Giant Barefoot Trackway and Inverted Trees Puzzle Alaska Researchers
Posted Friday, August 07, 2026
By Squatchable.com staff
Okay, folks, buckle up because this one is a doozy. I just came across a video on the Wild Discovery YouTube channel that dives into some seriously compelling evidence coming out of Alaska, and honestly, it's the kind of stuff that makes you want to grab your gear and head straight into the woods.
The story kicks off with a guy named Keith Lindsey, a metal detectorist who had zero interest in Bigfoot back in April 2012. He was just doing his thing along a riverbank near Fairbanks when the water levels dropped to an all-time low, exposing fresh ground perfect for treasure hunting. Fairbanks sits right in the heart of the Alaska Triangle, a region notorious for disappearances and strange phenomena, but Keith wasn't thinking about any of that. He was just sweeping his 11-inch detector coil back and forth, listening for that sweet chirp of buried treasure.
Then he looked up the riverbank and froze.
Massive footprints. Barefoot. Pressed deep into the cold ground in late April, when there's still ice clinging to the shadows. Keith did what any smart person would do and laid his detector coil right next to one of the prints for scale. The coil is 11 inches across. The footprint dwarfed it, measuring somewhere between 16 and 18 inches from heel to toe. For reference, a basketball player wearing size 20 shoes leaves about a 15-inch print. These were bigger, and they were made by something walking barefoot on frozen ground in Alaska. Nothing human does that.
But the size wasn't even the weirdest part. The stride was impossible. Keith tried to step naturally from one print to the next and came up short by a foot or two every single time. The gap between tracks measured over six feet per stride, and the prints were pressed deep into the soil with no sign of slipping or struggle. Whatever made these tracks was built for that kind of movement.
Even more telling, the prints ran in a perfectly straight line, one directly in front of the other. That's not how humans walk. Our hips create a natural staggered pattern. But this trackway showed the classic pattern researchers have documented for decades, the kind of gait that points to a creature with a completely different anatomy.
Dr. Robert Alley, a researcher who has spent years cataloging Sasquatch evidence across Southeast Alaska, examined Keith's footage frame by frame. His conclusion was blunt. The prints were clearly bipedal, far too large for any human, and showed individually visible, clearly demarcated toes. Bears don't walk on two legs for sustained distances, and no human variability accounts for these measurements. In his professional opinion, only one candidate remains.
Now, if that wasn't enough to get your blood pumping, the video then takes you to Prince of Wales Island, off the southern edge of the Alaska Triangle. This place is a temperate rainforest paradise for a large, reclusive creature. Steep mountains, endless cedar groves, muskeg bogs that swallow sound. And on one remote mountainside, there's a group of cedar trees that will make your jaw drop.
These trees are upside down. Full-grown cedars ripped from the earth, flipped over, and driven trunk-first into the ground with their root balls pointing at the sky. Not one tree, a whole group of them, standing deliberately and evenly like monuments planted by something with a purpose. Wind throw scatters trees sideways. Landslides pile them in tangles. These stand upright, evenly spaced, as if arranged with intention.
A native elder named Al Jackson knows this place and the warnings that come with it. He shared a story about a friend who, at around 15 years old, went hunting on Quahog Mountain with an elder. The old man warned the boy to watch out for the big black gorillas that live there. Big black gorillas in Alaska, where no ape species has ever officially existed. The elder explained how to recognize their territory. These creatures mark their boundaries by taking blown-down trees and driving them into the ground upside down, roots facing the heavens.
According to traditional knowledge passed down through generations, trees planted that way mean one thing: Bigfoot territory. Trespassers suffer the consequences.
Investigators who examined the site found no evidence of logging equipment. No machinery tracks in the soft ground, no cable marks or chain scars on the trunks, no cut marks, nothing. The trees appear to have been uprooted and inverted by brute force alone in a location so remote that hauling equipment there would be a monumental undertaking with no conceivable payoff. A hoax would require transporting heavy machinery up a trackless mountainside through muskeg that swallows vehicles, operating it without leaving a single tread mark, then extracting every trace of the operation. All to prank a hunting ground that a handful of people visit in a decade.
This is the kind of evidence that keeps researchers going. Physical trackways with scale references, analyzed by professionals who approach every case with a skeptic's checklist. Traditional ecological knowledge from indigenous communities that has been passed down for centuries, long before Bigfoot ever appeared in any newspaper. And a mountainside arrangement that defies conventional explanation.
The video goes into much more detail about the physics involved and the traditional warnings from native elders across the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. If you're a researcher, a witness, or just someone who keeps an open mind about what's walking through these forests, this one is absolutely worth your time. Head over to the Wild Discovery channel and check it out for yourself. You won't be disappointed.