Helicopter Pilots Film Bigfoot Building Boulder Burial for Missing Hiker
Posted Tuesday, July 21, 2026
By Squatchable.com staff
So there's this footage that surfaced on YouTube that I honestly cannot stop thinking about. A helicopter pilot, a thermal camera, and what appears to be one of the most haunting encounters ever documented. If you haven't seen it yet, you're going to want to carve out some time for this one.
Here's the rundown. On October 23, 2007, a rescue helicopter pilot with nine years of experience and over 2,000 missions under his belt took off from the Everest Regional Medical Center for what was supposed to be a routine training flight through the Northern Cascades of Washington. His copilot was riding along. The conditions were perfect, clear skies, light wind, ideal for mountain approach practice. Nothing out of the ordinary.
At exactly 7:00 AM, confirmed later by the onboard logs, the copilot spotted something on the thermal imaging display that didn't make sense. A massive heat signature moving through the forest roughly 350 feet below them. The pilot initially figured it was a black bear, but the size was off, way off. He adjusted altitude and speed to get a visual confirmation, and what he saw through the windshield changed everything.
Standing upright, moving on two legs, was a creature covered head to toe in dark brown fur that swayed naturally with each stride. The pilot estimated it stood at least eight feet tall, possibly more. Each step covered roughly seven to eight feet of ground. But here's where things took a darker turn. Over its left shoulder, the creature was carrying something wrapped in blue cloth. A sleeping bag. And hanging from one end, swinging limply with each movement, were hiking shoes. A pale, stiff hand protruded from the torn fabric.
The creature stepped into a small clearing, giving roughly five seconds of absolutely clear footage. Massive shoulders. Arms that hung down past where human knees would be. A head that sat directly on the shoulders with barely any visible neck. The build was clearly primate, but the proportions didn't match any known species. Then it looked up. Both cameras caught this moment clearly. The creature raised its head and stared directly at the helicopter. No panicked, wild-animal reaction. Just a calm, calculating assessment. It understood what a helicopter was and what the pilots' presence meant.
After shifting its grip on the wrapped body and adjusting its weight, the creature moved toward a ravine cutting through the forest at an increased pace. The pilot immediately contacted base, reporting visual contact with an unknown subject carrying what appeared to be human remains. He requested immediate coordination with search and rescue and local police.
What happened next is what makes this footage so compelling to anyone who has spent time researching these encounters. The base came back with a name. Liam Carter. A 34-year-old software developer who had vanished three weeks earlier while hiking the Boulder River Trail. Massive search efforts had turned up nothing.
For the next 20 minutes, the pilots tracked the creature through some of the most brutal terrain in the Cascade Range. The movement pattern suggested deliberate navigation toward a specific destination. Instead of avoiding obstacles, it chose the most direct path regardless of difficulty. When it reached a near-vertical cliff face, the pilot expected it to find a detour. Instead, it climbed straight down the rock wall, using its long arms to grip vegetation and ledges while maintaining perfect balance despite carrying roughly 150 pounds of additional weight. The copilot's voice was captured on audio saying simply, "It's not even slowing down."
At the bottom of the ravine, the creature crossed a churning creek in three massive strides, water splashing around its feet. On the other bank, it stopped and looked back at the helicopter again. This time, it raised a hand in what the pilots described as a gesture of acknowledgment. Not threatening, but unmistakably a sign that it recognized their presence. Then it disappeared into forest so dense that even the thermal camera could barely maintain contact.
The triple canopy of old-growth Douglas fir, hemlock, and cedar created a ceiling that blocked most aerial observation. After 10 minutes of unsuccessful searching, the copilot spotted something about a mile north of the last confirmed sighting. A large opening in a limestone outcropping, roughly 40 feet wide and 20 feet high. Large enough, as the pilot would later describe, to drive a truck through.
On a clearing directly in front of the cave entrance lay a wrapped body. The creature had set its burden down at the entrance. From their altitude, both pilots could clearly see a blue sleeping bag with yellow accents, matching the description from Liam Carter's missing person report exactly. While circling the clearing, they noticed something remarkable about the body's position. It lay within a ring of smooth river stones arranged in a perfect circle approximately eight feet in diameter.
The copilot's voice came through on the audio recording again. "Those were placed there intentionally. That looks like a grave marker."
Then movement at the cave entrance drew their attention. The creature emerged from the darkness, giving the pilot his first clear look at its facial features. The structure was clearly primate. Heavy brow ridges, broad flat nose, wide mouth. But the proportions fell somewhere between human and ape morphology. The creature was carrying more stones, large boulders estimated at 40 to 50 pounds each, held effortlessly in its massive hands.
For the next 18 minutes, both cameras documented extraordinary behavior. The creature repeatedly entered the cave and returned with new stones, carefully stacking them around Carter's body. The precision was striking. Each stone was deliberately placed, expanding the circle outward in what appeared to be an intentional, purposeful pattern. The copilot whispered, captured on the audio, what both pilots were feeling. "This is burial behavior. It's creating a monument."
The creature worked methodically, almost reverently. At one point, it paused and looked up at the helicopter for roughly 30 seconds, as if trying to make its actions understood to the observers. The pilot's radio transmission to base captured the full weight of what they were documenting. He struggled to find the words, describing the creature as building something resembling a gravesite out of stones, and emphasized that this was not animal behavior.
Fuel shortage forced the pilots to return to base. The flight back reportedly passed in heavy silence.
Now, for anyone familiar with the long history of documented encounters, this footage raises questions that researchers have been wrestling with for decades. The Northern Cascades of Washington have long been considered one of the most active regions for sightings, with consistent reports dating back to the 19th century. Indigenous peoples of the region, including the Upper Skagit and Sauk-Suiattle tribes, have oral traditions describing large, hairy beings inhabiting the high country, some of which include accounts of these beings interacting with the deceased in ways that suggest ritual or spiritual practice.
The credibility factor here is significant. Helicopter pilots, particularly those with rescue backgrounds, are considered among the most reliable witnesses in any sighting category. Their training involves constant environmental scanning, spatial awareness, and the ability to remain calm under unusual circumstances. The thermal imaging confirmation adds another layer, eliminating the possibility of optical illusion or misidentification of a known animal.
The burial behavior itself is what separates this from typical sighting footage. If authentic, it suggests a level of cultural or spiritual complexity that challenges the prevailing dismissive narrative. Reports of similar behavior have surfaced occasionally over the years, including accounts from loggers, ranchers, and backcountry travelers who have described finding human remains in what appeared to be deliberately constructed stone arrangements in remote wilderness areas. Most of these reports never received formal investigation.
The missing person connection adds a tragic dimension. Liam Carter's family spent three weeks searching for answers. The footage suggests those answers may have been found, though the circumstances are far from what anyone could have imagined.
The footage itself, if you can find it, is worth watching. The thermal imaging segments combined with the visual footage create a compelling record. The audio captures the raw reactions of two trained professionals processing something that defied their entire understanding of the natural world.
Whether you approach this from a skeptical lens or a believer's perspective, the footage raises questions that deserve serious consideration. The Northern Cascades remain one of the most rugged and least-explored wilderness areas in the contiguous United States. The idea that something could inhabit those mountains undetected for centuries, while occasionally interacting with humans in ways we barely understand, is not as far-fetched as mainstream science would have you believe.
This is the kind of footage that reminds us how much remains unknown in the remote corners of our world. The pilots did their job. They documented what they saw. The rest is up to those willing to look honestly at the evidence.