While I intended to stay a bit longer, this trip was belaugered by misfortune from the beginning. Getting off the plane in California I slipped on a stair and broke my ankle. The airport staff called an ambulance and in the chaos all of our advanced listening and recording equipment was lost. I’m hoping they will find it, but as of now they have no idea where it ended up. It was all uninsured and some of it is no longer produced. This was a devastating loss both financially as well as emotionally.

Since I spent the entire first day in the hospital, the expedition was immediately behind schedule. By the time we set up camp we were already a day behind and still had to set up the rest of our gear. I wasn’t much use in my cast, so I mostly just prepared meals for the other researchers.

By the second day we discovered that many of the items we packed were mislabeled and we had brought along a lot of items from the storage unit that were in the wrong box. One notable mistake was packing an entire box of fiction books that had been stored in a box that was supposed to contain some navigational equipment. So without our maps and GPS, the researchers were limited in how far they could travel each day.

The final problem came when a couple of the guys wandered into a National Forest camp site and interrupted some veterans day campers. Due to the dangerous nature of the animals we’re tracking, we make certain that we are well-armed. The forest service camp host detained two of our staff and local law enforcement was called. Eventually the ordeal was cleared up with no arrests, but several of our weapons were confiscating and two citations were issued for fish and game violations.

All in all, it was not what I’d hoped for. I have months of physical therapy to look forward to and our goal of catching or killing a live sasquatch is going to be postponed for at least a month until we can organize another expedition.