Sphere over Conifer, CO

The report, as filed

The night of Saturday, August 6, I was in a deep sleep in Pike National Forest's Mount Evans Wilderness Area at 11,800 feet. Due to off and on rain, I was hunkered under my green tarp. I was in my mummy style sleeping bag on the ground. I woke up perhaps around 11:30 p.m. I know I woke up for one reason, and that was to catch a glimpse of a UAP as it slowly distanced itself from me. It can only be described as "a thirty-foot diameter orb of dark red fire," kind of like lava, with a thin, bright yellow corona around it. It appears to be the same type of UAP that hovered over the flight deck of the USS Ronald Reagan in 2004. It disappeared among the clouds of a dissipating thunderstorm within two seconds of me looking at it. Prior to spotting it I saw a dark orange light filtering through the bushes immediately surrounding my campsite. The moment I looked at the UAP "my consciousness moved," so to speak, toward it. I think it was almost two miles away at that moment, hovering over a 13,800-foot ridge called The Sawtooth, which connects 14,065-foot Mount Bierstadt with 14,265-foot Mount Evans. It's like my consciousness zoomed in on the UAP, and I thus had a good view of it from perhaps only a quarter-mile away. That was the moment, one or two seconds in duration, that it wanted me to know it existed and had been near me. It was like it was saying, "We are here. It's all real. Goodbye." I believe that final glimpse was part of a longer, more intimate experience, but what that experience was I do not know. My background as an observer among the mountains is unsurpassed. I've been hiking for 37 years and have covered more than 15,000 miles, climbed more than 2,500 mountains, and camped out more than 1,000 nights. Waking up in a sleeping bag in the mountains is like anyone else waking up in a bed. I have never, ever had an experience like this. Being a licensed therapist who has worked with more than 120 clients across nearly 2,000 therapy sessions, I know what delusions, hoaxes, and histrionics look like. This is none of them.

Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center (record NUFORC #171080). Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.