Bluff Creek Project: July 9th-12th camping trip report.

Thursday July 9th:
We left Orick around 2pm and drove over the scenic Bald Hills to Weitchpec. It was supposed to be pretty warm but it started raining once we were up on the ridge. We proceeded up highway 96 to the GO rd and continued on to Louse Camp. We arrived around 5pm and found Robert and Kipp taking shelter under a canopy shelter. Kipp had his new CAMPCHEF stove setup and was preparing to cook up some food. It was still raining heavily. We setup our canopy shelter near the campfire and thought it best to try and get one going. We talked about our thoughts on the trip and decided that Friday might be best for a trip to service the cams on upper Deer Lick Lake and Twin Lakes. We stayed up until around midnight drinking beer and root beer schnapps.

Kipp investigating a gift left at the campground by an inquisitive Bigfoot.

Friday July 10th:
     We had decided that we would spend the day servicing the cameras at Upper Deer Lick Lake. We got a late start and spent the morning going through equipment and setting up gear. At around 11am we left the camp site and drove to upper Deer Lick Lake and were met with a downed tree Blocking the road.

     We continued our trip and serviced the camera on the abandoned ridge road. We observed a good looking bobcat on the camera that had been captured a few weeks prior. Below is a video of the animal. Bobcats are pretty rare up here. We observe about one bobcat for every ten mountain lions.

     Mosquito Lake was our next destination where we looked for animal tracks The mud surrounding the lake is prime for registering tracks and casts from there make excellent souvenirs. We found several excellent tracks and cast three.We then made it to Twin Lakes and pulled all of the trail cameras. The camera at the East lake had been malfunctioning so we removed it and it's housing. We upgraded the bolts securing the camera at the bear wallow on the west lake and replaced the memory card. We then proceeded to head back to Mosquito Lake to collect the casts that had been drying.

Steve Streufert, Kipp Morril, Robert Leiterman, Mike Meraz, and Mark Zoulas from Left to Right

We headed back to Louse Camp at around 5pm and met up with Steven Streufert, Mike Meraz and Mark who were waiting for us in camp.

Mike Meraz and Mark Zoulas were in Law enforcement but are now retired. Mike has been coming to the area since the 1970s and he and Bigfoot researcher Howard Walker was originally taken to the PG film site by Rene Dahinden in the 1980s. He was a friend of Rene Dahinden as well. He brought with him a selection of photos and letters from his personal archive which he inherited from Howard Walker. This included an early copy of the Patterson-Gimlin film that was made by the late John Erik Beckjord.

One of Rene Dahinden's letters from the archive.

Original photo of Rene Dahinden by Mike.

Robert Leiterman chatting with Mike over an old photo album

Kipp reading one of Rene's letters

Kipp taught me how to take selfies.

Telegram from Beckjord to Howard Walker.

Some Beckjord blobsquatches


Mike's copy of the Patterson Film. One of two copies made by Beckjord from Patricia Patterson's original copy.

Steve Streufert, Jamie Wayne, Robert Leiterman, Mike Meraz, Mark Zoulas, and Kipp Merril.

After a few hours of campfire stories we crashed out at about 12pm.

Saturday July 11th:

Kipp Morril had learned of family tragedy after making a phone call and decided to head home early, he left around 9am. In the morning we had planned to go to the film site but since we had already been there a few weeks prior we decided to investigate the area known as Elk Valley. I had not been there before and I thought it might be a good place to install a trail camera. We ran into Rowdy on the drive to Elk Valley and he followed us up there. We hiked up the north end of the valley and installed a single Reconyx camera. We hiked out and hung out by the cars sharing more Bluff Creek stories. I headed home early due to family obligations and left the group to spend Saturday night with themselves at Louse Camp. I received word that everyone headed out early on Sunday after a long night of campfire stories at Louse Camp.