Professor and students discover series of large footprints crossing high mountain trail witnessed in Taos County, New Mexico

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My summer ecology class was hiking to Middle Fork Lake. As with most classes, some students walked faster than others. I was with the stragglers, a few of whom were suffering from the cold and thin air. The trail had only been opened, as I recall, the previous day, and ours was the first group of the season to make the ascent. Lots of snow remained in shaded areas and in many places on the trail, and it was obvious no one had walked ahead of us, although a couple of older men on four wheelers passed us at one point. We were getting fairly close, within a half mile or so, to the lake; the slope was very steep. I remember our little group went past a switchback and we were uphill from a stream. Somewhere in this stretch, crossing the trail at a right angle, was a series of very large, apparently bipedal, tracks. In shape and contour, the tracks appeared human. No details, such as toe impressions, remained or could be readily detected, but every indication was that the tracks had been ...