1992-07-27 - Snoqualmie Pass, WA - Light

De-orbiting Object

It was the second night of a 3 day backpacking trip in the Denny Creek area of Snoqualmie Pass. A friend and I were camping at the south end of Melaka lake, near the outflow for the Pratt River. There was a group of Boy Scouts if memory serves me correctly camping at the north end of the lake. It was about 9:40PM, it was twilight and a clear evening for star gazing. My friend was in the tent getting settled for the night. I was scanning the southern sky and enjoying a hot cup of chocolate when I spotted what first appeared as a meteor coming towards me from the south-south east.

However, the “meteor” appeared different from other meteors observed in various meteor showers I had enjoyed in the past. It was a brilliant white, with an electric blue aura around the core and the tail. It also appeared to be at a much lower altitude than other meteor showers I observed. In addition, it was changing direction and arched over me heading due west! There was no sound, no sonic boom, as it passed overhead. But what happened next totally surprised me.

The meteor instantly stopped and hovered for about 3-4 seconds and I instantly concluded that this was not a meteor, but some sort of vehicle or object! A meteor cannot violate Newton’s first law of motion. Paraphrasing the first law: an object in motion stays in motion with the same velocity and in the same direction unless acted upon by an external force. And, this object applied the brakes and came to a stop. A meteor in flight does not change direction, much less come to an instantaneously stop!! The object was a round brilliant ball of light, approximately the diameter of an AA battery held at arms-length. My estimate is that it was about 5 miles west of me (Pratt Lake where we spent our first night) and maybe 8,000 feet above me based upon watching aircraft flying over my house from SeaTac Airport and McCord AFB. But wait there is more! After 3-4 seconds, the object broke its hover and began to descend in a pendulum zig-zag motion moving right and then swinging left and swinging right and left again, then descended straight down. I lost track of the object as it descended below the tree line or a ridge (descent time to the trees about 3 seconds). I do not know if the object landed or not.

I exclaimed, “now that is something you don’t see every day”. I watched for another 15 minutes waiting for the object to reemerge but saw nothing. I concluded that I witnessed a UFO, which was under intelligent control and spent a fairly sleepless night hoping that I did not wake up in a zoo on some distant world, or in a display case as a menu item for the special of the day.