Ep. 380 - Derek Randles

Derek Randles has been researching Sasquatch since 1985, when he was twenty years old and a rock-throwing encounter in Washington's Olympic Mountains rerouted his life. "This thing had stepped into reality," he says. "I was like, what am I gonna do with this?" Decades later, Randles remains one of the most experienced field researchers in the Pacific Northwest, though his approach has shifted from trying to attract Sasquatch to simply wanting to understand them better.

The 1985 Encounter That Started Everything

In August 1985, Randles and friends were hiking up the Skookum River trail in the Olympics. After a late start, they climbed a few hundred yards off-trail to camp on a ridge. As they unpacked, rocks started landing around them—ten to fifteen feet to their left, then to their right, arcing out of the treeline. The group panicked and ran back down the steep ridge toward the trail.

Randles slid to a stop, spun around, and saw a silhouette step out of the timber at sixty to a hundred feet. It was near dark, so details were lost, but the shape was unmistakable: a classic Sasquatch silhouette, swaying side to side. He later worked with artist Wally Herson to create a sculpture of exactly what he saw, which now stands in Herson's home.