01/30/2019
NO RETURN FROM APE CANYON, folks...no return.
Nevada State Journal
Reno’s Morning and Sunday Newspaper
Friday, August 14, 1964
Oregon ‘Apemen’ Roam Again
10-Foot Monsters Seen in Cascade Wilderness
The legend of the Apeman of Mt. St. Helens returns, like hay fever, with summer weather.
The story of the Apemen of the beautiful conical mountain in the Cascades is a favorite in the area, but it just may have some basis in fact. There is more evidence to support it than Nepal’s Yeti or northern California’s “Big Foot,” and probably as much as Loch Ness monster.
Last summer, two different Portland groups who visited the southwestern Washington peak about 50 miles from Portland reported sighting the monsters usually described as from 7 to 10 feet tall, hairy, and either white or beige colored.
Three persons in a car on a lonely mountain road said they saw one of the creatures when it flashed across the headlight beams of their car near the wilderness which includes “Ape Canyon.” But they said they were too frightened to go back.
A Portland couple, fishing on the Lewis River south of the mountain saw a huge beige figure “bigger than any human” amble off into the brush.
Old timers aren’t surprised. The Apeman legend actually is older than the white mans’ habitation of the Pacific Northwest. Forest Ranger Marshall Stenerson reported last year he had investigated many reports of the strange creatures.
The Clallam Indian tribe claimed the “apes” were the ferocious Selahtik Indians, a band of renegades much like giant apes in appearance who lived like wild animals in the secluded caves of the High Cascades.
The first recorded encounter of the apes with white men was in 1924. Marion Smith and five miners rushed into Kelso Wash., to report that a group of great ape-like creatures had attacked them in the middle of the night. Smith said they had been working a mine on the east slopes of Mt. St. Helens. During the daytime, they saw some of the apes and fired at them to halt an attack. One of the apes was apparently killed and the body rolled into a deep ravine – which became known as “Ape Canyon.” Smith told officers that the apemen hurled rocks onto their cabin that night and “danced and screamed until daylight.”
Then came the “great ape hunt in 1924.” The sheriff took a posse from Kelso on a trip into the area. The armed searchers fired at anything that moved, it was reported. Huge footprints were found, but no apes. The miners never returned to their cabin. The legend grew, then subsided for several years with only sporadic reports of encounters with apes. Responsible persons, experienced mountaineers and skiers, have given credence to the story.
Bob Lee Portland, a leader of the 1981 Himalayan expedition and advisor to last year’s Himalayan expedition, said last year he had a strange experience. Lee has never claimed to have seen the apes but said “there was something strange on the high slopes of the mountain.” He was a member of a party that searched from Jim Carter, an experienced skier and mountaineer, who vanished on the mountain in 1950. His disappearance remains a mystery. At the time, Lee was a member of the Seattle Mountaineer Search and Rescue Unit. He described the search for Carter as “the most eerie experience I have ever had.” He said that every time he was cut off from the rest of the search party he felt “somebody was watching me.” Carter, he said, had climbed the mountain with some companions on a warm, clear Sunday. He left the group to take a picture and said he would ski to the left of the group. He was never seen again. His ski tracks, however, indicated that he suddenly took off down the mountain in a wild, death defying run that no experienced skier would make – unless he was pursued, Lee said. The track reached the edge of Ape Canyon and continued down the steep walls. But no trace of Carter or his equipment ever was found although the area was combed for two weeks. Lee recalled stories of about 25 persons who said they had encountered the monsters during a 20-year period.
The Canyon named for the apes is a lonely, ominous spot in a wild area near Ape Cave, thought to be the longest unitary lava tube in the world. There have been many reports of footprints in the area. Some are described as being about 18 inches long, and definitely human.
Unless the creatures are really fuzzy throwbacks, the lost Indian tribe theory seems most likely. It has given rise to some suggestions, one of which is to leave well enough alone. The government might take over and shove benefits and subsidies at them – retroactive to the Ice Age.
And that, as well as costing a lot of money, would ruin a very good legend.
