SC EP:1075 I Ran As Fast As I Could

Damon writes "Hello, I wanted to just share my encounter I had in Vancouver, Canada. I was on a hiking tour with my mom,aunt, and cousin through a redwood forest. I grew up in rural Louisiana. So me and my cousin had plenty of experience of exploring the woods.
We were the kind of kids that were kinda rowdy and always getting into something at a young age. At the time I was around 16 years old when this happened. We were walking thru the forest getting bored of the hiking tour. So me and my cousin decided we were going to try to break off from this tour and walk through the forest ourselves, because we were passing up some really good areas that looked like they had some interesting things back off into the thickets. So we fell back to the back of the tour group, and saw a very heavily covered trail to our left and decided this is our chance. We ducked off through the bushes and made our way over some logs and branches. We walked through the winding forest for about 100-150 yards. Then we came up on a redwood tree that had fallen.
This really amazed us. The size of the tree even laying down was more impressive. We walked along the tree, with it being on our left side. Rubbing our hands along it as we walked down the trunk of the tree, coming up towards the roots that was exposed. Once we got near the roots of the tree, we had to walk around them to our right to get pass the roots. I was leading the way. So once I came around the roots of this huge tree, what I saw had me in a total shock. I came around the roots and I was within 10ft of what I thought was a bear at first. I stopped. And froze. But my cousin was still walking up behind me, and he made a noise coming through the roots and brush. This thing had it's back to me and was in a squatting position. With shaggy reddish hair. It appeared to be about 5 feet in height at the shoulders.
So that's why my first thought was "oh shoot, I just walked up behind a bear" I assume it heard my cousin, and it started to stand up and turn towards us. But it didn't stand like a bear. I saw arms come out from it's sides and stand up like a man. That's when I saw the legs and head and shoulders. I cant recall if I said any thing besides run to my cousin. And we ran through the way we came. I felt like this thing gave chase for a minute. But I was to afraid to turn around. We hit the tour trail and ran until we caught up with the group. We both were hyperventilating and couldn't talk. I tried to explain to the group what we just saw, but I couldn't say Sasquatch. I thought they will think I'm crazy. So I just said "Idk ,I saw something back there". We were both panicked.
I always tried to deny what I saw because it wasn't the right color of big foot videos and pics I've seen on T.V. and books. So I told myself, it must have been a big orangutan the escaped or a red monkey. I've never told many people about this. Maybe 5 people my entire life. Just family members. Its was just to unbelievable even for me. Not until I heard a story on your show about a sasquatch the was a reddish color that I knew what I saw was exactly what it was."