SEARCHING FOR BIGFOOT

TO VISIT OREGON IS TO EMBRACE THE ELEMENTAL POSSIBILITY OF BIGFOOT, THE HAIRY, HUMAN-LIKE MYTHICAL CREATURE. THE PROSPECT AND THRILL OF THE CHASE MAKES THE AREA'S THICK FORESTS, GURGLING CREEKS AND SCENIC HIKING TRAILS A TRUE WALK ON THE WILD SIDE.

- MIKE MACEACHERAN

Walking into Mount Hood National Forest, treading almost silently over the ground, Lance Olander was 90-minutes deep into the wilderness, and yet in the right place at the wrong time.

Foam-lipped rapids from a nearby creek were besieging the riverbed with a wailful rush, their eddies like glossy paint in a mixer. But Lance paid no attention to its flow as he reached its banks, only to what he saw morph from shadow to life across the water in the lee of the mountain.

The blood-red eye sockets seemed to erupt in rage. The howl was terrifying. It sucked the air out of his chest. And no sooner had he seen the 7ft-tall figure, he imagined death, or worse still, then scrambled, breathless, back into the woods, where the darkness crowded in further. The danger felt real.

Lance first met Bigfoot aged 23, when the legendary creature of the Pacific Northwest appeared in silhouette, hair matted and chestbeating. It arrived with a rampant battle cry, like a forest hallucination. Years later, he found himself in a similar predicament on a camping trip with his wife, the pair racing screaming from another male that was staring down at them from a tree strangled with moss.

Clockwise from top left: Trekking in the foothills near Mount Hood; Visitors picnicking a Trillium Lake; the temperate rainforest of the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness Previous pages: Trillium Lake at sunset