The High Park Monster

The cache is not at the posted coordinates; however, this is a great place to park. Please read below to learn of its true hiding spot.

My great uncle spent pretty much all of his life on his family’s ranch the High Park area of Colorado. He was born into hard times in 1931 and passed away after a life well-lived at the age of 84 back in 2015 - both in the same room of the main house. You could say his life came full circle, but I’d prefer to think that the gravity of the ranch was just holding him in the one place where he was meant to live and work in this world. He was a man who loved the land, cherished a warm fire on the cold and windy winter nights, and found a great joy in working with cattle (despite their wily antics). He was quiet and reserved around strangers and in the city, but he could carry on a conversation or tell stories for hours at a time with an old friend or members of the family.

Growing up on the Front Range in Monument, we’d typically come up to High Park to visit my great uncle and help out with some of the ranch maintenance a few times each year during the summer and fall months when I was young. My great aunt passed away back in 2002, and all but one of their four kids lived close by, so my great uncle didn’t have much in the way of helping hands in his later years. Despite the cattle work being done by a neighboring ranch who was leasing my great uncle’s land, there were still fences to mend and firewood to stack each year, not to mention all of the other odd-jobs that frequently popped up, so we helped out where we could and provided him some much-needed company. When we first started going to the ranch in the early 2000s, I wasn’t much help given my youthfulness – my main ambition was to explore around the property and get into trouble with my siblings. However, as the years went on, my connection to the land grew and I appreciated the importance of the work that needed to be done more and more. It got to the point that I began spending 2-to-3 weeks in a row out of every summer between my high school years at the ranch. The work kept me busy and active throughout the days, but I cherished the time I got to spend hearing my great uncle’s stories during the twilight hours at the end of every day even more. He’d make a pot of decaf coffee and we’d both sit with our mugs out on the wrap-around porch as the sun set, watching the prancing of the mule deer as they’d run about the grassy slopes. I’d observe the colors painted on the western horizon change and fade as my great uncle walked down memory lane, telling stories from his childhood, about riding his horse through the worst summer thunderstorms and spring blizzards imaginable, and of all the good moments he’d spent with his wife and kids on the property.

I distinctly recall one night during the summer between my Junior and Senior years of high school. It was probably about 2 weeks into my 3-week stay at the ranch, and the workload had gotten pretty light by that time. I had found an old fishing pole tucked away in one of the outbuildings and by looking at a map I knew that Fourmile Creek was only a few miles’ hike away from the ranch, so I decided to ask my great uncle if I could take the following afternoon off to go try my luck on the creek and try to bring back a trout dinner. None of my family had ever been down to the creek since we started coming to the ranch, and when my great uncle did saddle up his horse for a ride, he never rode out in that direction, which I thought was a little odd. As we sat down with our coffee and listened to the buzzing “whirrrr” sounds of diving nighthawks, I proposed my fishing idea. My request was met with a severe silence from my great uncle that I’d never witnessed before. I turned to look at his face and saw that it’d been seemingly drained of all emotion; he just stared blankly out towards the skyline. After what had to be a full minute of this silence, he just muttered a trembling “no” under his breath. He followed with, “No, you shouldn’t go down there…I can’t go down there…nobody should go down there.” I could see his hands shaking as he held his coffee mug, and it looked like he was trying to process a memory that had been buried deep in the recesses of his mind for a long, long time.

With my adolescent audacity getting the best of me, I asked him “why shouldn’t I go down there?” After another moment of silence he said, “Let me tell you a story I’ve never told anyone else, one that I’ve tried to forget about for decades but just can’t get to leave my mind. Maybe it’ll give me some redemption to finally let someone know what I saw that day.” Now, I’ll pause here to say that my great uncle was never one to joke around. He was the most honest and upright person I’ve known, was well-respected by all who knew him, and would have never been called out as a liar or a joker. He was only a couple years away from his death when he told me this story, but I can attest to the fact that up until his last day on earth his mind was fully sound and grounded in reality. I firmly believe that the following is a true story, which I have recounted here to the best of my memory:

“When I was a young boy, I overheard a lot of stories about strange happenings from between the area of the High Creek-Fourmile Creek confluence and Cripple Creek. There’s a lot of country between those two places, and it’s some of the roughest and most difficult to navigate in all of Teller and Fremont Counties. There’s good reason for why we’re a stone’s throw from Cripple Creek as the crow flies but you have to drive nearly twenty miles around Pisgah to get to town. Not many people ever bothered trying to make a living in those canyons, but those who did didn’t stick around too long. When they’d drive by our ranch on their move out, you could tell they were stirred up about something, but they’d always come up with some excuse about the weather being too harsh or the gardens not growing like they’d hoped they would. I always thought there was a deeper reason for their leaving, and I think the rest of my family did too, but we just waved them on and wished them the best in whatever they did next. A few of them talked about strange devilish howls in the night or some sort of large animal stalking their cabin, which we suspected were just the usual suspects: screaming mountain lions and ornery black bears looking for kitchen scraps. For our own part, we never went down that way much. Our cattle stayed up in the parklands all year, and I guess all those folks leaving out of the canyon country to the east never gave us any reason to go explore it. It wasn’t until the fall roundup when I was seventeen years old that I made my way down there, by no choice of my own.

“While out riding the east side of the ranch one late-September day, trying to drive cattle in towards the corral, I noticed a new break in the fence where a pine had fallen over the wire. It must have been pretty recent, since we’d had a lot of high winds a couple nights prior. I saw a bunch of cow tracks going from our property over to the other side of the fence, and it was clear those fools were trying to get down to the choicer grasses along the now-dry bed of High Creek. I yelled over to my father, who was about a hundred yards distant, about the break and the cattle tracks and told him that I was going to hop the fence and try to bring our wandering cows back over to the ranch. He yelled an “ok” back to me and I stepped my horse over the fence and down into unfamiliar territory. As I plodded on the next couple of miles, I couldn’t believe that I’d never ridden down here before. The hills on either side of High Creek began growing taller and rockier, and the wide, grassy bends of the creek bottom made for one of the most peaceful rides of my life. I could see cattle tracks all over the dry and pebbly bed of High Creek, which I figured would probably be flowing in the Spring-time each year before the post-monsoon dry season forced all of the water underground. I went around numerous bends before I finally got a glimpse of the breakaway cows, about 20 in number, loafing around a solitary pool of slimy green water that had collected up against the edge of a small cliff.

“I rode up behind the group and began pushing them, reluctant as they were, back towards the ranch. I made decent progress with them for the first few bends in High Creek, but out of nowhere one of the younger cows decided to split right and run through a group of small pines. “That’s just what I needed,” I thought to myself as I turned away from the main herd to ride after the rogue bovine. As I moved through the pines that came up about to the top of my head from where I sat on my horse, I realized that there wasn’t just hillside beyond the trees like everywhere else I’d seen so far along the creek bottom, but rather a hidden gulch. To the right of me, the hill went up steeply, while a slightly lesser hill rose up on my left. This draw was much narrower than what I’d ridden through so far along High Creek. I immediately noticed that there was a complete silence that felt like it was enveloping me once I got into the little gulch. No more sounds of birds in the trees, no late-season crackling of grasshopper wings, and most bizarrely, no wind. It wasn’t a very windy day to begin with, but I’d definitely been enjoying the light breeze throughout my ride up to this point. It was as if I had entered a vacuum of some kind. My horse began to shy away from the very bottom of the gulch that lay ahead; he was a 15-year-old animal that had spent his whole life doing ranch work, and I’d never seen him get spooked of anything outside of a mountain lion we’d happened a little too closely upon when I was younger. I nudged him on, but he slowed significantly and it was a challenge to get him to ride any further up into the gulch. After a short ways of dealing with his spooking, I went ahead and tied him to a tree and began walking up into the gulch. I was hoping I’d catch a glimpse of the young cow’s tracks breaking to the left, meaning that he’d gone over the hill to rejoin the rest of his compadres and I wouldn’t have to worry about chasing him all of the way up this gulley that stretched on for who-knows-how-long. I wasn’t very far up the gulch when, as I’d hoped, I saw the cow’s track make an abrupt turn from the gulch bottom and go up through the shrubby pines and scrub oak to my left.

“As I was about to turn around and head back for my horse, I felt a piercing fear strike deep inside of me. As I said before, I’ve been close to mountain lions before, I’ve run headlong into rummaging bears, and have been too close for comfort to a pack of coyotes in my past. I was startled by those encounters to be sure, but I was never petrified with fear. This, however…this stopped me in my tracks, mid-turn. I could feel eyes staring at me, as if they were drilling right through my very being. I could sense that something was behind me, though I couldn’t quite tell where. It couldn’t have been directly behind me on the gulch bottom, as I’d just walked there. It must be up on the rocky cliff that I had my back to. I felt that if I made a run for it up the hill to my left, much like the cow had done, or further up the gulch, that whatever was watching me would surely follow and overtake me. I found some old advice in my mind from my father, telling me to stand my ground if ever I was to be charged by a predator. I made up my mind to turn around slowly, and try to focus my gaze on whatever it was that was holding me in its sights. Turning around right there was the most painful thing I’ve ever done in my life; you could break every bone in me and I think it’d be more bearable than having to face whatever it was that was lurking behind me.

“As I rotated around in a slow “about-face” motion, I first caught a glimpse of its legs and feet. They were dark, hairy, and gigantic. I slowly looked up from the tree-trunk sized legs that I was now staring at, and I saw the rest of the bulking thing towering above them, silhouetted dark and black against the pinkish-grey of the cliff that it was standing on the side of. I can’t rightly describe the thing with any other word than “huge.” I was absolutely dwarfed in the presence of a hair-covered giantthat stood high above me. I remember its unrealistic size incredibly well, but I remember even more the look of its face. It was almost human; the hair that surrounded the face could maybe be described as ape-like, but the face was of a person, just bigger. The eyes of it scared me the most. Just like I’d felt when my back was turned, I could now see the power behind those eyes. They were the eyes of something with an immense intelligence. Some people may call this creature an “animal” and give it names like “sasquatch” or “bigfoot.” For myself, I don’t think I could ever assign a name to it. It was something more than an animal, and possibly something more than a human. I’d venture to call it a “being,” but “monster” may be a more applicable term. I don’t know how long I stood there staring back at it. As what felt like minutes dragged on, I got the sense that this thing wasn’t going to hurt me, but it certainly didn’t want to have me sticking around. The time that I spent standing there gave me the chance to notice that directly behind the being was a hole in the cliff; it wasn’t a huge hole, but it was very dark inside. I suspected that I may have unknowingly ventured onto the front porch of this being’s cavernous home, a place where few (if any) people had ever wandered before. After trying to formulate some words and get them to come out of my mouth, with only limited success (I’m pretty sure I was just whispering gibberish for a while) I found the courage to yell out to the monster. “I’m sorry I stumbled in here…I’m going to head back the way I came from…just leave me alone.” There was no expression on the face of the being after I said this, but I could feel the fear that had been holding onto me since I began turning around to let up a bit. I took that as a signal that I was being allowed to leave. I turned myself to face back towards High Creek and began walking slowly, then faster, and even faster, never looking back behind me to see what the being was doing. I reached my horse in what felt like seconds, and I can’t rightly recall the rest of the ride back to the ranch. Somehow, the cowboy in me remembered to push the cattle onward towards the break in the fence, but I have no recollection of doing so.

“As I said at the beginning of this, I’ve never told anyone this story. I was glad to be alive after my encounter, but I could never piece it together in my mind how what I saw that day was physically possible. I’ve heard many times that this “sasquatch” being is an American myth, but what I saw was real. It wasn’t what the stories make it up to be; it’s no animal, and I’m not entirely sure that it exists purely on our human plane of existence. I’m just a simple and old rancher, but take it from me…there are strange and unexplainable things out there; this “thing” in particular is best left alone. I don’t think we’re meant to research it, understand it, or pursue it. Please do me a favor…don’t walk down into that country. Stay out of it entirely. That being owns that land, and I think we cattlemen and homesteaders are just transient guests in a much bigger story and world than we realize.”

This was my great uncle’s story. As I said earlier, I have no reason to believe that it’s not true. He was clearly shaken up even in his recalling of it so many years after it had happened. Needless to say, I never took my little fishing trip that I had planned on down to Fourmile Creek that next day. However, as most us can probably understand, my curiosity was sparked by this story. I wanted to see this “hidden gully” he spoke of, and see if the small cave in the wall of the cliff was really there. I have only been back to the ranch twice since I started college in 2014. The first time was in the Fall of 2015 after my great uncle’s passing. We held his funeral up on a small hill a short distance from his house, where he was buried next to my great aunt, his parents, and his grandparents. The second time was just here recently, in July of 2022. My “cousin” (great uncle’s son) now owns the ranch, and lives there with his family. He was the one who lived not too far up the road to the north when I was a kid, and I have a decent relationship with him. I called him up earlier this Spring and asked if I could stop by the ranch, stay for a few days, and walk around to reminiscence about all of the good times I spent there. On the second day of my stay, my curiosity finally got the best of me. I wanted to see the place where my great uncle claimed to have run into the “being” that struck a lasting fear into him. I took a look at an old map and decided upon an easy route down to High Creek – likely not too different from the one my great uncle went chasing cows on 74 years ago. Once I got down to the High Creek bottom, I had some difficulty finding the hidden gulch he spoke about; the pines at the entrance that he told of had probably been destroyed in a flash flood years ago, so some newer growth of pines now crowded the entrance. Not long after I started up the gulch, I looked up ahead of me and spotted a small hole in a cliff up ahead. This had to be the spot. As I got closer, I noticed the same old silence that my great uncle had spoken of creeping in. The chirping of the birds faded away, and the wind died down significantly. I got an eerie feeling as I approached right up to the base of the cliff, the small and dark cave entrance looming directly above me. I never saw any being; I didn’t feel that there was some giant waiting up in that cavern to try and ward me away from its home. But I had a feeling…a feeling that this wasn’t a place I needed to be, and that I best not stick around too long. After all, there might be things in this world that we weren’t meant to comprehend.

---Beyond the Story---

If you choose to attempt this cache, please maintain your safety as your top priority. Geocaching, especially in more ‘wild’ areas, comes with inherent risks. Please let someone know where you’re going or bring along a friend for the adventure; this is a fairly remote area of Colorado, despite not being incredibly far from major roads. Be mindful of encounters with potentially dangerous animals; I have had at least two close encounters with mountain lions and one close encounter with a bear in this area over the 10+ years that I have been hiking here. Remember your ‘ten essentials’ – navigation, headlamp, sun protection, first aid, knife, fire, shelter, extra food, extra water, and extra clothes. I do not recommend attempting this cache when thunderstorms are in the forecast due to flash-flooding risks. The coordinates for this cache were based on my phone’s GPS reading, which was +/-30 feet at the time; while I assume that the location of the cache will be fairly obvious once you’re there, please be aware that the coordinates may not be the most accurate.

Stay safe, have fun, re-hide the cache as you found it, and please tell of your adventures in your log!

Many thanks to 3 Williams Kidz for inspiring this geocache.

Additional Waypoints