A Colorado woman driving along Highway 149 near Lake City says she watched a massive, dark, hairy creature glide out of the trees and up a steep hillside in broad daylight. The encounter happened on July 28, 2026, around 3:41 in the afternoon, just a quarter mile from the summit of Slumgullion Pass in Hinsdale County. Skies were overcast with storms moving through the area.
The witness, identified as Lori Bowling, was watching the roadside for deer or moose, a common habit on that stretch of mountain highway, when something much bigger stepped out of the tree line instead. She described the animal as dark blackish brown, with arms she called long and very hairy. Using the spruce trees around it as a size reference, she estimated it stood somewhere between 7 and 9 feet tall.
What stuck with her most was how it moved. She described its gait as a glide, a smooth, almost effortless motion as it traveled uphill along the edge of the forest before disappearing around a curve in the road. There was no stumbling over the uneven terrain, no crashing through brush the way a startled elk or bear might move. Just a steady, upward pace that carried it out of sight in a matter of seconds.
According to Coast to Coast AM’s coverage of the case, Bowling said she had never believed in Bigfoot before that afternoon, and the sighting changed her mind on the spot. She had been watching that same stretch of highway for wildlife plenty of times before, which is part of why the encounter stood out to her. She knew roughly what a deer or a moose looked like at that distance, and this was not that.
The BFRO Investigation
The report reached the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, the largest and oldest network of Bigfoot investigators in the country, where it was logged as Report 81439 and classified Class A. That classification matters. BFRO reserves Class A for sightings made under good visibility with little room for misidentification, as opposed to reports involving distant or obscured views.
BFRO founder Matthew Moneymaker handled the follow-up investigation himself. His notes describe the terrain around the sighting location as an area that had been cleared of beetle-kill trees several years earlier, leaving young saplings only four to five feet tall scattered among the surviving mature spruce. That detail matters for scale. A creature described as taller than nearby young trees, but still dwarfed by mature spruce, fits the witness’s height estimate of 7 to 9 feet.
During the on-site investigation, Moneymaker documented two footprints at elevated points near the sighting location, recording GPS coordinates for both the original encounter site and the prints. The coordinates place the sighting at roughly 37.99 degrees north, 107.22 degrees west, deep in the San Juan Mountains. Class A reports like this one are the ones BFRO investigators tend to prioritize for a site visit, since a same-day or near-term follow-up gives the best chance of finding tracks or other short-lived physical traces before weather or foot traffic disturbs them.
A Skeptical Look
Even a Class A classification does not settle the question of what Bowling saw. Hinsdale County is rugged, remote, and heavily forested, and human silhouettes in low light or against dense timber can appear taller and darker than they actually are. A hiker, hunter, or even a large animal moving through brush and shadow at a distance can produce an impression of unusual height, especially in the brief seconds most roadside sightings allow.
The footprints Moneymaker documented were not accompanied by plaster casts, detailed measurements, or comparative analysis in the available report, which limits how much weight they can carry as physical evidence. Overcast, storm-affected conditions can also make distances and sizes harder to judge accurately, even for an observant witness. And a brief roadside encounter, gone in seconds, leaves little time to take in details a longer sighting might reveal.
None of this means Bowling is mistaken. It simply means the case, like the vast majority of Bigfoot reports, rests on testimony and circumstantial detail rather than something that could be tested in a lab. A convincing witness and a documented footprint are not the same thing as proof, and researchers on both sides of the debate would likely agree on that much.
Bigfoot in the San Juans
Colorado’s San Juan Mountains have a long history of cryptid reports, and Hinsdale County sits right in the middle of that territory. The region’s dense spruce and fir forests, low human population, and thousands of square miles of roadless wilderness create exactly the kind of habitat Bigfoot researchers point to when explaining why sightings cluster in the American West. Highway 149 itself cuts through some of the most isolated country in the state, winding past old mining towns and over passes that see snow into early summer.
Reports like Bowling’s tend to follow a familiar pattern in this part of Colorado: a driver or hiker catches a brief, daylight glimpse of something large and dark near the tree line, and the animal is gone within seconds. What makes this case stand out is the combination of a clear daytime view, a specific and consistent description, and a same-day BFRO investigation that produced physical traces at the scene, however inconclusive those traces might be on their own.
The forest itself may have played a role in how visible the creature was. The area near the sighting had been logged and cleared of beetle-kill spruce in recent years, leaving younger saplings only a few feet tall alongside the surviving mature trees. That kind of patchy, uneven canopy can open sightlines that would otherwise be blocked in the region’s typically dense timber, giving a passing driver an unusually clear look at whatever moves along the tree line.
Conclusion
Whatever moved through the trees along Slumgullion Pass that July afternoon, it was enough to leave a skeptic questioning her own certainty. The BFRO has filed the case as Class A, Moneymaker’s investigation turned up footprints worth documenting, and Bowling’s description of a dark, gliding figure has already made its way into paranormal radio and news coverage nationwide. It remains an open case rather than a solved one.
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The full field investigation, including GPS coordinates and footprint documentation, is available in the original BFRO report.
