I've told my family this story a couple times, and I get some weird looks, but it really stands out for me so I will share it with you. It is the only sighting I have ever had, and wouldn't call it an encounter per se, but what the hell. I was a teenager at the time and was enjoying a late season elk hunt in Washington state with my father.
I don't recall the exact area, but it was in the foothills of the Cascades, northwest of the Yakima area.
This was in mid November or so, with a minor skiff of snow on the ground; not enough to completely cover the ground. My dad and I set out from the truck in the early morning and followed a ridge-line that was on one side of a natural bowl that had been logged a few years before. The ridge-line was still treed and fairly dense until you reached the edge of the ridge. We decided to make our way to the bottom of the bowl and follow a road/skid trail that went from the bottom to the top and try to push any hidden game towards my brother in law who went around the other side of the bowl.
It probably took us about 20 minutes to go from the ridge to the bottom. Half-way up the skid trail we stopped to take a break and watch for game sign.
As I turned to look towards the bottom of the bowl I glanced up towards where we had previously been and saw a dark humanoid shape moving at a speedy pace along the ridgeline where we had come from. Now, it wasn't a hunter so far as I could tell; it had no hunter orange on or a discernible pattern of clothing. What was more impressive was the long gate of the figure as it rapidly moved along the edge of the trees. My younger mind told me it had to be a cross-country skier because of the gate and speed that it was moving, but like I said, there wasn't near enough snow for a skier to be moving that quickly. The primary reason to believe it might a skier was the smooth locomotion of it.
The head and shoulders didn't appear to rise and fall as you might expect from a bipedal creature, especially one on the move like it was. It didn't look like a human on the run at all and I had this uneasy feeling as I watched it cover the space of a quarter mile in what seemed like seconds. It continued on down the ridge until it disappeared from view, entering the trees. I remember sitting in stunned silence before we resumed our climb.
At the time I didn't mention it to my dad because I knew he would say it was just another hunter, but even to this day I have very deep doubts about that possibility. I wish I had said something. I wish I had pointed it out.
Maybe Harry and the Hendersons made too big an impact on me when I was a kid, but I feel I spotted Bigfoot that day.