In October 2023, passengers on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad filmed a massive, camouflaged biped blending flawlessly into the Colorado mountainside before casually squatting in the brush.
My husband, Zed, immediately declared this irrefutable biomechanical proof of a surviving hominid, while I had to exhaustedly explain what a human hunter executing a woodland bowel movement actually looks like.
The 5-Pillar Deep Dive
Pillar 1: Forensics
Grade: D+
Zed practically vibrated through the floorboards screaming about this footage. He kept pointing at the screen, demanding I acknowledge the "biomechanical mass" and the "unmistakable thigh displacement."
Here is the surgical truth:
Digital zoom is not biological evidence. The footage was shot on a smartphone from a moving train across a gorge.
Look closer:
What my dear husband perceives as massive, undulating thigh muscles is a textbook case of digital compression artifacts. The camera sensor is struggling to resolve complex textures—like sagebrush and whatever the figure is wearing—at a high distance.
The pixel blurring creates an artificial sense of bulk. You aren't seeing a Sasquatch's quad activating; you are seeing a smartphone processor desperately guessing what color those twelve pixels should be.
Source: durangoherald.com
Pillar 2: Witness Profile
Grade: C
Our primary witnesses are Shannon and Stetson Parker. They are tourists.
Tourists on scenic, slow-moving trains are inherently predisposed to look for wildlife. They are scanning the tree line for bears, elk, or eagles.
They are credible in the sense that they undeniably filmed something physical on that hill. They did not fabricate the video.
However, lacking the trained observer context of a local tracker or guide, their brains defaulted to the most anomalous conclusion when confronted with a shape that defied immediate categorization.
"It’s literally just an elk hunter in a ghillie suit taking a dump," I told Zed.
"Hunters don't match that biomechanical mass!" he yelled back, completely ignoring the basic principles of optics.
Pillar 3: Ecology & Geography
Grade: B+
If a massive, undocumented primate were to hide anywhere, the San Juan Mountains offer a statistically viable theater.
The topographical reality of this region is unforgiving, dense, and ecologically rich.
Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Corridor: A steep, remote canyon running alongside the Animas River, providing high-vantage isolation and dense brush cover.
San Juan National Forest: Millions of acres of high-altitude alpine terrain and thick sagebrush scrub, teeming with apex predators and massive elk herds.
The Weminuche Wilderness: The largest wilderness area in Colorado, bordering the region and offering deep, roadless valleys where megafauna easily avoid human detection.
This environment supports large biological mass. Unfortunately for Zed, the mass in question is likely human.
Pillar 4: Skeptical Filters
Grade: A
Let’s apply some sterile logic to the timeline.
The footage was captured in October 2023. Do you know what happens in the San Juan National Forest in October?
It is prime elk hunting season.
The "perfect camouflage" Zed is obsessed with—the way the figure literally vanishes into the sagebrush before squatting—is precisely what a $300 commercial ghillie suit is engineered to do.
The figure's movements are slow, deliberate, and clumsy. It squats low to the ground.
It is not stalking prey with the grace of an apex predator. It is a man clad in synthetic foliage, likely realizing a tourist train just caught him answering the call of nature.
Pillar 5: Historical Patterning
Grade: C+
Despite Zed's leaps in logic, I cannot deny the raw data of the region's historical anomalies.
The San Juan Mountains have a documented, localized cluster of bipedal cryptid reports spanning decades.
While this specific 2023 footage is highly suspect, the ecological corridor it exists within has a troubling history of sightings that cannot all be dismissed as hunters in disguise.
Year | Location & Ecological Context |
1999 | Engineer Pass: High-altitude visual sighting by off-roaders near the treeline. |
2001 | Molas Pass: Footprints and localized vocalizations reported by backpackers. |
2018 | Hermosa Creek: Bipedal figure reported pacing a hunting camp at dusk. |
2024 | Purgatory Resort Vicinity: Ongoing camper reports of massive rock-throwing in the deep timber (Post-Silverton Train incident). |
The historical patterning proves the environment breeds high strangeness. But a pattern is not proof of this specific event.
The Final Collaborative Verdict
Verdict: 🟠 LIKELY MISIDENTIFICATION / INTERESTING
Zed refuses to let this go. He is currently barricaded in his office, aggressively updating his "Thigh-to-Calf Ratio" spreadsheet, entirely convinced the Silverton train footage is the smoking gun.
But the math doesn't lie.
Between the October elk hunting season, the digital pixel degradation, and the behavioral profile of the figure, the surgical conclusion points directly to a well-camouflaged human.
We agree the footage is fascinating. We disagree on the biological taxonomy of the squatter.
Join the Investigation
Are you siding with Zed’s desperate need to believe in the Silverton Sasquatch, or are you accepting my sterile, surgical logic? Tell me I'm wrong in the comments—or roast my camo-blind dipshit husband. I can take it.
Make sure you watch the embedded video above to see Zed nearly blow a gasket defending this pixelated blob.
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