Shaylane Beatty's Roadside Sasquatch at Torch River, Saskatchewan

Deschambault Lake is a Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation community in northern Saskatchewan. It sits at the end of Highway 911, off Highway 106, the Hanson Lake Road. Prince Albert lies about 340 kilometres to the south-west. The drive runs through long stretches of forest.

Saturday, December 9, 2006. A bright afternoon. Shaylane Beatty, 20, was driving from Deschambault Lake toward Prince Albert. One account says she was heading there to shop before Christmas.

Near the Torch River, called Torch Lake in the StarPhoenix report, something was walking along the forest edge. She took it for a bear. As she came closer, she saw it was walking on two legs. She described a dark brown sasquatch, about 2.5 metres tall, "muscular with long floppy arms attached to broad shoulders." The StarPhoenix reported that it stopped and turned to look at her as she passed.

Her car swerved toward the ditch. She nearly lost control. Then she sped off. Later she pulled over and phoned her aunt. She described a large, "very hairy" creature that walked upright.

Sunday. Beatty went back to the spot with two uncles. They found hundreds of footprints in deep snow, each about 50 cm long, and followed the trail until dark, photographing the prints. CBC reported that several men from the village tracked the prints and found a tuft of brown hair. According to Sasquatch Canada, the uncles sent a hair sample to American sasquatch hunter Tom Biscardi, but no result was ever published.

The story reached CBC News on December 14, 2006, under the headline "Sightings the talk of 'sasquatch-ewan'." The Saskatoon StarPhoenix followed the next day, in a report credited to Jeremy Warren. CBC Saskatchewan radio host Tom Roberts spoke with residents of Deschambault Lake.

Biscardi saw the photographs. He called the prints "the find of the century" and the photos "impressive." Beatty, he said, "definitely saw some sort of primate." Jeff Meldrum, an anatomy professor at Idaho State University, was more cautious. "Given the quality of the photographs, it's impossible to render any meaningful analysis."

Beatty's own first thought was a bear. Oversized prints in snow also have a familiar explanation. They can grow as they melt or overlap. No one made that case in print about these tracks.

Biscardi's endorsement carries baggage. He was centrally involved in several hoaxes, among them the 2008 Georgia frozen "Bigfoot body" that turned out to be a rubber costume. Nobody has alleged that the Saskatchewan prints were faked. But the hair, the one piece of evidence that could have settled something, simply dropped out of the record.

The case soon drew a second voice. A Flin Flon man in Manitoba came forward about a similar hairy creature he had seen the summer before. Years later, CBC included Beatty's encounter among its "7 spooky Saskatchewan stories." The footprint photographs have never surfaced online. Neither has an answer about the hair.