"We Found the Lost Ape Canyon Mine"

0:00 Either you're listening to the Big Society podcast and I'm Jeremiah Byron. Every week I talk to individuals who have experienced sasquats in some way or another, so you won't want to miss an episode. Make sure you're subscribed on the platform that you're listening to, and share this episode where the friend does not cost a thing, and it helps the show continue to grow. If you'd like to hear Bigfoot Society episodes early an ad free, you can do so by becoming a Patreon supporter or a YouTube channel member. Links to those are in the show notes in Bigfoot Society. I've taken far too much of your time so far, so let's get on with the show, all right, Big Society. We've got the privilege of talking to an old friend, mister Mark Murcell, and we also get new friend Jared Mitchell with us tonight. Mark, how's it going, Oh excellent? Thank you so much. Of course, you and I are friends, and I try to be a good friend of the Big Foot Society podcast, so we always have a great time when we see each other, either on the podcast or something once in a while and in person. So yeah, thanks, thanks, it's good tonight.

1:15 Thank you absolutely. Last time I saw a cryptocon it was a great time, always fun meeting people in person. And Jared, how are you doing tonight? Doing good? Just relaxing at home. Awesoanks for having me. I appreciate it definitely. Do you mind, Do you guys mind taking a few minutes introducing yourselves why it might be important for our listeners to listen closely to what you have to say tonight? Sure? Well, Actually, Jeremiah, I should ask you to tell all of the great listeners and viewers why this is important. But let me let me take the first shot at it.

2:00 My name is Mark and I am a lifetime land surveyor in northwest Oregon and southwest Washington. And the reason why I am talking with Jeremiah tonight is because around twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, I had been doing some research on an old historical event that took place in nineteen twenty four and before and after nineteen twenty four, and it basically became my sort of midlife crisis of re researching the nineteen twenty four eight Canyon incident on the east slope of Mount Saint Helens and getting into at first the historical document research. I realized that the cabin that was, you know, revolving around this nineteen twenty four attack by a band of mountain devils onto a group of gold miners up there. I started to think that the cabin and other features of the site may have survived the eruption and subsequent eruptions, but the first one was nineteen eighty. So around twenty eleven I started going up there and poking around a lot, about four or five trips or so by myself, and then in twenty thirteen I

3:34 had made it. Each trip was a little bit further down the slope, a little bit further down the east side of Promispute, and then in twenty thirteen with friends, I found that yes, the cabin was there. We were able to find the foundation of the cabin, some of their tools that was left behind where this nineteen twenty four attempt took place, and subsequent trips found other evidence of the Abe Canyon incident of nineteen twenty four. And then once that word got out of the evidence the field evidence that I found which seemed to back up the historical record, the document record, than the Bigfoot research community kind of went nuts and started inviting me into other research projects and have supported me greatly since then. The Abe Canyon project and any project research project has never really done. There's more to do. But the reason why we had Jared Mitchell and hopefully other Mitchell's on tonight is because last Sunday there was even more evidence found, not by me, but by the Mitchell Clan.

4:57 And that's why we're talking to you here to because I am thrilled. I was up there at last July tenth, on the exact day of the ninety ninth anniversary of the account, and well, yeah, there's a little bit more work to do, but basically this case is wrapped up. It's matt wrapped up. As of last Sunday, the Mitchell's got some hard, hard, exciting evidence. And I am I am eighteen, nineteen years old again, I have so much energy. There's so much more to do. I am extremely excited about what we're going to talk about today. It's it's so cool to see this this project just have new life breathe into it.

5:45 And the eight Canyon is such an amazing part of Bigfoot history. You know, you'd said Mountain Devil's but it comes. It's it's Bigfoot history and just to see even more come into it through what Jared and Braden and Jake were able to do is just really really cool. So, Jared, I'm excited to have you on tonight, Mark, But is there anything that you would like the listeners to know about yourself? I'll say the obvious, of course, that you are one of the great grandsons of the youngest of the original nineteen twenty four miners, who's Leroy Perry Smith, which is just incredible.

6:34 Any any other interesting details we would want to know about you, Jared, None in particular. Just we kind of fell into this all when Mark reached out to my grandma and that kind of started the whole thing, got our interest in that, and since then we've been just kind of really hounding into all of this and now we've come far and it's, like Mark said, just really gets you going and gets you excited, and I can't wait to see all the information that comes out of this incredible Mark, do you mind sharing a little bit? I hear that little detail there, So you you reached out to Jared's grandma's is what I heard? Yeah? I did.

7:23 First, let me make a commentary on what Jared just said, I've gotten to know some of the Mitchell clan. Let me let me briefly for all the Ape Canyon nerds out there, give a give a brief pedigree for Jared and you know in the family in nineteen eighteen, really the patriarch of going up and establishing a mind, the vendor white mind, the Ape Canyon mine. What's this guy named Marian Smith. And Marian had grown up in the Kelso Longview area, and he was the son of one of the earliest earliest pioneers in the area, a fellow named Lorenzo Perry Smith. And so Marian was his son. And he grew up in the age of big timber hauling out these monster monster trees out of there with steam donkeys, and this was steam logging at the time. And so Marian was, you know, a mountain man, if you will. He was known as a very congenial, very very straight, very nice man. He had been up there and he had seen and hunted and fished everything that there was to see up there in the Ape can Ape Canyon era of Mount Saint Helens. Marian was not a spring chicken. During the nineteen twenty four attack, I believe Marian was sixty

8:54 four years old, and so they started prospecting up there, and he had help of his son in law, Fred Beck of eight Kenyon Fame. He had a Fred had married his Marion's daughter Mabel. Later on their a cousin Gabe La Fever, a family friend named John Peterson, a couple of other family friends. But then prospecting starting in nineteen eighteen, he ended up in employing his son Lee Roy Perry Smith in order to go up there, and they established the mine in nineteen twenty two. So at the time of LeRoy's passing, he had Lee Roy and his wife had two kids, Roy Junior and Betty, who married and became Betty Mitchell. And so I had reached out to Betty early on, and because I wanted to know I wanted to know the family's perspective on Ape Canyon incident, which we can talk more about the family's perspective about eight Canyon. So I was able to reach out to Betty, and with the help of Jake's brother Tyler, another cousin of Jared's, I was able to make contact with Betty and got an audio interview with

10:26 her, and then fortunately on a conference last January a Bigfoot conference last January. I was. The conference took place in Kelso, Kelso Longview, and I was able to get Betty on stage in front of like about six or seven hundred people for a briefly interview and a Q and a session. And frankly, Betty is Betty is incredibly well spoken, and she's a she's a wonderful woman. And she did great and the frankly audience went nuts because I was like talking about family history and that's part of evidence of historical Bigfoot research.

11:13 And I talked about Lee Roy Smith and how I was able to get a hold of some of the family and ladies and gentlemen, want you please welcome to the stage, miss Betty Mitchell. And yeah, they're doing crazy. But I do give just a just a brief thing about what Jared just said. As I've gotten to know the Mitchell family, Jared, I'm going to talk about you here for a second. The Mitchell family is incredibly soft spoken and incredibly humble. I think that the Mitchell family should be like crowing like a showboater about how they relate to the Ape Canyon incident. It's like, you know, Jared just said, oh, yeah, we just went up there and we found some stuff. It was pretty cool. Well, yeah, nonsense, you made huge history, Jared, I mean huge, huge history last Sunday, and you know you didn't. You didn't brag about it enough as you should have. So but anyway, Yeah, I've gotten to know the Mitchells. I've also been able to, briefly a couple of times interview rodbeck Fred's grandson, so that that's important information to add to the whole story. These interviews, Oh my goodness, I know there for your personal your your personal your personal collection, and they help out with your future book, I would imagine as well, right Mark, Yeah, yeah,

12:46 yeah, absolutely maybe San Dale I hear him. I don't know. I love listen. I'm a nerd, a big foot nerd. I love listening to interviews. That's why I do interviews. But that's that's incredible. So you talked to you talked to Betty, and then what was the kid? Like? Did you like, what was the what happened? Then? How did it turn into Okay, guys, Jared, how did it turn into let's go look for the mind? Like, how did that come out of that situation? Yeah? Jared Jared j Jared, you take this one, Yeah, you bet so. I think it was around a year ago, or it was a year to two years ago. My grandma she started getting really into her lineage because she's never really known much about that, so she went through all of this and it's kind of weird timing because about a year into all of that, that's when Mark found her and that opened up this whole other can worms that She's just always loved big Foot, always been into it, so obviously this excited her. So I was up there at her house and she's just going on and on about this, showing me the books about it and just telling me all this information. And I was like, you know, our family, we don't really keep in touch with everything history wise with our family. So hearing all this and hearing that, you know,

14:20 our ancestors have had a cabin in the woods and a gold mine, and how significant of a story for the big Fit community that this is, Like, obviously it piques your interest. You're gonna want to get out there and you're gonna want to find more. So I about a year ago I actually got a hold of Mark through the Pacific Northwest Bigfoot museum. I messaged them, hearing, oh, someone has a binder on me and my family, and I'd kind of like to know who has all this information on us, And he showed me the binder. It's it's definitely a binder or two.

15:09 We'll be back with more big Foot Society after these words from our sponsors. And so I asked him a little bit about it, and he told me, you know, the cabin's not really there anymore because it's been so long. It's there, but it's not you know, it's fallen in on itself and decayed over the years, and it kind of just kind of dropped off there. And but then my brother and my cousin got involved too, and that's where it kind of picked up, like, hey, you guys want to go out there too, So, you know, they started talking to Mark as well, and we got a little bit of information and we went up there, me and my brother, and we tempted at one time we had an idea where it was, but we didn't have all the information, and so we ended up going up there a second time on Saturday with our cousin as well, and we learned some mistakes on hiking and it kind of kept going from there and eventually we got a hold of Mark, got some more information and we're able to find the cabin. And then my cousin Jake, he's just this little billy goat of a person that he just wants to get there, so he keeps poking and prodding and he doesn't want to

16:42 slow down, and he ended up getting down the cliff where we wanted to look, and he's that guys, I think I found it, and so, you know, heart start racing, you start, you get down there, rock misses your head a little bit, apparently, is what they told me. But we we did find it, and it's just a completely surreal experience to be able to find something like that, not just from the story aspect, but to think that, you know, our family hasn't been there in roughly one hundred years, and no one's seen that cave for fifty plus years, so just to finally see it, it feels kind of like you're just completing something for your family and not so much the big Foot community.

17:34 It's just it's a different experience than I would have expected. Man, that's that is so cool. Jared, can you share a little bit for listeners who might not really understand how hard it is to get down to that area. Who well, darn, I want to I want to hear what you that's for you both, but I I kind of want to hear so first, Yeah, yeah, I love you, Mark, but some of your descriptions were a little more vague than I would have anticipated. One of one of his directions was there's two ways, one a certain death, the other is the right way. Well, when you get down to that part, Mark, there's actually kind of four ways because there's two dips in the ravine right there. So we took the certain death way the first time, and so we kind of corrected it and we ended up getting within one hundred feet of the cabin, but we we didn't really understand where to go from there.

18:51 So and keep in mind, we had full packs on because we also thought, hey, we're going to just camp at the site. Well there's no so we have full packs on and we got to go through divine maples and whatnot. We go the wrong way and we ended up going to the spring first, and pretty much we spent that whole day going everywhere around the cabin for about maybe two hours. And I mean, like we walked right around it. There's the fact that we didn't find it was absurd and so we had a call of a day on that. But that was I mean, we ran out of water. The trek down was just absolutely steep, and if you don't have rope, probably would not be the best idea to even attempt it. But it's very, very different because I mean, you got to think there's all the ashen upon us up there, everything's loose, you don't really have good footing almost anywhere, so it's you're going down about six hundred feet down the side of a cliff essentially, So it's definitely nothing to look at and laugh and think that, oh, this is going to be an easy trip, which we kind of went the mindset in, so definitely not the best mindset, right. I want to make sure listeners realize

20:22 this isn't park your car and then walk a few minutes on a trail that's nice to this undiscovered area like you're you're really you know, I've talked to a gentleman Craig Flippy before, and man, he it was almost the end of them from what he said. But Mark, do you have anything to add on how rough and wild it is to get to that area from what you've experienced, don't go there. Don't. Actually, my friend, my friend Brad Jeremiah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry to be distracted. I am sending you maybe a little bit on the email. Yeah, on the email, I'm sending you a little bit of a punchline to maybe. I sent you an image to wrap up the show, a person in a note from Jared, Jared's grandmother Betty, which is like super cool. Anyway, you can share that if you want to. My friend Brad, who has been with me on pretty much every field drip up at Ape Canyon, has told people, don't go up there. Don't it is incredibly, incredibly dangerous, and it is. It's incredibly dangerous. The first part that this whole scoop is that Ape Canyon, that the cabin site in the mine site is on the north side of what we now call Ape Canyon. In nineteen twenty two,

21:53 it obviously didn't have that name. It's on the north side of the canyon, and it's on the east side of a butte that beaute is called Pumicspute. And so what one does I'm not going to give you detailed directions, but it's but it's basically on the butte, on the north side of the canyon. You go up to the top of the butte and you go down and Jared, I'm sorry about my vague descriptions and my vague directions, but I you know what else can I do? I told you in Brayden. Just wait for me. I'll take you right to it. It's really hard to describe. One of the hardest parts is that is it. It's incredibly rugged, and it's incredibly dangerous, and I'm I'm here in my chair in my office and I want to go over there fifty seventy five feet on pumicspute at eight canyon. That would take me an hour to go fifty or seventy five feet. You have, okay, a good foothold, maybe you've taken a shovel or pick axe and you've chopped out a foothold. You step on it and it wants to slide out from all the pumics and scream and ash. Or you can combine that with what Jared talked about about the vine maple. The vine maple is you don't I've never seen vine maple like this.

23:22 It's vine maple that is monstrous. That it's like twelve feet above your head and incredibly dense. It takes literally an hour to go explore something that's fifty or seventy five feet away. So I'm sorry about my bad directions. Jared Head, you drew us a pretty decent map. I will say that once you're there at the cabin site, then yeah, then my map makes sense. Once you get there, everything clicks and it's just like, okay, everything makes more sense now. But one thing you might not know about us, Mitchells is we're a little bit anty and we don't have patience.

24:07 So okay, we kind of just go for it. No, No, that that's totally cool. I gotta I gotta say, you know, Jared, I don't know if you have this or not, but I'm going to send you guys an article. A two part article from The Oregonian. The first one was July nineteenth, and the second one was July the twentieth of nineteen twenty four where I think I think maybe we talked about this where Jack Gregory, the sports editor, the sports reporter for The Oregonian. He went up there the week after the or about the week after the attack. He was one of the few reporters that went up there, but he was one of the few reporters that didn't interview the miners. But what Jack Gregory did is that he went up through Kelso for whatever reason, he picked up the deputy one of the deputy sheriff's, a guy named Charles Dunbar, and his son, and they went up to Castle Rock, took a right, went up to Spirit Lake and then took the trail south basically following the miner steps, and they went up Palmiste, down Palmisbute, down to the cabin.

25:27 What Gregory did in his article was he gave us about four or five photos. And the way that Gregory did the article was like Stanley's Africa, going into the deep dark part of the Pacific Northwest, you know, as being where these miners were attacked by eight men. So it's like a little bit of hyperbole. But what Gregory did is that he didn't get us a step by step direction of how he came in from Castle Rock, Spirit Lake, down through the plains of Abraham, up Pummuspute, down to the cabin.

26:12 But he gave us enough clues and a few photos basically that's what I had to work on in order to find the cabin site. But yeah, we don't understand how you found that. Well, that's gonna take about a weekend of us camping out and a lot of beer and I'll tell you all the details about how that happened. But yeah, the cabin site was found in twenty thirteen. Basically it was a wall close but basically Gregory's photos where you could see in these photos the trees that were cut off in order to build the cabin, and you could see the stumps. I knew that if I could find the rotten stumps down there, I knew I would be close to the cabin. I had confirmed with the Giffard finshow National Forests hit archaeologist, a guy named Rick McClure, that that slope had never been commercially logged.

27:22 And you can tell because there are some big trees down there still that were fire to the eruption and probably circuit eighteen twenty four, that area had never been commercially logged. And I knew if I could find the find any rotten stumps that looked like maybe they were cut down maybe not, I knew I would be close. But basically in twenty thirteen, stumbling around, we found one rotten stump, we found another rotten stump, We found another rotten stump, and I hit my metal detector and we started finding nails dug down about four or six inches in the ground, and that's where we found the foundation, the log foundation of the cabin, plus a corner another line of the foundation with the nails still driven into it. We found perhaps Lee Roy Spoon, Marrion Spoon, Fred Beck Spoon. We found a spoon and obviously twisted bail wire, and I knew we had the cabin. Like what you said about my crappy directions and my crappy mat when when I found that, all the rest of the clues all came together, It's like, oh geez, now this makes sense. Now all of this makes sense. And so what you talked about previously. We got back down to the car the next day

28:59 and I told you last night, Jared, it was like, is this a dream? Is this real? You know? How can this be real? That the cabin site is probably there and probably we found it. And I think that's probably what you guys were seeing feeling when you found Oh yeah, the sense of pride that it gives you is it's it's an interesting thing, incredible. I'm gonna I'm going to bring in another interviewee that just is now on stage. Perhaps he will show back up in a second. He just jetted out, but that's all right. We'll see maybe Brandon in a few minutes. That was funny. Yeah, he said he was in so I could text him and see if he can hop back on. Yeah, I was just bringing him on stage at all. Good. We'll see, We'll see what happens. But Jared, something I wanted to ask you is what were the emotions actually hold on? Let's Brandon. This is in the middle of recording for the episode. So you're currently on the Big Fist Siety podcast. But thank you for being on stage with Jared and Mark as well.

30:23 We're talking about how you guys discovered the gold mine just recently. How are you doing, sir? Good? Thanks Jeremiah. Yeah, I'll hold like I just kind of hurt a little bit of what Jared was saying. A whole lot of emotions, but a lot of process. Absolutely. I've got a question really for both Jared and Braden, and the question is, so you're going down to this area. But what are the emotions that are going through you because you've got in mind that man, my ancestors were in this area. Yeah, and they're we're attacked by Bigfoot in the Like, what's going through your your mind at this time as you're going down to this area of brading. They're crazy. We'll be back with more Bigfoot Society.

31:18 After these words from our sponsors of what we were thinking was, Wow, these guys are madmen, absolute madman To go down what they went down and then decide that that's where they want to build a cabin, that's where they want to dig into the side of the earth. I mean wow. Yeah, we couldn't really wrap our heads around. But because you know, when you go to build a cabin or you go to go mining, in my head, you want kind of easier access. You wouldn't, well, Jared, you know wherever the gold is and was, Yeah, but you wouldn't think to go down a freaking mountain to find the gold. Seriously, the fact that they chose that spot and made it there and did it total just awesome. Dudes. Yeah, I gotta say now, I gotta I gotta say. We talked about it a little bit this about this before before your show, Jeremiah, Sorry, we talk amongst ourselves. Is that, you know, for so much of the Ape Kenyon story, I feel that the Bigfoot research community has relied too heavily on Fred Beck and Ronald Beck's book about

32:52 you know the story. I mean, yes, for the first part fred Beck's book his retail nor Ronald's retelling of the eight Kenyon story, it's more or less accurate. There just a few minor points that don't hold up to the nineteen twenty four newspaper and document record, But for the most part, yeah, it's right. But there is a point where they started out in nineteen eighteen going east of Woodland along the Lewis River, and then they started headed north. They were prospecting looking for plastic locations along the Lewis River, and they're like, forget it, let's just go north. And they went north, just south and Mount Saint Helens. And mind you, there were there was logging activity up there, headed up towards north of the Lewis River, headed up towards Smith Creek, but there wasn't a lot of logging activity headed up that way. So these guys were just just beaten brush and they were going they were going up there a little bit by truck on the road, but these guys were just beaten. And then all of a sudden, it was basically like, Hey, there's a large, deep, treacherous box canyon, let's mind for gold on the other side, where there's a two hundred foot drop off for certain death. Why and how it is sited in nineteen twenty two to blast that ledge and start tunneling in by dynamite and hand

34:23 tools. I have no idea. It's the most crazy, stupid precipitous place to start a gold mine, absolutely. I mean, the odds are stacked against you, yep. But hey, I, like you said, you know, if that's where the gold is, I guess you're going to do whatever you can to make it happen. That's true. You gotta go where the gold's at Braden. I'd love to get your viewpoint of what it was like when you guys finally got to the mind. What did you notice about the mine? All that good stuff? Oh geez. I was actually the last person to come up on it. Jake was the first, our cousin, and we knew just by the little oh you know, the little noisy made that he found it, and in that instant, Jared like, let's go of the rope and starts taking fast little steps towards him. Jake's like, no, no, take it easy, Ghostlaw. And you know, I'm still working my way down the hill as well. And so being the last person to see it, they were already down there inside it and giggling and hooting and holler and and just that feeling that rush when you finally lay your eyes on it. I can't I wasn't ready for it. I can say that much. It must have been incredible. And so really, you know, I'm sure there's a few people in the audience that are like,

35:57 were you able to walk inside the mine? Was it like you had to clear stuff added there? Or you could actually go in there and kind of crawl around, Like, tell me more about that a little bit. So what it looks like has happened, my opinion is for the last one hundred years and the eruption, rocks have been coming. You can kind of see in Jared's picture there rocks have been falling down that and over time, dirt and sticks and debris have been piling up. So it's basically buried the entrance. You can tell that it goes farther, but we couldn't fit in there. Maybe a small child could, but we couldn't, and we weren't about to try. Don't why Jake was about to try? I mean, it's that far, right, like, why not? It's, man, it's so tempting. You know, you want to follow the rules and you don't want to do anything to get land yourself in trouble out there, but man, it's it's like you're you've made it this far, what's you know just a little bit more. It's so in the picture that is on the screen.

37:12 I don't know if you're streamers or any of that can see it, And the picture doesn't do the entrance much justice. And the entrance to that must have been massive because all the rocks that have piled up, I mean we're talking one hundred years of piling up. It could easily be cleared down to what looks like the ledge that they blasted out, probably about ten thirteen feet down. That's about what I'd say too. So, okay, you've got about ten thirteen ft of rock pile that if that was removed, I almost guarantee that opening would open quiet a bit up and you'd probably have full access. But we're hoping. Hey, Karremiah, can you go back to the other mine entrance picture really quick? That one, so Jared and Brydon, there's all obviously there's huge pile of scree but right right in front of the entrance there are two large rocks. Do I do I understand? Obviously, Jeremiah, I haven't been. I haven't been there yet. I told Braden and Jared and Jake yesterday. I was ready when I got when I got this info on Sunday night, I was ready to pack up and go down like six in the morning to go down and check out. Then I haven't been there yet. Do I do it? From what you guys just described, Do I understand that I'm going to go into the mine and I'm

38:45 going to step over those two large rocks in the in the sort of in the mid of that picture. Then I'm going to go down into the mine and and that whole fill. I'm going down like ten feet or maybe not quite, but it looks like there might be about five six feet of rubble that needs to go get out of the way. It does look like the mind kind of goes down a little bit, but it's mostly flat. Yeah, And you can look like it goes down because of the rubble that's in the way. I mean it underneath what would be the roof. You can see it goes down under and you can see the rocks that have fallen it.

39:32 When you see it, Mark, you'll you'll fully understand. It's a little hard to explain, but you'll you'll see in there and you'll see that, yes, this rock, if you move some of it, I guarantee that you can, there's more back there. It looks like the rock to the right was the rock that they kind of followed, and the rock to the left, it's all banged up and blasted, I think was the rock that they were digging out of there. It looks like they kind of tried to, at least from what I could see inside the mine, it looks like they kind of followed that rock on the right a little bit, kind of followed it around there. There's one thing, now, mind you, I have never I've never dug a mind, which may be a shocker to you guys, but I've never dug a mind. What I've seen from other evidence of minings of this period is that they would use a hand drill, a star drill literally just like a bit with a star on the end and with a sledge, and the star drill would drill a hole x amount large enough to fit a stick of dynamite in. And that's all they were doing.

40:55 They were just drilling a hole enough just to stick a piece of dynamite in, and then they would set off a dynamite in order to blast it. What I'm seeing from your photo, particularly on the left hand wall of the mine entrance, I'm seeing a groove that kind of goes horizontally, which is indicative of someone setting a hole for like, hey, let's stick in a stick stick of dynamite in there. One thing that when we were in all four, we were fining multiple of those those little drill marks. Okay, at least that's what we thought. We were finding multiple of those.

41:38 One thing that we all four of us need to understand along with the viewers, is that in nineteen twenty two, when this mine first started to get made, mind you, this mine is today one hundred and one years old. Dynamite you could go down to the hardware store and you could get a pair of pliers and maybe a saw blade and a box of dynamite. Dynamite was plentiful because this is Kewitz County and Lewis County and Clark County. This was logging territory, and so going down to the hardware store to get a pipe wranch, you could get a box of dynamite too, because that's what everyone needed in our area. Primarily changed for the negative the good old because mainly not so much for mining, but dynamite was used like crazy for logging activity in the early twentieth century. So picking up a box of dynamite was like nothing. It was it was. It was dynamite, So it was easily accessible. Man, that's crazy to think though. You know, guys, you're in front of the mine. Did at any point you have a thought that was something like they're straight up a big foot in that mind right now looking at us? Do you ever Do you ever have that thought at

43:08 all? I don't know, but I'll tell you a story that some people might take and run with a little bit. All right up there, you're going down, you're tied off. You got this rope that's kind of rubbing up against the rocks, and I think that's maybe what did it? But out of nowhere, weird coming down the cliff and this boulder starts hurtling itself at Jared. I mean, it's coming right for him, and I mean Jake and I are panicking, freaking out trying to warn him. I feel like I couldn't even find words. Jared is slowly reaching down to pick up a cool rock and it flies right over him. He had no idea what was going on. Jared, Jake and I were, you know, crapping our ants. We just about watched Jared die and he was none the wiser.

44:07 Just big boulder, I mean, fist sized, it would have just ruined him. Really wow, So do with that what you want. That's an interesting story. I still think it was the rope. But well, yeah, wait a minute, I've never like, this is awesome. I've never i have never gotten that much detail out of you. Braden. I always assumed that somebody had dislodged your rock and it bounced. Was this rock? What would you say? It was? Aeriel Born? I mean, Brandon, I don't know did it come through the trees or did was it just like one thing? Because I wasn't looking up at where it had come from. I was looking at Jared and my focus was there, so okay, to be honest, I was in panic mode and I couldn't tell you we'll be back with more big Foot society after these words from our sponsors.

45:15 But it's an interesting partly so sorry, I don't know. I want to know. Maybe maybe maybe the local inhabitants were like, crap, you know this Smith Mitchell family are back after a hundred years. I thought we drove them out like ninety nine years ago, and I want to get ready here they're going close. Oh there's that smell again. We did have you know, you're up there, you're joking around. We did have moments of, you know, we got to finish what we started there, you know, up here tracking our grand pappies kill. That's wild. Yeah, that's I told uh. Let's see, we're at seven. We're at seven twenty five on the Pacific time. Let me let me just take a moment. Uh.

46:16 I don't know I've told Jeremiah this before. I don't know Braden and Jared if I ever told you guys in in twenty thirteen, it was a trip. We found the cabin site, got back, we can't do in a slightly different location than you guys did. But there there's five of us that Saturday night and were the sun's just going down. We're you know, if you're if I give you a perspective, if you're on if you're on the trail, I think I saw your picture where you can a camp at the base Pumspute. We camped up up on top of the other butte and I'm going And it was eight thirty nine o'clock. It was the third weekend of June and twenty thirteen, and a friend who was there named Ben.

47:20 It was like, shut up, shut up, shut up. Come over here to the edge and about a quarter mile down the basin and up the ridge just to the south of Mount just to just to the south of Mount Saint Helen's Sure, we could all hear it. And it was rung. It was howling, chattering sounds that lasted a long time, and we listened and it went on for a minute or two, three minutes, and then to the left of that, maybe a thousand feet, headed south towards the Lewis River along the ridge top, there was an answering call and it sounded just like Ron Moorehead, Sierra sounds. Really this went on and on and on and on and on. By the end, well it wasn't the end.

48:25 It was the end for us because we just went to bed and pulled the sleeping bags over our ears. By the end, there were there were about five. I heard a fifth one way down the Muddy River along that ridge, and the five of them were just talking back and forth to each other all night long until we went to bed, and presumably talking about us. And it was It was strange because I was in I was in my tent trying to make all this sounds go away because I was kind of freaking out. And I remember I'm hungry and I'm eating some trail mix and I was chewing on a nut in my trail mix and I broke a crack in my tooth. I cracked a tooth, and that that was part of fred story. Yeah, really, he cracked and and and begged Marian to take him to the dentist. And Marian was like, no, the gold is still good. I'm not going to take you to the dentist. And I remember cracking my tooth on the trail mix. I was like, we're gonna die. We're going up like a burrito for discovering the hanging up and take it home. That's it. Oh man. It is funny how history repeats itself, isn't it? Absolutely totally Jaredan and Braden. There's probably a few people that if I don't ask this question, they're gonna just blow up the

49:59 co comments on YouTube, and the question is probably, so did you guys find gold in the mind? I wish man even just like a piece of courts or something that we could come home and show our grandma. I feel like that would mean the world tour. But no, Unfortunately we did not get deep enough. But hopefully the future has some really cool surprises for us. Who knows, I don't know. Yeah, I definitely. And you know part of that is Jake brought his little pick axe hammers and he said, well, if I bring him today, we're not going to find it.

50:42 Yep. But if I leave him here at our camp, we're probably going to find it. Well, he left him there at camp and we found it. Yeah, he made the better decision. We had such a hard day. We were not going up back for it. That would have been I mean, we we were telling Mark yesterday we didn't. We weren't just on that area. We ended up crossing onto an entire different area and going about maybe a mile or two, pasted it on the side of the mountain, just kind of exploring. Just we went on the ridge where we believe he shot at Bigfoot the first time. Yeah, little side quest.

51:29 Frustrated that, like hate, I hate to tell you, Jared, I know that it felt like a mile. It wasn't. It was. It was like three hundred feet or something like that. It's not. Well, you know, we were tired, so as far as I'm concerned, five miles. Yeah. Yeah, but that was a pretty neat little side quest. We you know, in search of the cabin location. We started poking around and we're like, well, this isn't it, but this is kind of cool. So we kept following the ridge down presumably where it ran to hide and get away. Right, there's a couple of little goat trails over there that you can follow. And I stepped on a wasp nest got stung.

52:20 That was cool. But yeah, we just woken until we couldn't go anymore and then turn around. I gotta I gotta tell you. Jeremiah Brandon and Jared and Jake and I have talked about this. I'm in contact with good sources with the Volcanic Monument and the Gifford can Show National Forests. They know, they know about the mind discovery last Sunday and they're like, hell yeah, keep going with your research. They're they're really really jazzed about it. So I have good contacts with the Forest Service and the Volcanic Monument about that. Also, I have a very very good friend whose name is Ty and he's a chemical geologist that specializes in basalt and I've sent him, i think mainly Jared's photos. And so with the permission of the Volcanic Monument and the Gifford pin Show, what our plan right now is to take is for me to go down and just take a ziploc bag of samples and basically have a rudimentary chemical assay of the dirt rock gravel that is at the mine entrance, because that's going to be an important part of the Ape Candid story how

53:52 much gold per Ton really is in the Vendor White mine, but nobody, nobody, nobody can mine it legally right now. There's no way that gold is going to come out of that mind by human hands. But it's going to be important to know how much gold is actually in the vendor white mind. So we can compare that with fred Beck's story. That is incredible to think about who currently owns this this mind? Mark, I would assume you know the answer to this. I do. Uh, it's it's a United States of America. Okay, well, I was kind of an easy one.

54:36 Come on now, no, all all, ever, ever, ever, since the United States of America settled all of the land disputes with Britain and Russia and everyone about the Oregon territory, the United States government has owned all that time, for the past one hundred and seventy years, all underground mineral rights, including this one, including the underground mineral rights in your backyard. Jared and Braden, you think that you have uranium in your backyard, but it's not yours. It's it's the United States government. Yeah and so and so. What these guys did, what particularly Fred Beck and Marian Smith did is that they laid the claim with the location notice in nineteen twenty two.

55:35 Okay, there we go, and then we also have the proof of labor. The proof of labor needed to be filed every year or every two or three years. And what the proof of labor is is that you file a document after you've laid a mineral claim in this case, and you say I have moved this much, or these are how many days I worked, so on and so forth. And if you if at the time in the twenties, if you had filed your proof of labor, which is fined and witnessed over a statutory period of time, then those rights, those underground mineral rights, would transfer to you to have you own it indefinitely until you sold it to someone else, just like a piece of land or a house or whatever. The problem is is that this is the only proof of labor two days or two years after the mind was established. It needed to be five to seven years, which was not done. Sorry you guys. Well, the exciting part about the said document, because I'm a history nerd, is that if you look at this document closely, it says that all work was

57:08 completed on July tenth, nineteen twenty four. They said we worked these many days, we moved this much, or whatever, but all work was completed on July tenth, nineteen twenty four. That was the night of the attack. Oh, Apparently the essays from the gold mine were good, according to Fred, and also Marian said that as well, the essays were good, they were getting gold out of it. They still had let's say, July, August, September, October, November, you gotta be out of there. They had about three and a half more months of weather to continue gold mining. But they were like, no, all work is done. On July the tenth, nineteen twenty four. Something must have scared them off, huh to maybe one thing too. And you know, I like to try to think of the logistical explanations and such too, And it's hard to to imagine that he was telling this story to scare people off of their gold because what it did is it created one of the biggest man hunts in world history.

58:36 I mean, we're still looking for the guy, but I mean it's good. Yeah, it's true. It was. It was called the Great eight Hunt of nineteen twenty four. Everyone, the guys from England over here, even that's right, that's right, man, Yeah, that's exactly right. It was so much so that the Scamania County Ranger required that everyone and check their guns before they went into the national forest because there were bullets flying everywhere trying to shoot them big guy, right, you know, yeah, every every every it was. It was a great a part that lasted for the rest of nineteen twenty four up there. So what you're you know, thinking of the explanations there and that one in particular. I mean I've I've heard that one a couple of times. The rolling rocks onto the cabin the y m c A Boys, I mean, Mark, you know, because you've been there, it's laughable. It's not possible. It's not possible.

59:39 If you've been there, you get it. No, kids didn't do that, you know. As also, I have arguable document proof that the YMCA Boys were not there on Thursday. I have document evidence on Wednesday night. They were there on Wednesday night, but they weren't there. I have document evidence that says all the y m c A Boy campers were back in camp. We'll be back with more big Foot Society after these words from our sponsors on Thursday morning. They weren't there on Thursday night. No, Wow, that doesn't surprise me. That to me was one of the least likely explanations, especially after seeing it. Yeah, and mind you, the YMCA Boys camp at Speric Lake was five or six miles away. Yeah, and then dark and cliffs. Uh yeah, that's to me the least likely explanation and the one I can't remember. The gentleman's name that said he was making the tracks and that he apparently rolled some rocks down a hill onto a cabin in nineteen twenty four. Jeremiah, Jeremiah. That came from Rants Mullins. That

1:01:13 came from Rant. He was, you know, a big battle with Ray Wallace over big Stompers that. Yeah, no, Wet Mullins may have been there, but I mean, all it takes is Jared and Braden for you guys to be there and me being there. So he's walking along the trail and he knocks a couple of rocks off. Those rocks are not going to hit the cabin, and all you gotta do is be there. Look at you, Brandon, You're like nope, It's like, that's that's not going to hit the cabin. Rant Mullins was coming back from a fishing trip from Crane Lake to the South and yeah, he saw he knocked a couple of rocks off. That's where the story, that's where the story came from.

1:02:02 Yeah, nonsense. That yeah, the fact he's just happens to be hiking above the No, no, no, that's crazy, dude. After seeing it, you know why it's not possible. It's Yeah, guys, it's been awesome talking to you. I have one final question because I want to respect the time of all three of you, but uh to to Jared in Braden, what was it like when you were able to tell Betty we found the mine? Like? What was what was the reaction that you got when when you were able to convey the information? Well, I wouldn't hear this.

1:02:46 Yeah, yet to have seen her in person. My cousin has called her so far, but we still need to go up there and tell her the story and show her the pictures. And to be honest, we're kind of bad grandsons. We should have done it already, but we need to. We need to get up there and talk to her, tell her what we've seen. Maybe we could get that plan tomorrow or the next day. We'll let's see what Jake's up to. But Jake said that she was kind of in disbelief and pretty excited. So oh, you guys, Oh, I'm not I'm not Betty's grandson, but I'd love to go with you.

1:03:28 Oh my god, I'm sure you would, Mark. I don't think Papa would like that. If there's one person whose opinion matters to me on all of this, it's hers. And oh yeah, if there's any I mean, if we could find something to bring her and show her that would that would make it all worth it to me. That's to me the biggest goal. Yeah, And I think the coolest thing that could I'm from this is definitely bringing her something from that mind, whether it be a rock to a bucket that was left behind, if anything like that was possible, just for her to have, I think that would just mean so much to her.

1:04:14 But yeah, we definitely need to respect, you know, all the officials at the park. And that's true. That is number one for sure. Mark. You had asked me to share this, uh, near the end of our conversation, if I if I can read this out, and I thought it was a it was a full one. I have this crazy little zine called Mountain Devil. It's just like a few pages long. I'm working on yet, Jeremiah, I swear to God, I'm working on the Big Ape Canyon book, which I nearly done with it, you know, promise anyway. Yeah, you know, we talked about this, Jared and Braden and I and I had to I was in conversation with Betty Mitchell, Lee Roy's daughter, and then I had to take a break for it, take a break from it for a little bit. And I had this conference up in Seattle. I'm standing there at this conference and there are these big picture windows and I'm standing in the audience listening to Shane Courson speak and a car pulls up. I can see through the picture windows into the parking area.

1:05:34 And the car pulls up and this guy, young hipster gets out, and I was like, is that Tyler? Is that Tyler Mitchell? And he goes around to the passenger side and he opened the passenger door and an older woman with silver hair steps out. I'm like, oh, my christ, is that Betty Mitchell? And he leads his grandma into the conference and introduces me to Betty. That's the first time I've ever met her. And that was the day that I got the audio interview with Betty. And so I have this little zine called Mountain Devil, and Betty, it's like, I want to buy one of your zines. And I want you to sign it, Timmy. I'm like, absolutely, and I'm not going to sell you one of my zines. I'll sign it to you, but I'll tell you what. I will sign a zine over to you, and you sign a zine over to me. And so I'm just like Betty, I love you.

1:06:35 Mark Marcella Babo here and she is writing and writing and writing and writing and writing. And bench hands it Tommy. This is copy whatever thirty six and it's Betty Mitchell. It's a little bit cut off, so I have to read it for memory. But this is what Betty Mitchell's daughter of Leroy Praise Puts Perry Smith wrote to me. Thank you, Mark for letting me in on this story that I never even knew existed. Brings back memory, brings back my father's memory of him, I mean Uncle Fred back. They were good men, who were the people you could expect the too truth from.

1:07:19 So I believe they told the truth at the bottom Betty Mitchell. And honestly, out of all of my EIGHTE Canyon research, this is one of my most prized possessions. Oh man, that's that is really and it means so much to her. I mean you should. You should honestly hear the way that she she talks about you and what you guys, I mean literally what Yeah, Yeah, she talks very highly of you. I mean really nice reaching out. I mean really, you guys kind of you kind of changed our lives a little bit. I mean we wouldn't have it. We'd be none the wiser. I'd still be going to work making my you know, paycheck and keeping my head down. I wouldn't be hunting bigfoot and lost gold mines and adventures and you know, so I thanks for that. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, you're welcome. I will say, Mark time, I'm really looking forward to that book that you're writing coming out because, like you said, it's it's hard to find this information and it's hard to determine which parts are the important parts of the books that are out.

1:08:40 So the fact that we're going to have essentially tell all and I mean from the work that I've seen you do, it's so thorough and accurate. We're just going to have so much to go off and it's I can't wait to read it and just get all the details. It's it's pretty exciting. Yeah, Jeremiah, I know, I know, we're running along. But there's one thing I tried to get to in a project last night which I won't drop names about something that's greater injured, and I did. I didn't get to this last night. I want I want you guys to hear it. It's an old soapbox of mine. I was invited into the Bigfoot research community because of my preliminary research into Ape Canyon right, and I learned very very quickly. I was graciously invited into the Bigfoot research community. And since then I've met people with bigger, bigger brains than I will ever have. I've met, you know, microbiologists, my cross capists, I've met anatomous you know all these names that I could name, And I've met so many cool people in the research community. I probably speaking in the historical research guy.

1:10:00 If someone brings me a cast, if someone brings me a photo of a pranch, I don't know what to do with it, but I do know who to send that information to to have them look at it. I'm going to have Cliff Berrickman look at it. I'm going to have doctor Jeff look at it. If I have a sound recording, I'm going to send it to Chris Spencer or David Ellis with the Olympic project. I don't know anything about this, but they have given me so many leads on historical projects, historical Bigfoot research projects, and I am very very grateful to them. And what that's proven to me. It's friends working with friends, researchers working with researchers, and that's the only way that the Bigfoot research community and this database is going to go forward. That being said, Jared and Braden, you're part of that. You're my friend. You have established so much shit last Sunday that is going to go stellar for this whole project. And that's that's that's part of my point is that it's friends working with friends. It's those who are interested, the networking of it. Yes, exactly exactly. So the book is the book who cares? But what I'm more interested A lot of people will care. Mark, You give yourself more credit. And I

1:11:31 guarantee the first person that's going to want to buy one is my grandma. She's gonna absolutely cherish up. Oh no, no, no, no, she's getting number one. Yeah, absolutely absolutely. And I tell you what, I wasn't going to ask you to do that, but I'm said, no, no, no, Betty. Betty is getting number one, absolutely. But what I have to say is that with the mind discovery that you guys did, there is so much more to do. And I'm you know, you're I'm sorry to say, you're in it to win it now. You guys are part of You're going up there with me. You're you're going up there with me. So sorry. You just married yourself to this.

1:12:13 You're in the big Foot community now, guys, and Jared, I just hope we can keep up right. Well, that's the thing. Do you guys have any closing thoughts about the discovery of the ape can in mine before we wrap things up? Go ahead, Jared, kind of just how surreal it is and exciting it is for all of us to come about, and the different parts of the stories that this can pertain to, and kind of, you know, keep the ball rolling with some ideas like I was mentioning last night with when they shot the creature sixteen times, they didn't know if it fell or if it crouched down and crawled down, and well, you know, seeing where the mine is, the possibility of crouching down and crawling down that I could see that, so that just it opens up so many more different possibilities and gets people talking more, and that's exciting. I'm glad to be a part of it. And I appreciate you having a song thank you and braiding any thoughts. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, you know, I feel like we're not the kind of people that really cool stuff happens too, you know. I mean, just we're not very lucky people.

1:13:36 We really are. It's in our family, Mitchell. Luck is a joke, it really is. And for us to come out there, I can a third try just stumble along, and I mean, it's it is, It really is surreal. I mean, this is We're gonna be talking about this for for so long. We're gonna be telling our kids and our grandkids about this potentially, absolutely, And we're gonna have to take Ellie up there with you sometime. Take my daughter, We're gonna have to. I want to take her up there, and I think it's gonna be amazing. And I want you to tell those camp fire stories for you. Want to thank you. How how old is she? She's ten months, So it's it's a way away. You mean, you mean I actually have to take care of myself and like not smoke and drink so much, so I can take her up yourself. I say, this is Jared, this is not a kid's trip. You barely made it ten to fifteen. That'll be able.

1:14:49 No, I'll all be around, We'll go Yep, absolutely, and I am really looking forward to it. Really, it's a the people that we're meeting, You guys are all extremely friendly, really knowledgeable. As we uncover things, more and more questions are popping up. And I hope as we keep going that we answer those questions, whether whether we like the answer or not. You know, it's a lack of a time making this exploration. It's unbelievable. It's fun. Absolutely, guys, it's been so fun chatting with you. I want to call it Mark. What's the best way people can get in touch with you? So I have a kind of bigger audience now and there could be people listening that have never reached out to you about Abe Canyon stuff. How could they do that? Number one the easiest way is through Facebook with my name. However, I have to tell you is that I have a brand spanking new web site. Yes, Mark Marsile has a website. Again, I didn't make it. My friend Tie, the geologist, made it and it's a monster history dot net and in there there's a link with a new email connected with Monster Hisstory dot net where you can get a hold of me. I have to contact my friend Tie to figure

1:16:23 out how I can access that email, but you can. You can, sorry, Jeremiah stopped laughing. You can get a hold of me through that email, but the best way is uh is probably just through a Facebook and you can message me. So fantastic, Brandon, Jared just want to give you the opportunity. If you guys have anything to plug, feel free to do it. If not, we're golden. I just want to say hi to my grandma and my mom, and I want to thank my my, my friends and my family. I want to thank Brandon for not pushing me down that cliff when I was there. Should be real thankful, all right, Thank you so much for coming on tonight. This has been a real fun chat and I can't wait to say what this goes in the future.

1:17:15 Yeah, me too, Jeremiah, thank you very much for having us on. This was a lot of fun here. A Bigfoot Society article is to provide a platform for those that have encountered Bigfoot to share their encounter in a safe and respected environment, but we need to hear your story. If you've experienced something that you just can't explain, please send me an email at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. Then we can start the conversation. And I know a lot of you have not shared your encounter at all. It's been twenty years and it's time that you get this off your chest and then you can get some well deserved for rest because I know you haven't been sleeping.

1:18:00 I understand what you're going through, and I appreciate every one of you listening