Part 2: Idaho Hunters Describe Huge Triangle Aircraft Over Their Campsite

“This thing really didn’t bank like an aircraft – it just sort of slid! I could not hear a thing. Couldn’t smell anything. That was very perplexing how something this size could maneuver like it was with no audio sounds at all!”

– Marc Bales, Pilot

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Reposted September 29, 2023 – May 28, 2009 Bend, Oregon – Kris Bales’ younger brother, Marc, works in their Bend, Oregon, construction company. Marc Bales also flies his own plane and watched the huge triangle aircraft at their Challis, Idaho, hunting camp site through 10X binoculars with the eyes and mind of a pilot.

Interview:

Marc Bales, Pilot and Home and Office Construction with his brother, Kris, Bend, Oregon: “Yeah, I was in the camp trailer with two other gentlemen and I heard Kris and knew it was very urgent. And we needed to get out there, so I just dropped everything I was doing and ran out the door. He grabbed hold of me and pointed up in the air and that’s when I saw whatever it was – the UFO.

I was in amazement because the object I was looking at was actually climbing and moving off. But it was very large. I did not hear anything, even when I was in the camp trailer. Kris, I guess, could hear some type of noise, but I did not hear anything in the camp trailer. When I’m outside looking up at this thing and not hearing anything, not smelling anything, I just don’t understand what I’m looking at.

My pickup was forward, probably 5 yards in front of me. I just ran up and grabbed my binoculars. There was another gentleman there beside me and he did the same thing. I picked up my binoculars and watched this thing as it was ascending and moving off.

WHAT DID YOU SEE?

It would be like looking at a manta ray swimming off, only it didn’t have the tail. So out on the two tips of it you would have the white lights. It’s climbing, so I can see the underside of it from behind and there was a pulsating, red light, soft and pulsing in the middle of it on the underside. There were two white lights on both sides of that. I guess if you were looking at a manta ray from behind, the lights would be out on the tips.

Marc Bales watched through 10X binoculars as huge triangular aircraft silently moved up to 500 feet altitude and proceeded “climbing and moving forward very slow up the south fork of Big Creek. No notable sound over generator.” Illustration © 2009 by Marc Bales.

RIGHT, AND IT SOUNDS LIKE MAYBE THE FRONT LIGHT WAS TIPPED UP AWAY SO YOU COULD NOT SEE IT?

Right, because I was not directly underneath it. But I’ll tell you what I could see that I don’t think Kris saw because he didn’t see it from the same perspective that I saw it. But on top of the craft, it did not look exactly like a cockpit on an aircraft, but there was a light glow of a dome-type, white light looking thing on top of it. I could see that through my binoculars.

WHAT WAS THE SHAPE?

If you took a fire alarm and set it upside down on a plate, it would be like that.

CIRCULAR?

Yeah, kind of a saucer shape.

SO, THIS WAS A ROUND, RAISED PORTION UP ON TOP OF THE CRAFT.

Yes, but it wasn’t very high. It was just slight.

OK, SO IT’S ROUND AND IT IS RAISED UP A LITTLE BIT AND WHITE LIGHT IS COMING FROM IT GLOWING.

Yes, just a dim glowing light. It wasn’t something that was bright. You probably couldn’t even have seen it there without binoculars. I had 10X binoculars is what I was looking through.

DID YOU COMPARE NOTES WITH YOUR FRIEND WHO ALSO HAD BINOCULARS?

We were just standing there in amazement. I didn’t even talk to him until we got back into the trailer.

AS YOU WERE WATCHING THROUGH BINOCULARS, WHAT IS RUNNING THROUGH YOUR MIND ABOUT WHAT THIS MIGHT BE?

I was trying to figure out what I was looking at. It was kind of an odd thing. I mean, it’s not often that you get to look at something and just come up with a big blank. I’m a pilot so I understand what kind of flight characteristics that aircraft have.This thing really didn’t bank like an aircraft – it just sort of slid! I could not hear a thing. Couldn’t smell anything. That was very perplexing how something this size could maneuver like it was with no audio sounds at all!

IT’S PECULIAR THAT YOUR MULE ANIMALS DIDN’T REACT.

Yes, and usually they are the first clue that something is going on around your campsite. They acted like there was absolutely nothing going on. That was very interesting.

WHAT WAS THE VERY LAST MOMENT THAT YOU SAW?

I think Kris told you that the campsite was approximately 6,000 feet in elevation. The highest peak was around the 11,000-foot neighborhood. We just saw this thing eventually disappear out of sight going over the top of the peak.

HOW DID YOU END UP CONTACTING OTHER PEOPLE ABOUT THIS EVENT?

Kris and I did sit down and we drew up what we had seen. We had some GPS coordinates that we jotted down. And then, he was so shook up that he was not going to spend the night there in camp. So, what we did was we got in the pickup and drove to a town and spent the night there. The other two gentlemen had their animals at the campsite and their mules were like family to them. They were not leaving them, so they stayed.

So Kris and I spent the night in town and then the next morning, the question in our minds was: When you see something like this, what do you do about it? I decided I’d call the tower in Boise, Idaho, because I didn’t know who else to contact. I kind of half expected the guy there to not take us seriously. But he was very interested in what we saw and very helpful. I just asked him if he had seen anything strange on radar. He asked me why and I explained what we had seen. And then he put us in touch with the Assistant Director of the Federal Aviation Administration and he gave us a number to Mountain Home AFB. I think that’s how we got in touch with Peter Davenport. And then we started calling these agencies filing reports and all of them – you know, I didn’t know what to expect when I called them. Had the first guy laughed, I probably wouldn’t have called the rest. But they were all very interested. Most of them had a conference call going. They wanted other people to listen in on the conversation.

DID ANYONE IN AUTHORITY – MILITARY, INTEL, POLICE, ANYONE – COME TO TALK WITH YOU AND YOUR BROTHER?

Well, we didn’t know it, but right after we made the call to the military, I guess back in camp – maybe it’s a coincidence, but probably not – there were two jets scrambled that flew right over the exact coordinates that we had given the military. So, that was the following morning after we had made these calls. So, apparently the military was interested.

WHICH MILITARY WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN, DO YOU THINK?

You know, it’s just pure speculation because I can’t say anything for sure, but the closest air force base was Mountain Home AFB in Mountain Home, Idaho.

AFTER THE JETS FLEW OVER, WHAT ELSE HAPPENED?

We just progressed back to camp. I might add that I guess the military called Kris’s house three times while we were still over there at the Challis camp site. We didn’t leave. We stayed over for a few more days. But the military was trying to get in contact with us through Kris’s wife and his home phone number back in Bend, Oregon.

DID YOU EVER FOLLOW UP WITH THE MILITARY PEOPLE WHO HAD CALLED KRIS’S HOUSE?

We didn’t really follow up with it. We didn’t know what to do. We made the calls that we thought we needed to make and we just kind of left it alone after that.

WE’RE TALKING ON MAY 19, 2009, WHICH IS ALMOST NINE YEARS LATER. WHAT IS IN YOUR MIND TODAY ABOUT THIS EVENT AND WHAT THIS COULD HAVE BEEN?

You know, in my mind today, I still don’t understand what I saw. It’s still a little frustrating to really not get any definite answers. It’s not something that you talk a lot about to people who have not experienced the same thing because it seems to be a lopsided conversation.

I would like to see it again. It was not something that was threatening to me because it had already was moving off. I would really love to see that situation again and have some of this explained.

THERE IS THAT HAUNTING QUESTION: WHAT WAS SOMETHING THE LENGTH OF A FOOTBALL FIELD GOING DOWN AT 100 TO 200 FEET RIGHT ABOVE YOUR CAMP?

That’s a great question. And you can’t really explain the precarious situation that would be in. I look at things from a pilot standpoint. This was a very abrupt terrain. We were on the side of a valley. This took some very high tech complex design to be able to maneuver where they were maneuvering.

AS A PILOT, WHAT IS YOUR THOUGHT ABOUT SOMETHING THAT MIGHT BE DEFINED AS EXTRATERRESTRIAL FROM OFF PLANET?

I think it is entirely possible. Like we told the military when we were talking to them, if you don’t have one of those, you really need to get one! (laughs) because it was amazing! It was truly amazing.

WHAT DID THE MILITARY SAY?

You know what? They were very serious about everything. They didn’t laugh much.

WHEN YOU SAID, ‘IF YOU DON’T HAVE ONE OF THOSE, YOU SHOULD GET ONE,’ DID ANYONE MAKE A COMMENT?

Not really, they didn’t.

IF IT IS FROM OUTER SPACE, IT MEANS WE ARE NOT ALONE IN THIS UNIVERSE AND THERE ARE OTHER INTELLIGENCES THAT ARE FAR, FAR ADVANCED BEYOND HUMAN.

Beyond anything that I know. And we’re not the only ones that have seen this in that area. These are rancher friends. We were describing it to one of my good friends and his uncle was there. And Kris was drawing And it was exactly what Kris was going to draw. this (craft) out in the dirt in the barnyard and our friend stopped Kris and he finished the drawing.

THIS IS A RANCHER IN THE CHALLIS AREA?

Yes, and these are good friends. We just simply asked them, ‘Hey, you guys didn’t see anything strange the other night?’

They said, ‘Like what?’ And we told them and they explained that people in the Challis area have seen this stuff. This wasn’t on the same night, but they had seen the big triangle prior to that night (of September 27, 2000).

PRIOR TO SEPTEMBER 27, 2000?

Yes.

WHAT DID THE RANCHER SAY ABOUT WHAT HE SAW?

They’d seen pretty much the exact same shape that we had seen. They viewed it from more of a distance than we had seen it. But they told me that they will see lights in that valley that are in one position in one second and then are 50 miles away in just a millisecond – faster than you can describe!

THE RANCHER IS DESCRIBING SEEING UNUSUAL LIGHTS THAT SEEM TO BE ABLE TO JUMP DISTANCES IN THE SAME HUNTING VALLEY AND THEY HAVE SEEN THIS MULTIPLE TIMES.

Oh, yeah. Most all of those people in the area that have lived there for 50 to 60 years have seen these things.”

Belgium 1990 Phenomenon of Large,
Unidentified, Silent, Triangular Aircraft

Artist's illustration of unidentified, silent, triangular aerial craft that haunted the Belgium skies in late March 1990. — Artist’s illustration of unidentified, silent, triangular aerial craft that haunted the Belgium skies in late March 1990.

On March 30, 1990, Brussels, Belgium, citizens spotted a large, black, triangular craft hovering silently over the city for several minutes. Local police officials arrived on the scene and reported observing the object as it hovered over apartment buildings. One officer reported that the object released a red glowing disk of light from its center which flew down to the ground and darted around several buildings before disappearing. The larger craft eventually departed at high speed.

[Editor’s Note: Wikipedia: “The Belgian Air Force scrambled F-16s to pursue the craft once it was spotted on ground radar systems. The fighter pilots and radar operators reported that the object would dart ahead at incredible speeds every time they finally had a radar lock on it. One pilot reported the object’s speed at over 900 knots. After nine confirmed target locks the object finally vanished from their screens.

“The Belgian Air Force has gone on record with the details of its black triangle pursuit. It released its radar video footage and its conclusions, ruling out the following origins of the object in question:

– Balloons. Impossible due to the highly variable speeds (confirmed visually and by radar).
– Ultralight (ULM). Same impossibility as for balloons.
– Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Impossible due to the hovering characteristics.
– Aircraft (including Stealth). No noise.
– Laser projections or mirages. Unlikely due to lack of projection surface (no clouds). Lights have been observed from different locations. Lights moved over distance of more than 15 nautical miles (28 km). Form of unlighted craft has been observed with binoculars. Further, laser projections or mirages can not be detected by radar, but the Belgian triangular craft showed up on radar traveling rapidly.

“The report concludes that the Belgian Air Force was ‘unable to identify either the nature or the origin of the phenomenon.’”]

Since the beginning of January 2009, Peter Davenport’s National UFO Reporting Center, NUFORC, has received 128 reports about unidentified triangle-shaped aircraft and/or unidentified aircraft in triangular patterns. Over the past fifteen years since NUFORC was first organized in 1994, Peter Davenport has logged in 5,451 total reports of triangular aerial phenomena. But Peter thinks that is a small percentage of everything happening in Earth’s skies because perhaps only 1 in 10 people report what they see.

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Earthfiles would like to learn about other unidentified aerial triangle sightings similar to the illustration in the SOM1-01 1954 training manual, what the Bales brothers saw and what flew over Belgium in March 1990. Please email: [email protected]. All requests for anonymity are honored.

More Information:

To report unusual aerial phenomena and/or entity encounters to the National UFO Reporting Center, contact:

Peter Davenport, Director
National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC)
P. O. Box 700
Davenport, WA 99122

Website: http://www.ufocenter.com/

Director : Peter Davenport – [email protected]
Webmaster : Christian Stepien – [email protected]

NUFORC Hotline: 206-722-3000
(Use only if the sighting has occurred within the last week.)

For further information, please see my books: An Alien Harvest, the 2-volume Glimpses of Other Realities and my documentaries A Strange Harvest and Strange Harvests 1993 now available in DVD format in the Earthfiles Shop.

Also, see Earthfiles Archive for dozens of unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrial biological entity case studies from 1999 to 2009. As an example, here is only a partial Archive list:

05/29/2009 —Part 3: 1954 SOM1-01 Training Manual and Challis, Idaho, Huge Triangle
05/29/2009 —Part 4: 1954 SOM1-01 Training Manual and Challis, Idaho, Huge Triangle
05/28/2009 —Part 1: Idaho Hunters Describe Huge Triangle Aircraft Over Their Campsite
05/28/2009 —Part 2: Idaho Hunters Describe Huge Triangle Aircraft Over Their Campsite
12/24/2008 —Part 14: Army/CIA Unit Studied the Real UFO Blue Book Cases
11/21/2008 —Colorado State Patrol Officer Encountered UFO and “Human” Stranger
11/17/2008 —Part 3: Morphing UFO Over Levittown, PA – Scientific Research
11/17/2008 —Part 4: Morphing UFO Over Levittown, PA – Scientific Research
11/14/2008 —Part 2: Morphing UFO Over Levittown, PA – Scientific Research
11/13/2008 —Part 1: Morphing UFO Over Levittown, PA Drops Little Squares of Light
10/30/2008 —More Encounters with Glowing Humanoids, Green Orbs, Strange Aerial Lights and “Thunderbirds”
10/10/2008 —Part 1: Two Pennsylvania Hunters Encountered Strange Lights and Lime Green, Glowing Humanoid on Oct. 4
08/26/2008 —Update: Earthfiles Viewer Comments About UFOs and 14th Century Black Death
08/22/2008 —UFOs and 14th Century Black Death
07/13/2008 —Part 6: Insights from An Experiencer with Greys and Blond Humanoids
07/12/2008 —Updated – Part 2: Roswell Rock Matches August 2, 1996, U. K. Crop Pattern
07/11/2008 —Updated – Part 1: Roswell Rock Matches August 2, 1996, U. K. Crop Pattern
06/27/2008 —More Military Sightings of UFOs in U. K.
06/06/2008 —Updated: Mysterious Crash Near Needles, California
04/24/2008 —Strange Aerial Lights Like Texas – But Now Photographed in Indiana, Illinois, and Massachusetts
04/23/2008 —Four Red, Unidentified Lights Change Patterns Over North Phoenix
04/07/2008 —Part 1: Bizarre Objects Caught by Illinois and Missouri Game Trail Cameras
04/07/2008 —Part 2: Bizarre Objects Caught by Illinois and Missouri Game Trail Cameras
04/06/2008 —Final Part 10: Real X-File, Source Unknown
04/02/2008 —Part 9 – Real X-File, Source Unknown
03/30/2008 —Part 8 – Real X-File, Source Unknown
03/28/2008 —Deer Mutilation in Longs, South Carolina, Two Helicopters and Large, White Sphere
03/20/2008 —Part 7 – Real X-File, Source Unknown
03/15/2008 —Part 6 – Real X-File, Source Unknown
03/08/2008 —Part 5: Real X-File, Source Unknown
03/04/2008 —Part 4: Real X-File, Source Unknown
03/03/2008 —Updated Part 1: Real X-File, Source Unknown
03/02/2008 —Part 2: Real X-File, Source Unknown
03/02/2008 —Part 3: Real X-File, Source Unknown
02/22/2008 —Updated: Three Eyewitnesses in Selden, Texas, Saw Two, Large Rectangles of “White Flames” in Sky
02/14/2008 —Update: Mysterious Symbols Projected in Night Sky by Aerial Disc Near Stephenville, Texas, Local Airport
02/08/2008 —Law Officers Describe Unidentified Shape-Shifting Aerial Craft in Stephenville, Texas, Region
01/28/2008 —Updated 01-28-08: Viewer Letters About Aerial Craft and Military Flyovers Above Dublin, Stephenville and Selden, Texas
01/18/2008 —Updated: Huge Aerial Craft Over Dublin, Texas, “Longer Than 3 Football Fields”
01/15/2008 —Updated: More Sky Spiral Mysteries in Iraq, Canada and Germany
01/11/2008 —Canadian “Disc” and Smoke Spiral Still A Mystery
12/20/2007 —Updated: Viewer Letters About Secret American Military Space Program
12/11/2007 —More Confirmation of May 1974 Discs in Albuquerque and Huge Cylinder Craft At White Sands Proving Ground.
12/08/2007 —Another Eyewitness to Glowing Disc and Military Security in Albuquerque, New Mexico
12/07/2007 —Part 2: Secret American Military Space Program?
12/01/2007 —Part 1: Secret American Military Space Program?
11/29/2007 —Part 1: Glowing Disc Encounter with Military in Albuquerque, NM
11/29/2007 —Part 2: Glowing Disc Encounter with Military in Albuquerque, NM
11/29/2007 —Part 3: Glowing Disc Encounter with Military in Albuquerque, NM
10/21/2007 —Viewer Comments About Big Triangles and Lights – In Conflict?
10/19/2007 —Updated: Huge, Silent, Black Triangle Craft Over Youngstown, Florida
08/01/2007 —Part 3, Non-Human Blonds, Greys and Big-Nosed, Cat-Eyed Lizards
07/31/2007 —Part 2, Non-Human Blonds, Greys and Big-Nosed, Cat-Eyed Lizards
07/28/2007 —Mysterious Aerial Lights Over Stratford-upon-Avon, July 14, and Farnborough, Hampshire, on July 22, 2007
07/26/2007 —Part 1, Non-Human Blonds, Lizards and Big-Nosed, Cat-Eyed Greys
07/14/2007 —Schofield Barracks, Oahu, Hawaii – Huge, Lime Green Oval Craft Hovered Over Battalion Headquarters
06/14/2007 —High Strangeness Encounter in Tucson, Arizona
06/13/2007 —Into the Unknown with George Noory
03/16/2007 —Tenth Anniversary of March 1997 Phoenix Lights: What Was the 2-Mile-Long Triangular Craft?