These shares involve travel and work by boat or skiff—river runs, lake shores, fishing boats, and coastal trips where the water is how people arrived or escaped.
Common threads are banks, anchors, and open water, things seen or heard from the vessel, and parties who came for fishing, recreation, or travel. Browse these shares if you want river and coastal reports with boats in the middle of the story.
In the summer of 1978, a seasonal Tongass National Forest service worker named Eric and two colleagues executed an un-armed exploration trek up Powers Creek inside the tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness within the Endicott Arm fjord system. After a peaceful first night, a thunderous, multi-octave shriek erupted from deep within the inlet canyon lines at midday.
Around 1997, a fly-fisherman named Daniel chartered a bush flight to drop him off alone on a sharp grassy spit at the first major bend of the Tikchik River system, northwest of Tikchik Lake. Armed with a heavy .480 Ruger revolver in a chest vest, Daniel finished a four-hour trout session. While packing his rod at the slough edge, a shift in the august wind parted the dense, 12-foot shoreline willow wall to expose a massive dark silhouette that towered far above his own standing height. Out of extreme caution, Daniel backed up flush to the river cutbank.
During an autumn gold prospecting trip, two first nations brothers named Ivan and his sibling navigated their 18-foot Lund skiff as far upstream as possible into the headwaters of the King Salmon River, north of the Nuyakuk confluence. While meticulously searching the bank cuts for gold-bearing quartz veins, they pitched a light spike camp using a Coleman cookstove. On their third night, a terrifying vocalization that sounded exactly like a woman being murdered erupted from the opposite bank.
Filming near the site where James and Deborah heard a scream and saw movement while they were in a remote area a few miles west of Nancy Lake Recreational Area last year in summer of 2021. As they're running in fear towards the recreation area with bear spray in hand, they're being paralleled while hearing imitation owl hoots and birds. Once they made it to a parking area and met up with a canoe group to tell them what happened, they heard loud thrashing in the trees.
Two shares, the first a retired fish and game biologist that had an experience ten years ago off the Mulchatna river while gathering data on salmon with three others, where they realized what they at first thought was a person exiting the freezing cold river was a Sasquatch they estimated to be over 10'. They later met up with a group of observers who didn't believe them at first, but did later after they had an encounter, topped off with screams. When both groups tried to relay their experiences to a fish and game trooper, they fell on deaf ears.
Scott, Caroline, and Mark had a terrifying encounter while hiking off Skilak Lake on the Kenai Peninsula, where they were cut off on a trail, surrounded, and inspected by three Sasquatch. Thankfully, a local who alerted them was able to run to his boat and evacuate them.
While enjoying a private family fishing trip drifting down the lower Nushagak River, Michelle, her husband, and their teenage son were interrupted by a piercing, two-finger whistle echoing from the shoreline. Assuming it was just another angler celebrating a catch, they ignored it—until the sharp whistle was followed by a bizarre, garbled chatter resembling a twisted form of Pig Latin mixed with animal grunts.
A peaceful kayak excursion took a terrifying turn for vacationers Janice and Scott while exploring the rugged coves of Southeast Alaska, east of Cordova. After tying off their kayaks in a secluded inlet to photograph a stunning, tiered waterfall, the couple noticed the towering trees at the edge of an old-growth meadow slowly rocking back and forth. As Scott raised their expensive camera, he spotted a massive, dark humanoid figure repeatedly leaning out from behind the tree line to observe them.
This encounter is from Eric, a fishing guide in the Aleknagik Lake area, that happened with a client in Pike Bay.
I share an encounter I had with a hunting guide and his client who was looking to bag a Hairy Man after an experience he had years prior. Spoiler alert: he changed his mind.
These events occured 1998 in the Wood-Tikchik State Park in a canoe on the Aguluwok River with my friend Brian. This area has a long history of encounters.
I share an encounter I experienced with two other relatives in 2007 on the Nushagak River. I've shared this experience before, but I give some more detail in this video.
I share an experience from the summer of 1994 up the Nushagak River involving myself and three others.
