News

Jun 07, 2023

Upstate NY tree hunter discovers ‘Bigfoot,’ a centuries

When Erik Danielson wrapped his tape around Bigfoot's enormous trunk, it measured 16.4 feet in circumference, more than five feet in diameter.Photo Erik Danielson On a recent expedition to the

When Erik Danielson wrapped his tape around Bigfoot's enormous trunk, it measured 16.4 feet in circumference, more than five feet in diameter.Photo Erik Danielson

On a recent expedition to the Adirondacks, Erik Danielson, 32, stumbled upon a beast of a tree, an eastern white pine that he nicknamed “Bigfoot” for its gigantic flared footprint.

“Until I saw it out there, I wouldn’t have thought something like that was actually out there,” Danielson said.

Danielson, who lives in Fredonia, is the stewardship coordinator for the Western New York Land Conservancy and an experienced big tree hunter. Last year near Bolton he found New York’s tallest tree, also a white pine, which he nicknamed “Littlefoot” due to its slender trunk.

Towering 151 feet over the forest floor, Bigfoot is 23 feet shorter than Littlefoot. But at breast height it measures 16.4 feet in circumference, or more than five feet in diameter, twice as wide as Littlefoot. More impressive, Bigfoot maintains a healthy 40-inch girth even at 80 feet.

“There’s very little taper to it,” said Don Leopold, distinguished professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and author of Trees of New York State.

“When you see a giant sequoia there’s no taper from bottom to top, it’s just a pole,” Leopold explained. “White pine is very similar to giant sequoia, although about one-tenth the size. So the taper in a tree will influence the ultimate volume.”

Danielson estimates Bigfoot’s volume to be at least 1,450 cubic feet, making it the largest white pine in the world by a couple hundred cubic feet, he said. The only white pines that come close to it in volume are a few trees scattered in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

American Forests, a nonprofit conservation organization, maintains a register of champion trees organized by species and state. According to the group’s formula, a tree’s score is determined by the sum of its circumference, height, and canopy spread, a different measurement than volume.

Bigfoot scores 363 points based on American Forests’ formula. When the state Department of Environmental Conservation confirms Danielson’s measurements—he’s credited with two other state champion trees—Bigfoot will squash three white pines currently listed as the biggest of their kind in New York.

Tree hunter Erik Danielsen narrowed down his search for Bigfoot to a 550-acre site near Benedict Creek in the Moose River Plains Wild Forest, roughly halfway between Old Forge and Indian Lake.

Forest giant

Often reaching 130 feet in height and four feet in diameter, the eastern white pine is New York’s tallest native conifer. It grows in every county in the state, in a wide variety of soil types, but it’s most closely associated with the raw and rocky Adirondack wilderness.

“In the Adirondacks, there’s no larger tree,” said Leopold. “It’s really one of the giants of the eastern U.S.”

Danielson found Bigfoot through a combination of research, legwork, and luck.

His search began last spring when a backcountry hunter and member of the Big Tree Seekers Facebook group, which Danielson helps administer, posted a picture of a big white pine growing near historic Great Camp Sagamore.

They dove into public archives, devouring every document they could find about the area, including a 1902 report describing what is now the Moose River Plains Wild Forest as unusually well-stocked with “original pine,” or unlogged old-growth stands.

Unfortunately, a later map indicated that 85% of the forest there had been flattened in a 1950 nor’easter that old timers still refer to as ‘the big blowdown.’ But maybe—just maybe—a few forgotten survivors of the big blowdown were still out there.

Danielson looked for clues in recent LiDAR (aerial laser) scans and was surprised to see “lots of large, tall, white pine crowns all kind of spaced out in a way that suggests an old growth stand,” he said.

On July 6, Danielson packed his measuring tape and set out for a 550-acre tract of wilderness near Benedict Creek, roughly halfway between Old Forge and Indian Lake. Danielson has tramped through forests all over the state looking for big trees, but he’d never seen anything quite like the Benedict Creek site.

“The tree makes the story but the forest itself is probably the most significant aspect of it, because it’s 550 acres roughly of old growth white pine,” said Danielson. “Whereas other well-known groves are like 12 acres or 20 acres. That’s the really incredible part.”

Finding Bigfoot was incredible, says tree hunter Erik Danielson, but even more remarkable was exploring the primeval beauty of the Benedict Creek site.Photo Erik Danielson

Bigfoot

Danielson was awestruck by the primeval beauty of the Benedict Creek site. The trackless, undulating terrain was carpeted in moss and dense vegetation, crisscrossed with fallen trees. Birdsong filled the air. Danielson felt it in his bones—this is a special place.

“It’s pretty much the only place I’ve ever been where in the entirety of it you don’t find any signs of people,” he said. “Normally you can find a lawn chair that some back country hunter packed in there 15 years ago. There’s nothing like that in there.”

After four hours of bushwhacking, Danielson came to a secluded valley where a little waterfall splashed among gnarled birches and pine trees “that went up like columns with this old, thick bark,” he said.

Wading through a sea of green ferns, Danielson headed for a stand of big pines according to his LiDAR map. As he hiked around a ridge, the view opened up to reveal a massive silhouette looming through the tangled undergrowth.

His heart stopped: it was Bigfoot.

Danielson circled Bigfoot’s enormous flared footprint, stepping among its tendon-like roots, winding his measuring tape around its trunk. The tree set a new state record for circumference for a single-trunk white pine. If it was tall enough, Danielson reckoned it might be a state champion.

He scrambled up a ridge to get a clear view of Bigfoot’s crown above the surrounding canopy, hoping Bigfoot was 140 feet tall. Anything more was asking too much. Then he aimed his laser rangefinder at Bigfoot’s crown.

“Shot to the top, shot to the tape, and it came to over 150 feet,” he said, “which is remarkable because usually when we have the really large circumference pines they’re not also the really tall pines.”

It’s impossible to determine Bigfoot’s precise age without taking a core sample, but it’s immense size and deeply fissured bark resembles the ancient white pines in Elder’s Grove near Paul Smiths College, most of which are more than 330 years old. Don Leopold says it would be reasonable to assume Bigfoot’s been around about that long.

Later, near Sagamore, Danielson found the tree from the Facebook photo that tipped him off to the Benedict Creek site. It was also bigger in volume than the previous largest known white pine, but not as big as Bigfoot.

“So in the span of the trip two trees went right to the top of the list,” Danielson said.

Danielson surveyed about one quarter of the big pine groves in the Benedict Creek tract. He plans to go back and survey the rest when he has time. Tree hunting is, after all, a past time, not his job.

“It’s entirely possible that there could be a larger one in there,” Danielson said. “You can never really say that you have found the absolutely largest for something like that.”

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Steve Featherstone covers the outdoors for The Post-Standard, syracuse.com and NYUP.com. Contact him at [email protected] or on Twitter @featheroutdoors. You can also follow along with all of our outdoors content at newyorkupstate.com/outdoors/ or follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/upstatenyoutdoors.

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