Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories is the kind of place where mysteries can survive. Vast, isolated and surrounded by seemingly endless wilderness, parts of the enormous lake stretch into the Arctic Circle. In the summer of 2001, three people reportedly travelled into one particularly remote corner of that wilderness—and came away with a story they would remember for years.
It happened on July 4, 2001. A father and his adult son had waited three years for the opportunity to take a fishing trip to Great Bear Lake. They arrived around the opening of fishing season, hoping to spend their days pursuing the enormous lake trout for which the area is famous.
But nature changed their plans.
Ice still covered too much of the prime fishing area near their lodge, so arrangements were made for the father, son and their fishing guide to take a bush plane somewhere else. They were flown into an even more isolated location where the water was open and they could spend the day fishing.
According to the son’s later account, lodge staff, their guide and the bush pilot indicated that they were the first people to be taken into that particular area during the summer of 2001.
Their guide knew about an old, deteriorating trapper’s cabin nearby. The father enjoyed exploring abandoned cabins and looking for old objects, so while the group was fishing for lake trout, they decided to make their way toward it.
It was approximately 1:00pm. The sky was clear and blue, and the temperature was around 50°F, or 10°C. As their boat approached the shoreline, the son noticed something near the trees behind the cabin. At first, it appeared to be nothing more than a dark silhouette.
But something about it immediately seemed wrong.
The afternoon sunlight illuminated the green vegetation surrounding the old cabin, causing the dark figure to stand out sharply against its surroundings. It appeared extraordinarily large—its head and shoulders rising above the nearby trees and the deteriorating cabin.
And it seemed to be looking directly at them.
The son asked the fishing guide whether he could see it.
The guide said that he could.
Instead of turning the boat around, the guide moved closer.
As the distance between them narrowed, the son was able to see more of the figure. He could reportedly see it from approximately the middle of its thighs upward. Its entire body appeared to be covered in very dark brown or black hair, including its face.
Its head seemed unusually large and somewhat conical, widening around the jaw. Its shoulders were broad, and its arms were remarkably long and muscular, extending much farther down its body than the arms of an ordinary person.
The witness would later estimate the creature at approximately 7 feet 6 inches tall and around 300 pounds.
He had an interesting way of judging its height. He personally knew a former NBA player who stood approximately 7 feet 3 inches tall, and he believed whatever was standing behind that cabin was even larger.
Yet despite its enormous size and hair-covered body, the creature didn’t strike him as moving like an ape. It appeared strangely human. Then the figure turned. The three men watched as it began walking away through the vegetation. It remained completely upright on two legs.
According to the witness, it never dropped onto all fours. Instead, it slowly moved through the trees while using its long arms to push branches, brush and small trees out of its way.
For several minutes, the men simply watched. The creature continued deeper into the wilderness until the trees finally swallowed it from view. The entire encounter reportedly lasted somewhere between five and seven minutes which is an unusually long time for an unexplained creature sighting.
Once the figure had disappeared, the men decided to go ashore.
That was when they noticed something else. A powerful smell hung in the air around the place where the creature had been standing. The son described it as musky, somewhat similar to the smell of a bear, but with another unmistakable quality mixed into it.
It smelled like fish.
He hadn’t noticed the odour while they were still in the boat. It only became apparent once the group reached land and approached the area where the mysterious figure had been.
There were also impressions in the ground that appeared as though they might have been tracks.
Unfortunately, the terrain consisted largely of moss and permafrost, making the impressions difficult to read. The men couldn’t determine exactly what had created them or how long they had been there. They had seen recognizable bear tracks elsewhere in the area, but the impressions near the cabin were less clear.
The creature itself had vanished.
No photograph was taken. No hair was collected. Nothing remained behind that could provide a definitive answer about what the three men had watched moving through the trees.
Years later, when the son formally reported the encounter, he remained adamant about one thing: whatever he had seen did not resemble any animal he recognized.
He didn’t believe it was a moose, muskox, caribou or bear. He also didn’t believe it was a person. What stayed with him most was its size, its enormous shoulders, its unusually long arms, its conical-looking head and the unmistakably upright way it walked.
If he had to compare it to anything, he said it resembled a giant humanlike creature.
There was also the extraordinary isolation of the location.
The three men hadn’t simply driven down a highway and stopped beside the lake. They had been flown by bush plane into a remote area after ice disrupted their original fishing plans. According to what they had been told, no other visitors had been brought into that location that season.
Their encounter wasn’t formally recorded by the American Bigfoot Society until February 18, 2011, nearly ten years after it reportedly happened. Even today, the account rests primarily on the testimony of those who said they were there.
But perhaps that is what makes the Great Bear Lake encounter so fascinating.
Three men were fishing in an isolated corner of Canada’s North when they noticed something standing behind an abandoned trapper’s cabin.
All three reportedly saw it.
Their guide moved the boat closer.
The figure didn’t immediately flee. For several minutes, they watched an enormous, dark-haired creature standing among the trees. Then it turned and walked upright into the wilderness, using its long arms to push the vegetation aside as it disappeared.
When the men stepped ashore, there was no creature waiting for them.
Only strange impressions in the moss and permafrost.
And that lingering, musky smell in the air.
Great Bear Lake encompasses more than 31,000 square kilometres of water, surrounded by an immense northern landscape where settlements are few and distances are enormous. There are places around its shores that most people will never visit.
Somewhere in that wilderness stood an old trapper’s cabin.
And on a sunny afternoon in July 2001, three people reportedly saw something standing behind it.
More than two decades later, the question remains:
What was watching them from the trees at Great Bear Lake?
Sources: American Bigfoot Society, Government of the Northwest Territories, Natural Resources Canada.
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