As nightfall neared, a small group gathered at a trailhead in Pike National Forest about 15 miles southeast of Bailey. The new moon had blotted out the midsummer sky, and a sense of anticipation rippled through the hikers. They were hoping for a rendezvous with Sasquatch.

Bailey, at 7,700 feet in Colorado’s Front Range, is a mountain town less than an hour southwest of Denver where anglers, hikers and cabin-goers stop before venturing into the wilderness. Pike National Forest – 1.1 million acres of ridges, canyons and lodgepole pine – begins just beyond town. Leading tonight’s hike was Jim Myers, local authority on the big fella and proprietor of Bailey’s Sasquatch Outpost and Museum.

Myers said he’d seen Sasquatch in these mountains before – and wouldn’t mind another sighting that night. His research partner, Wayne Wasechka, was on hand to help guide the “Night Hike,” one of several Rabbit Hole Adventures outings including overnight and horseback trips in search of the legendary creature.

The seven hikers behind them were all self-identified Bigfoot buffs. Some had grown up watching Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of in the 1970s; others had fallen down YouTube rabbit holes.

“I need to know,” said Heidi Smith, a Denver truck driver. “A couple of things happened when I camped with my sister, but I don’t know for sure.”

Myers didn’t set out to make Bigfoot his business. In 2013, he opened the Bailey Country Store to sell groceries. A year earlier, Kate Murphy, then manager of the Bailey Lodge, had told locals about seeing a “tall, hairy creature” bound into the woods about 200 feet ahead of her on a forest road.

At the Smiling Pig, a Bailey barbecue joint where locals swapped stories over brisket and cornbread, Myers recalled Murphy’s account. “By gum, I believed her,” he said. “I’d been interested my whole life, but I’d never actually spoken to somebody who saw one.”

That belief deepened a year later when Myers said he had his own close encounter at nearby Wellington Lake. “I was fly fishing, and it was standing above me on a big rock outcrop looking down,” he said. “A fish grabbed my fly, and like an idiot, I turned to look at the fish.  Three seconds later I turned to look back at the Sasquatch, and it was gone. It had simply disappeared.”

The sighting pushed Myers to devote a small corner of his store to Sasquatch souvenirs. Sales quickly outpaced the groceries, which disappeared entirely. In their place grew a museum with exhibits on sightings, footprints and tree structures, plus an animatronic Bigfoot. The front shop sold everything from Bigfoot boxer shorts to Yeti salt-and-pepper shakers.

After amassing an impressive collection of cast footprints and plaster models, Myers started a side business, Rabbit Hole Adventures, to lead tours into the same backcountry where these stories had originated. That evening’s “Night Hike” began under a moonless sky, the ridgelines dissolving into shadow as the group headed into the forest.

As twilight faded, the hikers scrambled to a plateau. Myers and Wasechka pointed out conifers twisted into arches – possible Sasquatch handiwork, they believed, and maybe even a form of communication. Some scientists said such shapes came from wind or heavy snow, but Myers doesn’t buy it.

“Don’t wander off,” Myers cautioned.

“They usually snatch the last in line,” added Wasechka, earning nervous laughs.

From a rock outcropping, the hikers scanned the surrounding peaks and valleys. “It’s their domain,” Myers said. “We don’t know where they are, but they know exactly where we are.”

He insisted there’d be no manufactured scares. “Whatever happens is real,” he said. “I don’t have any friends who’d come here and wait in the woods in the dark for three hours.”

Myers prefers the term “forest people” and believed they wanted to engage with humans. He called out into the darkness, knocked on trees, and whistled. “We’re back out here, friends. If you’d come out, we’d appreciate it.”

He named his guide service Rabbit Hole Adventures because, he said, “you go down a hole, and that leads to another hole, and another hole… The evidence has led me into the paranormal.”

That evidence, in his telling, included braided horse manes, twisted trees, creatures vanishing without a trace and – most haunting to him – bioluminescent eyes. “I’ve seen 15 pairs glowing at once, watching us from the woods,” he said. “There’s no scientific explanation for it.”

Two hours into the hike, the group still scanned the dark woods under a canopy of stars. “The only thing that makes noise out here is Sasquatch and people,” Myers said.

They spotted a few faint flashes in the forest and distant glimmers of light, but no lumbering silhouettes. After a bumpy, dusty ride back to Bailey, the hikers reconvened at the Sasquatch Outpost near midnight.

“More questions than answers,” said Sean Caton-Leeks, a Bigfoot enthusiast from Southern California.

“I know there’s something,” Smith said. “It’s learning how to look for it.”

On Main Street, the Sasquatch painted on the front of the Outpost stared into the dark forest beyond, a reminder of the possibilities for those still chasing the unknown.