Pressure Releases and Scalloped Margins
If you read enough Bigfoot literature, you are bound to come across claims that the maker of various purported Bigfoot tracks must have weighed hundreds and hundreds of pounds. While this is an interesting issue in and of itself, what is often lost in the discussion is the rearward force that propels the animal forward. Remember, to go forward, a foot must exert a rearward force. In humans, this force is usually concentrated at the ball of the foot, and often creates in a track a "pressure release disk".
This can be seen clearly in this color photograph of my own foot, made on Alki beach here in Seattle. Like the Blue Creek Mountain - Onion Mountain tracks, the track was made in a fine, compliant substrate, and photographed when fresh.
The "pressure release disk" is seen immediately posterior of the ball of the foot. Note too, how real toes produce scalloped margins in the track. Now let's compare my track with two of the clearest tracks from the Blue Creek Mountain - Onion Mountain trackway.
The lack of a scalloped margin is highly evident in the left foot, as it appears to be driven more deeply into the soil. Note how neither track exhibits the slightest hint of a pressure release disk. If you don't like my interpretation of these tracks, perhaps you might be interested in what professional tracker Tom Brown has to say in his book Nature Observation and Tracking. On page 209 in his chapter entitled "Reading Pressure Releases", he writes;
Several times people have shown me what they thought were the tracks of Bigfoot, the legendary Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest. It took very little study to discover that they were fakes. Why? There was no life in them. There was no variation in the pressure releases. I'm not saying Bigfoot doesn't exist - I hope he does - but so far all the "Bigfoot" tracks I've seen were made by pranksters (usually large men) striding through the woods with stamps strapped to their feet.
Indeed, the tracks of the Blue Creek Mountain - Onion Mountain trackway exhibit a highly "stamped" appearance, with "no life in them", as Brown says. Again, another huge red flag that the tracks are fake to begin with.
Dermal Ridges and Casting Artifacts
Fake Feet and Monolithic Margins