Under a full moon in Washington’s Gifford Pinchot National Forest, Tanner Hoskins scans the trees with a thermal scope. The Pacific Northwest Bigfoot Search leader believes he sees something moving near a dark lake, but the group has no immediate way to confirm what it is.
Hoskins and three friends have spent the past six years searching the Pacific Northwest for evidence of a large, unknown bipedal creature. Their interest began after Kelly Stolp described hearing heavy footsteps and a guttural howl near his tent during a 2020 camping trip. Mike Palagi, who was at the same campsite, later heard the sounds as well. The two former Army snipers searched the area while armed but found nothing.
Stolp initially hesitated to share the story because he worried it sounded absurd. He eventually told Hoskins, a security guard at Shriners Children’s Hospital in Portland. Hoskins, who had grown up hearing his great-grandmother’s stories about “hidebehinds,” created a website for the Pacific Northwest Bigfoot Search and invited people to submit their own reports.
Since 2021, the group says it has received 287 reports through its website and social media accounts. The submissions include alleged footprints, vocalizations and sightings. Hoskins acknowledges that many reports should be treated cautiously, but says accounts from people who want to remain anonymous—including loggers, law-enforcement officers and government employees—can seem particularly compelling to him.
The search team now heads into the wilderness every month or two. Its core members are Hoskins, Stolp, Palagi and Alberto Quinones, who is married to Hoskins’ cousin. They use thermal scopes, drones, trail cameras, casting materials and audio recorders while searching remote areas across the Pacific Northwest.
The group is not united in its belief that Bigfoot exists. Palagi describes himself as the team’s biggest skeptic, while Stolp says he does not believe in the creature. Palagi has suggested that a deer could have caused the stomping heard at the 2020 campsite, while the unusual howl might have come from a bullfrog. Hoskins says he remains only 80 percent convinced until he sees Bigfoot himself.
Their search brought them to the 1.3-million-acre Gifford Pinchot National Forest, an area associated with numerous Bigfoot reports. The forest includes Ape Canyon, where gold prospectors allegedly encountered apelike animals in 1924, and Skookum Meadows, where a body-shaped imprint found in mud in 2000 was attributed to an unknown primate. Skamania County also has an ordinance intended to protect Bigfoot from harm, reflecting concerns about armed hunters in the area.
Hoskins says the team’s first potentially significant find came four years after Stolp’s encounter: a footprint measuring 16 inches long and seven inches wide. The group has not found definitive scientific proof, however, and Bigfoot remains unconfirmed.
For Hoskins, the expeditions are about more than proving a creature exists. He had once enjoyed spending time in the forest but stopped doing so when friends preferred video games and bars. After Stolp shared his experience—and after Hoskins lost his great-grandmother in 2021—he became increasingly drawn back to the outdoors.
The Pacific Northwest Bigfoot Search has also expanded into the Pacific Northwest Missing Persons Project. Its work connects the group’s wilderness experience and knowledge of remote terrain with families looking for answers about unresolved cases. The searches offer a practical purpose while giving participants a way to process grief and seek closure.
Whether the group will ever document Bigfoot remains uncertain. For now, the expeditions continue to combine camping, investigation, skepticism and a shared willingness to examine reports that have not found an easy explanation.
Sources: Outside.