Colfax County, New Mexico
Sunday January 30, 2005
Angel Fire Ski lift
Footprints were sighted by a older couple who saw tracks below them from a ski lift. The tracks trailed off into the line of trees to their right. The trail of tracks they said were made in fresh powder, approximately 15 inches deep on top of a snow pack near the main summit. The informants said the trail was fresh, not kicked-up snow, but a straight line of tracks from one side of the ski lift to the other on their first early morning ski-lift ride up the mountain.
The tracks went directly under the lift, which they estimated to be at the 10,000-foot elevation level and in deep snow. "Whatever it was left deep holes of bare footprints in deep snow, but not so deep we couldn't see toes in them tracks."
The weather was brisk but clear and not snowing at the time. The woman said she was of Ashiwi Indian and Spanish heritage and her maternal great-grandmother, whose parents were inhabitants of the Shiwona territory in what is now New Mexico first warned her of the “Great Atahsaia” when she was very young. They believed Atahsaia is a bad spirit hair-covered cannibal giant that kidnaps little children and women, taking them away to the great Spirit Mountain.
Today the informant called the creature ‘bigfoot,’ admonishing as she talked that "bigfoot was not to be tracked down or hunted, and that it was a bad omen of things to come."
