may be. Yeah.
00:10:26
Speaker
Really pissed off the rest that were there. So for the rest of the night, these beings started throwing shit at them. What? And not just like small things, boulders at them.
00:10:39
Speaker
Oh my God. To the point where one of them actually got hit with a stone. It was actually Beck, the one who um fired the gun. He got hit with a stone so hard and knocked him out for a couple hours.
00:10:52
Speaker
Oh my God. And after he got hit, the others were like, ah we're not doing this. So they had like a small shack structure. And they all just kind of hid out in there for the rest of the night. And the entire night they were getting, they were hearing things hitting the outside outside of the shelter. They were hearing things like walking around the shed and like these weird noises. And they were freaked out. No one slept other than Beck because he was knocked out. Yeah.
00:11:17
Speaker
but But they were freaked out. They didn't really know what to do. They didn't want to shoot again because they didn't want to escalate things further because clearly these things meant business. And so they kind of just waited it out.
00:11:29
Speaker
Oh, wow. Okay. But then right at the beginning of dawn, something literally slams. It sounds like something ran full speed and slammed into the side of the shack.
00:11:42
Speaker
Almost like it didn't understand that there was a door that you could open. It just like it was trying to get in. So he just ran and was like trying to slam in against the door. what And at one point it actually tore a hole through the roof.
00:11:55
Speaker
Oh my God. Which then had all the debris that was on the roof, like the rocks and stuff that were like falling inside. Whoa. Yes. And so the men were like super so shaken, but then as time went on, they, they just, ah ah the attackers abruptly vanished. They just kind of disappeared.
00:12:15
Speaker
They, what they just left. They just left. They were, they were done. So they were assaulted for hours and then they were like,
1950 Disappearance of Jim Carter
00:12:21
Speaker
cool, catch you later. And just dipped out. that Which to me is worse than just like something actually happening.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah. It wasn't like they were after anything. It wasn't like it was an attack or anything. they were or Like it was attack, but it wasn't like a, they weren't motivated. It sounds like they were just, I don't know shooting the shit and throwing things.
00:12:41
Speaker
Yeah, it reminds me Have you ever seen, i think it's called Strangers, where, like, they ring the doorbell and then they're terrorized for, like, the whole night until they, like, you don't know this movie? Okay, I don't really like scary movies because i get so anxious after to the fact and I, like, won't calm down.
00:13:00
Speaker
Okay, don't. Not on one hand, the amount of scary movies I've seen in my lifetime. Okay, after the conversation we had about doors and stuff, don't watch this one because it it literally has traumatized me for my entire life.
00:13:14
Speaker
Okay. Noted gladly, I'm not going watch it But it's ah it's essentially like people fucking with you for hours just for the sake of like messing with you and then abruptly ending it or like abruptly walking away.
00:13:28
Speaker
It's the unknown that I hate. like That's what I'm saying. And then if if you're really getting attacked by a human, right, what's to say that they're not going to just wait you out and like go to your your prospecting site? And i don't know. it would it would It would give me the heebie-jeebies. So anyways, after these figures disappear, the men abandon the site and immediately make their escape. They're like, I'm not saying here. This is crazy.
00:13:55
Speaker
And they run into us s forest Forest Service Ranger J.H. Huffman and William Welch. And they beg these two Forest Service Rangers to investigate.
00:14:07
Speaker
The Rangers go up to where the prospector site was and they don't find the creature that was wounded and supposedly fell into the canyon. who And there's no signs of physical evidence of like a struggle at all.
00:14:22
Speaker
Are there like rocks littered around the shelter? There were some large stones near the the cabin that they're big enough to be, you know, have some heft to them, but they're not outside the realm of possibility for a human to throw.
00:14:35
Speaker
Oh, interesting. Okay. And there were some 14 inch footprints, which is a massive foot. 14 inches? 14 inches. Oh my god.
00:14:46
Speaker
But what is the average man's size footprint? Hold on, gotta Google this. yeah Quick Google search, please. The average. Do like the elevator waiting music?
00:15:03
Speaker
Okay, according to Google AI, the average US man's size footprint is 10.5 inches. point five inches Okay. Bigger, but still like within the realm of what could be a normal foot for a human. Yeah. like It's a big person.
00:15:20
Speaker
But if they're seven feet, I mean, it makes sense that your foot would be 14 inches. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so yes, 14-inch footprints. They were found at the scene, but again, they dismissed it as you know potentially humanoid or possibly fabricated by the men themselves. And then they essentially just ah concluded the investigat investigation.
00:15:42
Speaker
Hello? They essentially concluded the investigation and just said that the men were exaggerating, got scared by something, mistook what happened, or staged it.
00:15:53
Speaker
That it wasn't like true not. What? At all. That was the the end of the conclusion. That seems so anticlimactic. Do they like compare the footprints to any of the men that were there?
00:16:04
Speaker
In my mind, if you're saying that everything is fine, then that footprint has to be one of the men that was staying there. And if not, there was someone that was attacking them. Therefore, the case should be open, no? I didn't see any like confirmed evidence about this, but what it did say in the report is that possibly fabricated. So maybe it did match one of the men's or like they it looks like it was modified in some way to be bigger. Gotcha. But...
00:16:28
Speaker
I still feel like if five grown men who are prospectors in 1924 are this scared, something happened Or, i mean, prospectors, they're out there. they're they're They're trying to work for money, right? And it's and I feel like it's a notoriously like not unlucrative until you get your big break. So if they thought that they could get famous or make like make some kind of money off telling a story like this, I yeah could kind of see it maybe.
00:16:56
Speaker
i could kind of see it maybe too. But then if they have guns with them and they try to shoot one of them and then they were still so scared that they hold up in a shack while rocks were being thrown at them.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, unless it's just like none of it happened. But yeah, I agree. It seems seems weird. Well, a couple years later, actually a decade later, there was a filiologist, William Halliday, proposed that it was actually local youths that were camping at a YMCA camp near Spirit Lake just above the canyon. Okay. Okay.
00:17:33
Speaker
kind of just above where they were. And they were probably tossing lightweight pumice stones into the gorge without realizing miners were below And they just happened to hit them. But again, are small pumice stones thrown by kids enough to knock somebody out for two hours? Yeah. and i was like only like That only is like half the half the story. Like, what about the big figures?
00:17:56
Speaker
I feel like you can't just explain one, not the other. Like, they need to go together. Yeah. So that was a possible explanation. But... You know, it never fully erased the belief of these men. um The story spread
Enduring Mysteries of Ape Canyon
00:18:10
Speaker
and the Canyon's nickname ended up becoming Ape Canyon, which was later then assigned its actual name moving forward. And that's how Ape Canyon got its name.
00:18:20
Speaker
That's really cool. I never knew that. It But then I have more to this story. Ooh.
00:18:29
Speaker
there might be a confirmation that something Wiley is going on in this area. No way. Tell me, tell me, tell me. So a generation later, the Canyon's legend collided with a real and baffling disappearance. Ooh.
00:18:42
Speaker
So in May 1950, 32-year-old man named Jim Carter joined a 20-person Seattle climbing party on Mount St. Helens going by Ape Canyon okay up to a place called Dog Head.
00:18:57
Speaker
Gotcha. So one thing you need to know about Jim is he is a very experienced skier and mountaineer. Okay. He is extremely comfortable comfortable in glacier environments, steep slopes, particularly steep volcanic slopes that have roof loose rocks. Gotcha. Okay. That was his jam. He loved it.
00:19:19
Speaker
And so as the group was descending on a clear Sunday, they passed near that dog's head landmark, which is about 8,000 feet up on the mountain. Oh, wow. okay Okay. they're up there quite a bit. Yeah.
00:19:34
Speaker
Carter was kind of just, he was so good at mountaineering, skiing, all of this. He was kind of the photographer. So he would go up ahead or go stay behind and take pictures and then catch up with a group. Gotcha. Gotcha.
00:19:46
Speaker
Which to be that person, you kind of have to be, for lack of a better term, better than everybody else. Yeah. Because if you're lagging behind and you got to catch catch up like you and and being in these positions where you can take the best photo, sometimes going off trail to get these best photos, you have to be good and be competent. hey You got to be very experienced.
00:20:06
Speaker
Yes. So while the team was approaching the dog's head kind of peak, Carter told his companions that he would, he was going to ski off the trail to the left and drop down just down below them. So he could look up and take a really cool picture oo of the team, okay which I thought was pretty awesome. Yeah.
00:20:25
Speaker
And so he, he does just this. He pushes off alone and vanishes from sight for a little bit. Before the team could take any pictures, though, they get to this dog head landing area where they're thinking they're going to see Jim down below to take their picture. But instead, what they see is him skiing down the mountain incredibly fast.
00:20:47
Speaker
In fact, some described it as if he was running from something that they couldn't see. Oh, my God. At like an unsafe space. And then he hit the timber line and then he disappeared from sight.
00:21:00
Speaker
so they're freaked out yeah they essentially saw him like jump over these crevices like going fast in an area where not even an experienced mountaineer would dare to go yeah and so they're like we got to figure something out they they go to the bottom of the trail they loop in with some park rangers and they're able to get gathered together a 75 person team to search that's impressive Wow. Yes.
00:21:25
Speaker
Very impressive. So the following morning, the searchers were able to reach the last known position of where Jim was at. Okay. And they found a single clue, a discarded film box where he had apparently stopped to take the picture. So he was posted up. You could tell he was there for a second. Okay. And he was getting ready to take this picture, but then it was very clear. Something happened because there was these tracks that kind of were all over the place. And instead of being smoothed and controlled, like a normal skier would do, it was really tight turns, like reckless kind of trail through the brush. And you could tell he was going so fast. And in fact, he was going so fast. He launched himself over some huge crevices, like massive crevices that you shouldn't be going over. Yeah.
00:22:19
Speaker
Ones that he, like his friends that have hiked with him before said he would never have attempted unless something serious was going on. what So he's going down this hill crazy. There's all these weird turns and then the trail just, just disappears.
00:22:37
Speaker
It leads to the side of the cliff, but there's like no body. There's no wreckage that they don't know where his clothes are. There's no skis, like nothing. It just ends. What the heck?
00:22:50
Speaker
Isn't that crazy? Yeah. We just like plucked up out of the out of the snow, just gone. Forever. So yeah, it's crazy. Veteran search leader, Bob Lee, said the pattern that he was looking at suggested severe panic.
00:23:10
Speaker
Quote, taking chances that no skier of his caliber would take unless something was terribly wrong or he was being aggressively pursued. Whoa. Which is kind of crazy. Yeah.
00:23:22
Speaker
The tracks actually led down toward Ape Canyon, almost exactly where the prospectors had this interaction in 1924 with these way. figures no way And then there was also some areas where Carter could have deviated from his path to get to a safer route to descend down the hill. But it was clear that it was almost like he was being herded away from these staff safe passages.
00:23:49
Speaker
And they just, they never found anything. No shattered skis, no torn clothing, no equipment, nothing. It was like he just vanished out of nowhere. What? Later, aerial teams that came in found faint traces of some sort of route beyond the canyon, but it was a couple of footsteps and then the trail ended.
00:24:12
Speaker
Oh. Entirely. Like, they couldn't find anything. So for five days straight, they continued to comb the woods. They combed the canyon end to end. And like I said, 75 people were consolidated around this area. There was air crews and just nothing. And so weeks passed with no discovery. And while they were searching, multiple reporters or multiple people reported that they felt like something was watching them.
00:24:41
Speaker
The silence became yeah and no no the silence became so intense at points, people reported their hair on the back of their neck standing up. Oh my God.
00:24:53
Speaker
Here's a quote. I could feel the hair on my neck standing up, he recalled. This is Bob Lee. I was unarmed except for my ice axe, and I never let go of it. So this is an experienced searcher.
00:25:06
Speaker
Yeah. Who's very used to these hills. And he said that he was getting so freaked out that his hair was standing on the back of his neck and he was like gripping his ice axe for dear life. That's scary. my God. Very creepy. And then he just said something strange was on the high slopes of that mountain.
00:25:23
Speaker
Something weird was going on.
00:25:26
Speaker
So again, we have another very experienced person. Like this is a searcher. He's used to being outdoors, searching for people that are lost in in hor horrific conditions.
00:25:38
Speaker
yeah And again, there's this feeling of something isn't right. It's just like the minors where they're like, hey, I'm used to being out here, but something is here that we can't quite see. So yeah, after two weeks, the search is called off.
00:25:54
Speaker
Carter's never found. And there's no suitable explanation for this disappearance. And so people are filling in the gaps with the, this was the ape, the the devils of the ape cave or like the the Sasquatch of the area that came to claim somebody. He must have stumbled across a den or or one of the beings and it chased him down the mountain. That's why he freaked out and was in such a panic. A lot of people, you know, in folklore saying that Ape Canyon is keeping some secrets and those secrets are Sasquatch like figures that will chase you down.
00:26:28
Speaker
Oh, my God. had no idea. Now I'm really happy I couldn't go that one time. I don't know. could have met Sasquatch. Maybe could friends instead. I think I'm a little bit too much of a scaredy cat to meet Sasquatch. I don't know what I do. I don't know what I'd say.
00:26:43
Speaker
I'd be pretty offended if they started throwing rocks at me, quite honestly. I mean, same. Yeah. think that's a fair response, though. Why do you not have so much hair on your body?
00:26:57
Speaker
That is my story for you, though. That is so good. I had no idea. you remember when I was visiting Mount St. Helens being curious about the name and like it didn't seem fit with anything else in the area?
00:27:09
Speaker
That's fascinating, though. Thank you. Absolutely, yes. It's because of the the apes that are said to wander Mount St. Helens. And there's also some pretty significant Native American folklore that also talk about Sasquatch-like figures in this area, but...
00:27:25
Speaker
I didn't want to bring, I didn't feel like it was my place to bring that into this conversation. So yeah, maybe I'll do and and an episode later, but can I do one deviation or add one story to this? Okay. Let me get, yeah we're going go on a a very short adventure or hopefully it's a very short adventure adventure because when I was researching this, I don't know how this came up in my search because it's not even anywhere close, but I just want to read this to you.
2018 Tree Fall Incident
00:27:52
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Okay. In the early morning hours of January 27th, 2018, a remarkable and unusual event occurred on the north shore of Lake Quinault in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State.
00:28:05
Speaker
At around 1.30 a.m., m over 100 old-growth trees suddenly fell across a stretch of forest roughly a half mile wide. What? What?
00:28:17
Speaker
Yeah, this is there yeah it's near July Creek, and the carnage was so dramatic, some trees were uprooted while others snapped off cleanly at the base as though struck by tremendous force.
00:28:31
Speaker
In fact, the crash of the falling trees was so intense that it registered as seismic activity. Whoa. Whoa. Isn't that crazy?
00:28:41
Speaker
So the logical part of my brain is like, oh, it had to be a mini earthquake or was there a storm going on and was this the soil loose? Was there lightning? That's just, that's crazy.
00:28:53
Speaker
But 100 old growth, like you got to, old growth are beefy, especially in that area. Yeah, yeah. They're humongous. And so just for them to be ripped up by the roots and snapped in half at the base cleanly.
00:29:08
Speaker
Yeah. That's That's people weird. Yes. So most of the trees fell on the north side and were pointed southwards, meaning that the forest must have come from the north and like kind of landed and forced them to the south.
00:29:22
Speaker
Yeah. And again, these were not small trees. Many of them were actually ancient giants known as like common within the Quinault rainforest. Have you you've hiked over there? Yeah. Um, not in the rainforest or anything, but I've hiked and kind of in on the peninsula.
00:29:38
Speaker
So these trees are the ones that people used to make houses out of. oh okay. No, like the the trees themselves, you would carve it out and you would live inside of the tree. It was so massive. well Whoa.
00:29:50
Speaker
Okay. Like these are big. Like they're the size of a car at least across. They're massive. And it takes takes winds of at least 60 to 80 miles an hour or greater to snap or topple the trees of this size.
00:30:06
Speaker
Oh my God. So that's significant force. Yeah. Yeah. that's a lot. But unfortunately during this time, there was no weather events that were happening. The local area just said only light breezes during the hours of the tree fall. There was no thunderstorms, no convective activity, no radar signatures of any sort could be detected during this time.
00:30:27
Speaker
What the heck? Some were thinking that this could be like a microburst. A powerful localized downdraft often associated with thunderstorms was one of the hypotheses, but that got knocked out because there was no thunderstorms in the area. There was no lightning going on at the time, so there was no lightning strikes. And then there was no wind speeds above 20 miles an hour that were recorded at this time, so nothing to uproot 100 trees.
00:30:56
Speaker
That makes no sense then. That's insane. And that's, that's it. And it was just like a blurb in the newspaper. Cairo seven s new Seattle. I will link it in the, in the stuff, but that is, that's really cool. I had no idea about that one either.
00:31:11
Speaker
hundred trees just snapped in half. true there's The real question here is though, did, did they make a sound? Clearly because it registered on the seismologist, but I like your joke, but I'm bum.
00:31:30
Speaker
We're still jury still out on if, you know, if a tree falls in the woods, no one's there. Does anyone hear it? But apparently the ground feels it. And that's what really matters. That's what really matters. So that was the tidbit I wanted to tell you because I feel like it was either a meteor that came down.
00:31:47
Speaker
Ooh. Like a small chunk of rock or Sasquatch throwing rocks. Connection point. There you go. Or a spaceship crash landed.
00:31:59
Speaker
I feel like maybe not, but I mean, if it's coming down from the north, it hits there. I'm just saying it's it's a possibility, my friend. It's a possibility. Just give me the possibilities. I suppose anything is a possibility and we don't have any answers or clues.
00:32:13
Speaker
One day I'm going to turn it around and you're gonna say it is and a UFO. I don't know about that. I don't either. I will keep trying until the day I die. Anyway, so that's the ape caves and then are not the ape caves. Although the ape caves is pretty cool. This is the ape Canyon and Sasquatch missing people and missing trees.
Episode Conclusion and Call to Action
00:32:37
Speaker
That was a really cool episode. Thank you. Absolutely. Well, that's it for today's dive into the dark corners of the Pacific Northwest. If you love the stories or shivered a little, be sure to subscribe and follow so you don't miss what's lurking beneath the evergreens next time.
00:32:52
Speaker
Thanks for joining us on Beneath the Evergreens. We appreciate you diving into the mysteries with us. Until next time, keep your eyes open and your door is locked.
00:33:02
Speaker
ah ah Unless you want to invite Dracula in and then.