Katmai National Park (Bear Viewing)

Monday, August 13, was our BIG adventure day. We selected to go brown bear viewing with Ken and Chris Day of Emerald Air Service. The reason we selected their bear viewing company was because they are known for going where the bears are (as opposed to other tours that take you to a viewing platform where there are crowds of people and allow only a few minutes observing bears). Chris and Ken are very knowledgeable about bears and share this information while getting up close to the bears in their natural environment. (Although, we admit we were apprehensive about being up so close.) We were assured that in 20 yrs of doing this, no one had been harmed.

The day started out with Chris meeting with the 9 of us and explaining about the dos and don’ts of bear watching. (Give them their space, walk slowly, don’t make any quick movements, stay close together as a group, etc.). We were fitted with hip boots, headed for the float plane (deHavilland Otter), and we were off for our 90 min trip west over the Kachemak Bay and Cook’s Inlet. The flight took us right over the Augustine Volcano where we could see steam coming out of the top.

The Katmai National Park is located on the Alaska Peninsula and is only accessible by water or air. There are no roads into the park. We flew inland and landed on Crosswind Lake. Most of the tour groups fly into Brooks Camp where there is a viewing platform. Ken and Chris fly to different areas depending upon where the bears are. This particular area is very remote. The hip boots came in handy for getting out of the plane and also walking in the streams and bogs. We walked a short distance over the tundra on a bear path and immediately saw bears feeding on salmon in the stream. The first photo here catches a sow between us and our second group of photographers. It gives you an idea how close you can get and how uninterested they are in us.

There were thousands of bright red salmon spawning in the stream. In fact, there are so many fish that the bears are very picky about what they eat. At the beginning of the season, they eat everything they can catch, but later in the season they eat only females because they like the roe and the fatty skin. One of the photos shows a bear stripping the skin off.

The bears would look up and see us, but then went back to catching salmon. They weren’t interested in us as soon as they saw we weren’t a threat. (Thanks goodness they were only interested in the easily caught salmon.) We watched several large bears (browns/grizzlies) feeding, and then we walked farther up the stream to observe other bears. The large males seemed to be by themselves and didn’t move around much. The sows keep the cubs away from these bad boys. We saw several sows with cubs. When we would see bears, we would sit down and just observe them. We enjoyed a lunch, while sitting on a bluff overlooking the stream, where we were entertained by a sow teaching her two cubs how to catch salmon. All this time the bears were approximately 100-200 feet from us.

More walking over the tundra along a bear trail, and we followed another sow with her 2 cubs. This time the curious cubs came within about 25 feet of the group. We never felt threatened at any time, but we had our experts with us who made us feel very comfortable. It was an experience of a lifetime to get this close to so many grizzlies (approximately 50) and be able to just sit and observe them.

The weather was unusually warm (probably low 80’s) and there was some hiking over the bumpy tundra, so this adventure is a bit more rigorous than flying into a viewing platform. We, however, thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone, as long as they understand what kind of trip it is. And we haven’t even mentioned the expense. But hey, you only do this once.