Report 2281: Shocked hikers watch hairy human-like animal run by them 10 feet away

I was hiking with my girlfriend in the evening on the night of March 29, 1997 We were in a pretty isolated area so we were surprised when we heard what sounded like a muffled scream that sounded like gibberish sort of like Chewbacca on Star Wars. It didn't scare us but we were curious as to what the sound was and where it was coming from. We began to call out Hello to see if it was a person who would answer us. There was no response, so we kept walking in the general direction of the sound. All of a sudden we heard crashing like a large animal running through the underbrush, and we saw a large figure in the general shape of a human except more hunched over and hairier than a human. It ran by us about 10 feet away and ran off down the side of the mountain. We were too shocked to follow it and we were too scared because it was getting dark and we didn't want to stray too far from the trail. We had no camera with us. We haven't told any forest rangers or any type of authority because we were afraid they wouldn't believe us.