Itinerant Air-Cooled

What we Learned

Many of our readers commented on “Something is Afoot in Central Oregon,” the Bigfoot story we ran in our summer issue. For one reader, Gene McMullen of Bend, the feature unearthed the long-forgotten memory of an unexplained experience years ago.

Central Oregon Magazine,

First off let me say I seriously doubt any existence of Bigfoot. However the mention of a sighting at Round Lake was like a bolt out of the blue. In 1953, I and a group of friends hiked to Round Lake. In those days it was a 25-mile hike from the junction of the Clackamas and Collowash Rivers. The trail followed the bench above the Collowash for several miles before it forked. The westerly fork dropped down and crossed the river and then continued on to Bagby Hot Springs. Our fork went to Toms Meadows (we stayed the night in the shelter) and then on up to Rhododendron Ridge and then dropped down to Round Lake. Round Lake was really remote in those days. No logging had occurred and no roads penetrated the area above the Collowash-Clackamas junction.

We camped on the northeast side of the lake, which is quite small (8 or 9 acres) near the inlet stream. The next morning I got up early and fished the southeast side of the lake just at sunrise and then worked my way back to camp. Later that day my friend and I went out on the lake in a crude log raft. On our way out we looked across to the area I had fished that morning and saw what we thought was an old stump, maybe seven or eight feet tall. We mentioned how much it looked like a big person and kind of joked about it when we were down the lake and out of sight of the apparition.

Our other friend did not feel well and stayed back in camp. Suddenly, he appeared at the lake edge hollering at us to get back to camp quickly. When we got back, he said something big had come down into the brush along the creek and shook the brush violently. He also stated that whatever it was smelled very bad. Since he ran out of camp in a hurry, he never stayed for further observation. When we all got back to the camp there was nothing there out of the ordinary. When we looked across the lake to where we had seen the thing, it wasn’t there. We all panicked, packed our backpacks and headed down, cross-country, to the Upper Collowash. The whole event shook up our young minds, as one might imagine. I was 16 and the other two were 18.

I still think maybe what we saw was a big old bear, but it was just weird to have someone mention a sighting at Round Lake, a small remote area that not many people visit, even today with a logging road within a quarter-mile. My friends are now deceased but both of them insisted to their deaths that they had seen Bigfoot.

Gene McMullen
Bend, Oregon