A hiker waiting below the summit of Colorado’s Humboldt Peak says his phone camera caught a large humanoid figure near the top, one that appeared to walk toward a false summit and vanish.
The image was taken on August 19, 2025, just before sunset, by Jeffrey Winzenried, who owns Mountain Edge Tattoo Removal in Colorado Springs. He was hiking in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains with his brother, and he stayed back to save his legs while his brother made the final push up the 14,068-foot peak.
What He Photographed
While Winzenried waited, three other hikers passed him on their way down, leaving his brother apparently alone on the summit. He had his phone out to photograph his brother coming back down, and that is when the images were taken.
Winzenried describes the figure as appearing to walk forward toward the crest of a false summit before disappearing. When his brother returned, he confirmed that he seemed to be the only person on top at the time. A close-up of the image appears to show a large humanoid figure with its arms bent and its hands on its waist.
Reaction Online
Winzenried posted the photo in the 14ers.com Facebook group, where it passed 300 likes in about two hours. As one commenter put it, usually I’m a skeptic, but this is fascinating. Some people went straight to alien theories, and The Denver Gazette noted that speculation about visitors on Colorado’s highest peaks seemed to be a trend that summer, after odd markings were found on rock near several summits. The reporter thought that those markings had a feasible explanation.
Winzenried himself says he is not sure what he saw and is curious whether anyone can explain it.
The Down-to-Earth Options
Distance, fading light, and a phone camera’s digital zoom are a good recipe for a person-shaped smudge. A rock formation, a trick of shadow, or another climber on a part of the ridge that his brother could not see are all possible, and a compressed phone image does not leave much to measure.
None of that explains why the figure seems to disappear. It is a single photograph with a few witnesses on the mountain, and that is exactly the sort of case that stays interesting precisely because it cannot be tested.
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