Paranormal Folklore: The Slide Rock Bolter.

  

The Slide-Rock Bolter is a strange and massive  cryptid   that makes it's home on to of steep mountains, it was first recounted by 19th century  lumberjacks, according to folklore it lives in the mountains of Colorado, but only on mountains where the slope is at an angle greater than 45 degrees. 

It somewhat resembles a large fish, with a large head, small eyes, and a huge mouth,  Its tail ends in a fluke like a dolphin, with enormous grab-hooks that it uses to stay in place high above it's prey until it's ready to strike.

The enormous beast doesn't hunt in a typical manner, instead it's a massive ambush predator.

 It can stay completely motionless for days at a time, watching the gulch below for animals or  tourists unlucky enough to cross it's path.

 The moment it's next meal is in sight, it will lift its tail to release its hold on the crest and let gravity do it's job, sending it barreling downhill, it drools a grease like substance   from the corners of its mouth to increase the speed as  its huge body barrels down the mountain.

It's  helpless victims are scooped  into its wide open mouth as it slides down. The accumulated speed will carry the Bolter up the next slope, where it will once again grasp the ridge with its tail and wait for it's next meal to wonder into it's grasp.

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Encounters..

Whole parties of tourists are reported to have been gulped down at once. The animal is a menace not only to tourists but to the forest as well. Many spruce-covered slopes have been rendered wastelands as the Bolter knocks the trees out by their roots or mows them down as if with a scythe.

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A forest ranger, whose district included the rough country between Ophir Peaks and the Lizard Head, conceived the bold idea of deceiving a Slide-Rock Bolter to slide to its own destruction. A dummy tourist was outfitted with a plaid Norfolk jacket, knee breeches, and a guidebook to Colorado. The dummy was filled with powder and fulminate caps and posed in a conspicuous place. 

The next day the false tourist attracted the attention of a Bolter that had been hanging for days on the slope of Lizard Head. The creature attacked. The resulting explosion flattened half the buildings in Rico, which were never rebuilt. The remains of the unfortunate Bolter made many a meal for the local buzzards that summer

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This cryptid and others can be found in Fearsome Critters (1910)