NUFORC Sighting 28925

Occurred: 2001-07-04 22:00 Local
Reported: 2003-05-24 21:41 Pacific
Duration: 7 1/2 hours
No of observers: 2

Location: Big Pine, CA, USA

Shape: Disk
Characteristics: Lights on object, Emitted beams, Changed Color, Aircraft nearby

3 objects take off from mountains near Big Ears site

For the 4th of July my girlfriend and I went camping at Owen's River in Owen's Valley near Big Pine and the Big Ears station. Our campsite was on the eastern bank of the river approximately 150-200 yards north of the Taboose Creek river crossing. At around 8 P.M., we watched the Independence firework display (approximately 30 miles south), as well as the occasional displays over Bishop (approximately 25-30 miles north). At around 9 o'clock, when most of the fireworks had stopped, my girlfriend sighted a strange object in the sky east of our camp. By my reckoning, the object was about 3 miles east and between 500 and 800 feet in the air. It hovered just above the top of a peak in the White Mountain Range. From our vantage point, near the easternmost side of the valley, the object appeared to be about the size of a dime, and had a three-layered disk shape (the top and bottom sides more narrow than the center layer, similar to a hamburger shape). Around the middle of the object were a series of revolving lights. They turned in sequence... YELLOW-ORANGE-PINK-RED-WHITE etc., etc. Thge object hovered over the mountains for about 30 minutes, in which time it sporactically darted from place to place, excelerating rapidly then gliding to a stop in diagnol, horizontal, and vertical movements. At one point, the object came closer to our campsite, growing to about the size of a quarter. From it, several beams of white lit up the mountain side and base. The pattern appeared very clearly on the ground, consisting of about 20 to 30 white circles spaced out and forming a hexagon in it's entirety. This light moved over the ground and the side of the mountain like a search light, and at one point actually lit up the tree just above where we were sitting in the bed of my truck. I think it is important to note here that my rottweiler Tank was also aware of the object at this time. He sat at the tail gate of my truck in a guard position and watched the desert around us to the east. He did this! fully alert for some hours. It may be equally important to note that at this time we were yelling back and forth to some other campers about 100 yeard up river to our north who were all watching the same event. Sometime after the the white lights stopped, the object retreated back towards the mountain, at which time it emitted a second series of lights which included a red horizontal beam which hit the mountain side at regular intervuls. This sequence was always followed by a series of vertical lights which scanned over the same area. It appeared to me like a grid. It was during this time (about 1 hour), that my girlfriend noticed another light go up from the mountain. It appeared to have the same shape and spinning lights at as the first, but was much smaller in comparison (if it had indeed taken off from the mountain top, then it would have been a few miles behind the original object. It is very likely that they were actually the same size). Shortly after the second object started to gain alttitude, a third object took off from the mountain from the same area as the first. It was also the same shape as the other two with the same lights, and was the same size as the smaller of the two others. This object drifted straight up while the one that had gone up before it drifted diagnally to the right (or south). The time between the two take-offs was somewhere between 2 and 3 minutes, at which time the grid-like lights from the first object had ceased and it darted upwards to a great height at great speed. The lowest of the objects (the last to "take off"), stopped climbing for about a minute. It was at this time that we saw a red beam flash beneath it to the mountain top, followed a second later by a strange rushing sound. After this, the three drifted upwards in unison for a few more minutes, then one by one, the revolving lights of each stopped turning and the objects became solid white lights against the black night. It occured to me at this point that they looked remarkably like stars. W! ith the exception of the largest object, they were almost indistinguishable from other stars, almost. They drifted straight upwards in a triangular pattern which they held for hours. The only way I could keep my eyes on them (my eyes were beginning to become confused by the abundance of stars that night and focusing on just one or two lights became increasingly more difficult), was by comparing their drifting movements to that of other stars (the three moved significantly faster than other constellations). I watched them drift upwards until early morning, in which the light of the sun made them impossible to see. I did, however, catch a glimpse of the a metallic reflection high above before the sun broke fully into my eyes. It might be important to note that in the morning, I could see the area where the two had taken off from, and there seemed to be a trail of smoke or vapor which started at the top of the mountain. I fell asleep sometime early in the morning, but was awakened by the sound of two jets (F-16s by the look of them) flying low through the valley and circling the mountain top where we had seen the objects just hours before. The fighters left and came back many times during the day (assuming that they were the same planes), until it started raining around 5 in the afternoon and after that they never returned. It was a very strange 4th of July for me and one that my girlfriend and I will never forget.

Posted 2003-05-27