Massive Bigfoot Reported Near Lake City, Colorado: The Slumgullion Pass Encounter

Alleged sighting: afternoon of July 28, 2026, near Slumgullion Pass, Hinsdale County, Colorado. Public coverage: BFRO filing the following day; Cryptid Legends recap dated August 19, 2026. Monstrum Athenaeum is summarizing those records now, not reporting from the scene.

She was looking for deer. She says she got something that made her lose her words.

On the afternoon of July 28, 2026, Colorado resident Lori Bowling reported a large, unknown biped along Highway 149 near Lake City — about ten miles southeast of town, near the top of Slumgullion Pass in Hinsdale County. The account went to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization the next day. BFRO published it as Report #81439 and stamped it Class A.

Cryptid Legends picked the case up on August 19. Monstrum Athenaeum has not independently verified the sighting, the tracks, or the investigation. What follows is what those two public records actually say.

Class A is not a lab result. It is the BFRO's judgment that the witness had a clear look. Keep that distinction in your pocket. You are going to need it.

"I just saw Bigfoot, stop the truck."

According to the BFRO filing, Lori and her husband Bill were traveling north toward Lake City in a truck and fifth-wheel RV. Time: about 3:41 p.m. Overcast. They had just rolled through a mild thunderstorm. Lori had been watching the slopes for moose and deer.

She says a large, dark-haired figure stepped out of the woods. Not a shadow. Not a glimpse. She watched it turn and walk uphill along the forest edge.

She could not get the sentence out at first. Bill's statement says she looked amazed, speechless, excited, and a little frightened — a reaction he claims he had never seen from her in nearly 39 years of marriage. When the words finally came, they were blunt: "I just saw Bigfoot, stop the truck."

They turned around. By then, she was already worried he would think she was nuts.

What she claims she saw

Bowling's description, as filed:

• About 7–9 feet tall
• Dark blackish-brown hair
• Long, very hairy arms
• A head that looked "molded into the shoulders"
• Upright walk with a gliding gait
• Four or five large steps before the road curve ate the view

She clocked the height against the small spruce in the cleared strip. That matters. A few years back, beetle-kill timber was cut back about 200 feet on either side of the highway. Bill says the biggest new saplings in that strip were only four to five feet tall. If you believe the report, she had a ruler standing in the dirt.

The creature, she says, was about 200 feet downhill, at the edge of the woods. Close enough that this is not a "something on a far ridge" story. Far enough that there is no photo of the animal itself.

She told investigators she had never considered herself a Bigfoot believer. After July 28, she says she sure as hell is.

They went back. They found a print. Maybe two.

This is where the case gets teeth — and where it still fails a courtroom.

They dropped the RV at home, about ten miles away, and returned to search. Bill says the area had plenty of deer and elk sign and no people tracks. It is not a trail corridor. He reports finding one apparent barefoot impression where she said the figure had been. He photographed it next to a 4¼-inch knife. Raspberry-like stems were stuck in the print. Recent rain, he believed, plus those stems, argued the impression was relatively fresh.

He also thought the print seemed small for a 7-to-9-foot walker. He said that out loud in the report. Good. Witnesses who sand every rough edge are usually selling.

The next day they came back and reported a second possible footprint, not much larger than the first. A lightning storm ran them off before they finished the search. The BFRO notes the weather may have wrecked whatever else was there.

Those prints were not independently verified as belonging to an unknown primate. They are observations attached to a witness investigation. Cryptid Legends is honest about that. So are we.

The map pin is unusually sharp

BFRO investigator Matthew Moneymaker's notes put the sighting on Highway 149 about a quarter mile from the top of Slumgullion Pass, near the County Road 50 turnoff toward Deer Lakes. Footprint 1 is recorded around 11,467 feet. Footprint 2, the next day, around 11,282 feet.

San Juan Mountains. Steep. Conifer. A high, lonely stretch of southwestern Colorado. The Bowlings say they have lived in Lake City about twelve years; Bill's family has been coming since the 1950s. Camping, hunting, fishing. He says no one in the family — and no local he has met in Hinsdale County — had ever claimed a Bigfoot before this.

That is either a point in their favor or a reason to ask why the first one showed up on a Tuesday in July. Both readings are legal.

Why this one is traveling

Daylight. A moving vehicle. A named couple. GPS. An immediate return to the ground. Two possible tracks. A second witness who did not see the animal but documented the shock. A Class A stamp from the organization that still runs the biggest public database in this racket.

It is also still an eyewitness report with no photo of the creature and tracks that have not been cast, scanned, or blessed by anyone outside the family and a BFRO write-up. A misidentified person in dark clothing, a bear on its hind legs at a bad angle, heat and storm light playing ugly tricks — none of that is dead.

Class A means the BFRO thought she had a clean look. It does not mean an unknown species walked the pass.

If you are the type who wants a cabin-cam circus with circling footsteps and a vanished owner, that file is elsewhere in our Cryptid coverage. This one is quieter and, frankly, harder to wave away on process. They reported it the next day. They went back in the rain. They admitted the print looked small.

Bottom line

Lori Bowling says she watched a 7-to-9-foot, dark-haired biped take four or five gliding steps uphill off Highway 149 at 3:41 p.m. on July 28, 2026. The BFRO filed it, mapped it, and called it Class A. Her husband says he has never seen her like that.

No camera on the animal. Two possible tracks. A storm. A lot of altitude.

If you care about this beat, read the primary BFRO report before you read anyone's recap — including ours. Then decide whether a woman looking for moose on a familiar pass saw the thing the database exists to catch, or whether the mountain just handed her a story she cannot put down.

Monstrum Athenaeum will update this page if casts, third-party track analysis, or a second sighting in that grid square enter the public record.

Sources

• Primary witness statements, husband's statement, GPS, Class A classification, and investigator notes — Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, Report #81439
• Secondary summary and analysis of the same case — Cryptid Legends, Aug. 19, 2026, Massive Bigfoot Reported Near Lake City, Colorado
• Organization context (not an endorsement of the species claim) — bfro.net

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