US Army Ranger training mission near Greenwater finds large barefoot human shaped tracks witnessed in Pierce County, Washington

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While stationed at Fort Lewis (15th Engineer Battalion, A Company), I received mountain training at the Huckleberry Creek facility. The final exercise was called the Alpine Scramble, a "Point A to Point B" land navigation problem with problems to solve along the way. While on the exercise, my squad stopped at a stream to rest and eat. There was a sand/gravel bar going out into the stream. We noticed large imprints on the bar, and subsequently found several large footprints in the soft soil by the stream. They were not very long (compared to some reports)-14 inches-but very wide-about 7 1/2 inches. They were also pressed quite deeply into the soil, while we had to really stomp to make any kind of real imprint. There was about a four to four and a half foot stride between footprints (we had a tape measure). As we were on a tight schedule, we did not spend a whole lot of time examining the prints-perhaps ten minutes (our squad leader was convinced they were a joke put on by our instructor...