Brendan Jesus
It seems like just yesterday we watched Dr. Travis Taylor drive through the hills, en route to another season of research. His fire-red Jeep rolling through the Uintah Basin with optimism and a renewed sense of wonder. Years later, when the show is on Season 31 and you’re showing your kids The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch, you’ll eventually arrive at Season 5. The memories will come back…the dreaded season of drilling.
Season 5 tried desperately to push the boundaries, to be bigger, better, and badder than previous seasons. Unfortunately, the show flatlined mid-season. It made a fairly solid comeback in the final few episodes, but was it enough? Only the ratings will tell. Until then, let’s get into the two-episode finale of Season 5.
Episode 13 “The Breakthrough”
This Is Not A Drill Pt. 8 (Yeah, really.)
2:15 P.M. We join Thomas Winterton and Mark Construction Inc. at the Mesa Drill site. After two months of drilling the team has only been able to make it 400 feet out of the 675 feet. Alex Swanson sets up the fishing tool that will be used to secure the piece of broken drill pipe from Episode 12 “Drone-Ageddon.” Drillers rejoice as the fishing tool catches onto the end of the broken drill pipe. Success!
Once the drill is properly repaired, Thomas inquires how much drilling is left to finish the first borehole. Alex says it should take about five hours to get through the final 75 feet. (The math doesn’t work out on what they’ve previously stated, but honestly who can keep track anymore?)
Let’s Get Crazy
5:15 P.M. The Skinwalker Ranch Command Center.
Cameron Fugal descends on the helipad. No Brandon. Hmm. Also arriving, via mobile LIDAR SUVs, are Pete Kelsey, Jim Royston, Sam Deriso, and John Brown. The usual gang is also here, Travis, Erik Bard, Thomas, Kaleb Bench, and Dragon.
Strap on, because Travis gives us quite a lengthy talking head regarding the plan for their end-of-season experiment extravaganza! Here’s what we have. A rocket will be launched in the East Field to stimulate the phenomena. Josh Brown will drive the mobile LIDAR SUV, while Cameron shadows from above (1,000 feet), from the East field to the Triangle to the Mesa Drill Site and finally arriving at Homestead Two. Sam Deriso will be in the mobile LIDAR SUV with a multisensor box and a GPS tracker. Once they reach Homestead Two, Thomas will launch a rocket from the Mesa Drill Site. From there, the mobile LIDAR SUV, and Cameron, will turn around and make the trip all the way back to the East Field. (Also, Mark Construction will continue drilling throughout the night to meet the deadline.) Jim Royston will fly his LIDAR drone back and forth around the in and out points at the Mesa. Kaleb Bench will be at the East Canyon with Dragon using the handheld SLAM scanner.
Once that experiment is complete, we go onto phase two!
Steve Jones, a hot air balloon pilot, has the burner of a hot air balloon positioned right under where the Blob appeared at the 30-ish foot spot. Jones will be setting off the burner multiple times in order to stimulate the Blob. Thermal and LIDAR imagery will be taken of this event.
8:25 P.M. rolls around, it’s time to get this show STARTED!
Dragon gets the first rocket locked and loaded. It fires without issue! The mobile LIDAR SUV starts. Jim Royston’s drone goes up. Cameron hovers above the SUV. The experiment starts off without issue. The SUV passes the Mesa Drill Site and Travis sets up his rocket. The rocket shoots off and is glorious! Prompting an, “OH YEAH,” from someone. It’s quickly noticed that Cameron’s helicopter, which is supposed to be directly over the SUV, is quite off course. Even though all of Cameron’s equipment shows he’s directly over the SUV. Could this be caused by the cone-shaped anomaly? The truck and helicopter make it to the end of their route and turn around. They complete their second run.
Cameron goes up to 2,000 feet for this second pass. Dragon launches the third rocket, and again, it’s glorious. For some reason, Cameron is unable to see this rocket from his location in the sky. Pete Kelsey goes to his terrestrial LIDAR scanner and notices something…the cone-shaped anomaly is back.
It’s time to start the second experiment with the hot air balloon burner. Cameron ascends 3,000 more feet to position himself 5,000 feet in the air. At this point, Kaleb Bench sets up his SLAM scanner. Steve Jones sets the first blast off. Travis asks if he can give it as much gas as possible, and Steve agrees. Then things get weird when, for the first time, some dude named Bobby Valentine, of Valentine Brand, just randomly pops up. Are we supposed to know this dude? Anyways, Steve sets off the second burst of flame. Each time Steve pulls the rip chord and flame shoots out, Cameron only gets static over his radio. It’s very interesting how it only corresponds with when the fire is going.
There are some anomalies in the thermal imaging of this, but more will come later. It should be noted that Cameron Fugal is wearing night vision goggles and is reporting multiple UAPs flying around him. That’s when Fire Management Officer Don Mitchell pops his head up and starts asking tons of questions. Like, it feels like he’s trying to run this ship at one point. It just feels so weird to have this Bobby Valentine dude, who I don’t think we’ve ever seen, and Don Mitchell back for the second time. He was a non-entity the first time he was on the show and now he’s just acting like he’s been on the show since day one.
This episode isn’t over yet! Thomas radios over to everyone with glorious news…they’re about to break through the top of the Mesa! Cameron flies over to the Command Center to pick up Erik and Kaleb. They fly to the top of the Mesa to witness the glorious breakthrough…the drill has finally made it!
While this may be fun and exciting, it’s only the first hole. We still have to suffer through them digging a SECOND one.
Episode 14 “Shock and Awe”
I’ll be honest with you here, I was never a huge fan of the season finale bottle episode/evidence review. Each episode hits you repeatedly with “if you remember…” moments. It’s completely unnecessary. To save you all the headache, and my fingers the stress, we’ll just go over the highlights of evidence discovered from the mega experiment. (Sorry in advance for how many times I type the word ‘data’.)
2:46 P.M. The Mesa Drill Site. Dr. Travis Taylor, Erik Bard, Dragon, Kaleb Bench, Thomas Winterton, and the team from Mark Construction Inc. meet at the top of the Mesa. They reveal that they’ll have to pull the drill out for the winter, but Alex Swanson is confident the hole will not collapse on itself. And even if it did, he says it would be nothing to drill right back through it.
Three days later, we join nearly everyone at Brandon’s mega office building in Salt Lake City, Utah. Brad Crispin, Ryan Graves, Jay Stratton, Jim Morse, Cameron Fugal, Jim Morse, and Brandon Fugal join the investigators at a semi-circular villainous-looking table. Brandon monologues for a little, this is the most we’ve seen of him in almost 10 episodes. Erik takes over and pulls up Pete Kelsey on a video call.
Pete starts going over the data from his terrestrial LIDAR scanner. Data out to the northeast reveals the cone-shaped anomaly. This is the second time they got concrete evidence of the cone-shaped anomaly. It’s seemingly repeatable evidence. Brandon refers to it as some sort of forcefield. And Jay Stratton ponders on whether we’re in some sort of experiment. Pete brings up the data from the mobile LIDAR SUV, which provided over 100 gigabytes of data. The image he pulls up looks like a FLIR photo and is honestly quite confusing. The gist is that we are seeing new data that correlates to Pete Kelsey’s 2021 photogrammetry spire anomaly. Pete is confident that we shouldn’t be seeing what we’re seeing.
Jim Royston corroborates this and says his data is similar. He also pulls up the GPS data from his LIDAR drone (that went around the in and out points on the Mesa). We see gaps in the data directly over the ‘in’ point of the Mesa! Three different sets of missing data from three drone paths. Pete Kelsey says there will definitely be more to come from this data as he scours it over the next few months.
Pete also pulls up data from Kaleb’s SLAM scanner. The data shows hits below the surface, which is strange. LIDAR scanners can’t see through the ground. Moreover, the underground data correlates directly with the data above ground. An overhead view of the data reveals, once again, donut-shaped anomalies that could possibly be correlated to what portals are theorized to look like.
Erik pulls up Cameron’s night vision footage. We get a good look at the UAPs floating around when he was 5,000 feet in the sky. They say it looks cylindrical and that it couldn’t be a bird or bug. I don’t think it looks like anything. But, that’s just me.
At this point, Erik pulls up a video from the bottom of the helicopter. This video takes place when the helicopter is over Dry Gulch Creek (the middle of the river). If you remember, this is where they had a dead zone with their equipment and OH YEAH MAYBE FOUND EVIDENCE OF AN EXTINCT SPECIES OF WOLF? Remember when that happened and we just quickly moved passed it?
Erik pulls up the coolest thing we’ve seen yet, a photo of the Mesa with every single GPS data point from this entire season. It’s truly spectacular, but also very overwhelming. Jim Royston reveals they will be using OmniTeq’s newest child: the Athena Engine. This is a complex AI algorithm that will be connected to multiple multisensor boxes placed around Skinwalker Ranch. It will be gathering roughly 1 terabyte of data daily over the off-season.
Final Thoughts
That’s it! We made it! Another season is in the books. I think I’ve made it fairly clear what my thoughts on Season 5 are. That being said, I’m still hooked. I have my theories and ideas of what is going on, but at this point, I’m just here to enjoy the ride.
Thank you for taking this journey with me, putting up with me, learning with me, and growing with me. Until next season…watch the skies, stay vigilant, and don’t read Lue Elizondo’s new book!
