Can Bigfoot Climb?

I've been pondering a story a friend just told me, and it makes me kind of nervous. Not really nervous, since I'm not a climber, but kind of nervous on behalf of those of you who are—and I suspect a number of people who are interested in Bigfoot also climb, as Bigfooters seem to be an adventurous bunch.

I don't just mean technical climbers, but anyone who goes up mountains or scrambles up cliffs and such. Maybe you just like big views, or maybe you like to be up high, or maybe you're just in it for the exercise or to watch birds. Anyone who climbs should ponder the story my friend told me, which I'll relate here soon.

It makes sense that Bigfoot would be good climbers, given that they're primates and have opposable thumbs. And if they're gorilla-like, as some claim, then why not climb like one? On the other hand, humans are primates, and we seem to need lots of technical gear to climb anything very steep.

Or do we? Watch this guy.

I recall reading a couple of encounters in the mountains where big walls were climbed by Bigfoot, one in the Trinity Alps. If you poke around on the internet a bit, you can find such stories. In all honesty, they make me nervous, or did I already mention that?

Anyway, the other day, I ran into an old climbing friend, I mean an old friend who climbs, and I ended up having to buy him dinner to get him to sit down long enough to recount his story in detail. I've heard a few stories of Bigfoot in the big mountains, but they're not stories about climbing Bigfoot, and my friend's story was.

My friend had recently done his last climb of the season, and he always goes to the same place—it's kind of a tradition or ritual for him and his climbing buddies. They go up to Wyoming and climb the Grand Teton. That particular mountain makes my head hurt just trying to look up at it, and climbing it is a whole new world to me, I can't really even imagine it.

They like to go in September because that's when all the guided climbs are pretty much over, and there aren't usually too many people around. My friend said this was his 20th time climbing it.

I want to write his story up for one of my books, as it's just too long to go into all the detail here, but let me just say that what he and his friend found on the top of the Grand Teton boggled their minds. You can guess—a Bigfoot. It seemed to be enjoying the views, but they didn't stick around long enough to ask.

When they finally got partially back down, far enough away from it to recover a bit, nobody said a word, as each one thought they were hallucinating, maybe a case of hypoxia. It wan't until they had a beer in a Jackson bar that they compared stories.

I wish I'd been there—at the bar, not on the mountain. Here's a photo I borrowed off the internet: