Untitled Sighting

Me and two friends of mine decided to go hiking at the base of Mt. St. Helens, for a couple of reasons, first we loved the outdoors, and secondly, me and one of my friends were hoping for some sort of sighting (other friend doesn't believe).  We started walking from a snow-park, that i can't remember the name of, but it is directly at the base of the mountain.  we probably hiked about 3 or 4 miles into the thick, old growth forest.  There was probably 4-5" of snow on the ground, and it was a beautiful day.  On the drive up we saw several trees that were twisted about 10-12' above the base.  when we were walking, the first unordinary thing i noticed was a creek bed.  the strange thing about the bed, was that it had all the little saplings and other small trees tore down around it and woven over the water, so that you could walk across it without getting wet.  all over the woods we found more and more "dismantled" trees, and i thought it was very strange since i grew up in Home Valley Wa, in the middle of the woods, and had never seen anything like this in my adventures as a child.  as we carried on, we noticed a bunch of bare foot prints.  none of them looked to awful recent, because the had probably a 1/2" of fresh snow over them, but i could still destinctivley tell what the were.  i wear a size 11 1/2 boot, and these prints dwarfed my foot, with a boot on.  the big toe on these prints were close to the size of my heel.  we tried to take pictures, but the didn't turn out very well, because of the glare of the snow.  we also had a tape measure and the largest print i remember measured out to 21"  in length.