“Incredible” is an understatement in describing our trip to Katmai National Park. It is now near the top of our list of favorite National Parks. Yes, it’s that good. The coastal brown bears that live in Katmai are related to the grizzlies found in many other parks, only bigger. The primary location for visitors to see the bears is at Brooks Falls and you’ve probably seen the iconic shots of bears catching the leaping salmon at the falls. Since the salmon and bears typically start arriving at Brooks Falls in late June, we scheduled Katmai at the very end of our Alaska adventure. And we 100% saved the best for last – Katmai was beyond fabulous.
We visited Katmai in June/July 2021
Getting There
When we started putting pen to paper on our 2021 Alaska plans in late 2020, I called the Brooks Lodge to inquire about availability. A few minutes after the laughing stopped, the nice lady on the phone informed me that I was about a year too late for what I wanted, but there was a day in mid June for one night for $800. I had done enough research to know that the bears didn’t start arriving until late June at the very earliest. So we formulated a plan B. The main access point to the park was the small town of King Salmon and there are few lodging options there. The most common option was to stay at a specialty fishing lodge and use their services to fly in/out of Brooks Falls. This was super pricey at nearly $2000/night, but included food/drink and optional guided fishing. Maybe someday, but not really a good option for us, just for the parks. Ultimately, we settled on one of the available cabin type lodging establishments that did not provide food (more on this later). The Antlers Inn was perfectly comfortable and we easily could have brought a couple friends with us. Since their “season” is only a couple of months in the summer, the $200+ nightly price tag was understandable. We had learned by this point that Alaska is expensive. Next, we had to get transportation into the park from King Salmon. You can take a 15 minute bush plane flight or a 45 minute water taxi from King Salmon to Brooks Camp. We chose the earliest flights in and the latest flights out of the park to maximize our time and we’re glad we did. We actually did this over two days – in and out and in and out. And it ended up costing less than the $800/day just to reserve a room at the lodge. Still, it would have been nice to stay inside the park to get more “bear time.”
Brooks
Falls
When your plane lands along the shore of Naknek Lake at Brooks Camp, your first task is to go through bear training at the visitor center. This was required before they let you head out on the trail to the bear platforms and it provided some good grounding. Basically, they taught you how to act around hungry bears that can eat you. For starters, you don’t want to carry any food or food smelling items out of the camp and into bear country. It was easy to store our food/snacks in the food cache at the visitor center. Our ranger, Kalon, emphasized that bear encounters are likely and that the bears aren’t here for humans, they’re here for the salmon, so as long as you stay out of their way and don’t attract attention, you will be fine. And never, ever, run from a bear. They’re much faster than you and that triggers a chase response that won’t end well for the human. He just didn’t really define what an “encounter” was and how close we’d really be with nothing to separate you. The real confidence builder was when he said that in the many years of operation at Katmai, there was only one “incident” and since we figured we weren’t the dumbest ones to ever show up, we were probably going to be ok. The training took less than 10 minutes and our graduation ceremony included a nifty bear pin. From the visitor center, it’s maybe a mile walk to the falls and the two major viewing platforms (Riffles and Falls). Next to the visitor center is the lodge which holds maybe 60 guests in little 4 person cabins (add this one to our wish list for a future visit) and then you pass through a sturdy gate to the elevated bridge that crosses the river. This gives you a taste of what the visitor protection looks like at the platforms. Gated ramps that lead to tall, heavy, metal gates that put you on an elevated walkway. You definitely feel safe up there. As we crossed the bridge the first time, we could see a bear off in the distance, maybe a quarter mile away. Neat. After the bridge, you exit the protected walkway and venture out onto a regular walking path that’s used by guests, employees, and yes, bears. There’s a lot of evidence (poop) of bears along the mile walk to the platforms, but our first walk was uneventful, and we arrived quickly, ready to see us some bears.
This is Grazer. She is a total bad ass. She defended her two cubs fiercely, sometimes chasing off much bigger males. And she was, by far, the most successful fish catching bear that we saw.
This is Holly, one of the well known mama bears around Brooks Falls. We literally crossed paths twice during our visit. In this case, she’s maybe 15 yards from us walking our way with her cub not far behind in the brush.
As Holly and her cub approached, we ducked into the bushes about 15′ off the trail. She gave us a glance as she and her cub passed by and Rainy captured this shot. Yeah, a bit tense, but as long as you’re “bear aware” and did’t do anything silly, the bears went about their business.
Face to Face
With Mama Bear
A few days before flying to King Salmon, I discovered online webcams of the area and little to my knowledge at the time, it was the onramp to a whole subculture of Katmai bear lovers. I absolutely recommend that anyone considering a trip to Brooks Falls check out the webcams at https://explore.org/livecams/brown-bears/brown-bear-salmon-cam-brooks-falls You’ll not only get to see some great live shots and epic video, but you’ll learn a lot about the specific bears. Anyway, most of the adult bears that visit (and revisit) Brooks Falls are assigned numbers and some are given names. On the shuttle ride to the Antlers Inn, we struck up a conversation with Linda, one of the passengers and we later ran into her at dinner. She was an Explore.Org expert and was very excited to actually see many of the bears she’d studied. After our early morning flight from King Salmon to Brooks Camp and our successful completion of bear training, we teamed up with Linda to make sure we had a decent sized group of 3 to pass through the woods together on the way to the platforms. At the main Falls Platform, the rangers limit the number of visitors and only allow one hour of viewing until you must leave that platform. But you can make a short (and secure) walk over to the Riffles Platform which overlooks the river maybe 100 yards downstream of the falls. After our initial arrival, we put our names on the list for the Falls Platform and headed for the Riffles. There were probably 25 other human visitors there which was fine as there was viewing space for everyone. And as soon as we got there, a mother and her 1 year old cub wandered into the water not far from the platform. Linda let us know that this was bear #435, named Holly. She was huge and she was beautiful. After snapping several photos, a ranger found us and passed us on to the Falls Platform. From the Riffles, we could see that there was a larger bear up there, so we knew we were in for a treat. In our first hour at the Falls, we saw several bears, including a couple of the bigger males (called boars) including #747 (quite the irony) and #856. We didn’t see them at the same time, cuz they would have probably tussled, but we did see #856 chase off a couple of the smaller males. At this time of the season, the bears are super hungry and more aggressive since they’d been hibernating for several months and only a few salmon had made it to the falls. Throughout our two days at Brooks Falls, we probably spent at least 12 hours on the two main platforms watching bears. Maybe 90 minutes of that time had zero bears. We didn’t know what to expect coming in, but the number and activity of the bears was one of the coolest things we’ve ever experienced in any of our travels. And it wasn’t even the peak time for bears/salmon. The bears had different approaches to fishing – some expended a lot of energy chasing, others waited for fish to swim by then lunged after them, and a few snorkeled by sticking their heads under water and walking around looking for a potential meal. The prime spots, however, were at the very top of the falls (they’re only about 6’ tall), where bears wait for salmon to practically jump into their mouths as they try to return upstream to their original birthplaces to spawn. Since the salmon were just arriving at the falls, there weren’t many jumpers and we never saw a bear actually catch a salmon in mid-air. We did see others catch fish, but most of them were just flailing after the few salmon in the area. The most successful was one of the moms, Grazer (#128) who had two cubs in tow. On one of her visits to the Riffles, we saw her catch a good sized salmon and she peeled it like a banana, eating the fat rich skin and then giving most of the remaining parts to her cubs. While they were eating away, she scanned the water and caught another one in less than a minute. As she repeated doling out the fish, she spied one of the big males sprinting down from the falls. She communicated the danger to her cubs and they all high-tailed it away to safety. The big guy must have figured that she had found the best fishing hole, but he got shutout after several unsuccessful attempts.
Well, not all of the fun was at the platforms. If you remember, bear training told us that we’d encounter bears out on the trail. At the end of our first day, the three of us were heading back to the visitor center to catch our plane out for the day. Not long after leaving the safety of the platforms, we looked down the path and saw a bear maybe 50 yards ahead on the edge of the trail standing up, scratching his back on a tree. It was like the Country Bear Jamboree, except that there were two other visitors 20 yards ahead of us, walking right toward this bear. We half shouted, half whispered (if that makes sense) “hey stop, there’s a bear.” I think these girls must’ve skipped bear school, cuz the first thing they did was turn around and start running toward us, away from the bear. Oh jeez, so I yelled “don’t run” which must’ve done the trick as they slowed to a walk and joined us as we watched the bear scratch his itch. Then he started walking down the path toward us. We all backed away and found our way back to the ramp to the platforms. We went inside the 3’ gate and watched the bear slowly approach. That gate would not have protected us, but fortunately the bear turned off the path and headed down to the river. So the five of us returned together back to the visitor center with a keen eye on the lookout. That was pretty cool. We never felt at great risk as the bear never even looked at any of us. Plus Rainy, Linda, and I could have easily outrun the other two if it got to that point.
The next morning, we got to camp, put our packed lunches in the food cache, and hit the trail to the platforms. This time, about halfway there, we saw two bears up ahead on the trail. And they were moving toward us. It was Holly and her cub and they were moving about as fast as our walking pace. So we followed our training and moved about 15’ off the trail. We were less worried about Holly, but really didn’t want her cub to get curious and decide to check us out. They passed right by us, and at one point, Holly turned and looked at us. That was chilling. It wasn’t like a visit to the zoo or the pet shop. The look in her eyes was nothing like I’d ever seen. It was pure bottled fury in a killing machine, walking 15 feet away from us. Rainy got pictures to document the whole thing. We had a couple more encounters later that day, including Holly again. But by that time, she knew us. Seriously, bears have such a keen sense of smell that she most likely recognized our individual aromas.
Peanut Butter
Jelly Time
Before we left Anchorage for King Salmon, knowing that there’d be limited food choices on arrival, we stopped at a grocery store and bought some snacks, a loaf of bread, peanut butter, and a jar of grape jelly. That $10 investment probably saved us close to $100 and loads of time. At Brooks Falls, the lodge serves food, but it ain’t cheap and the lines around lunch can get long, reducing the time spent with the bears. Our PB&J lunches each day made for quick meals that tasted even better knowing the money and time saved. The first day at Katmai, we were getting ready for lunch when one of the rangers herded us and a few other visitors into the lunch area which was a thinly fenced area around a few picnic tables. Seemed one of the bears was walking through camp which is a no-no. Other rangers were “hazing” the bear by making loud noises with thunder stix. It wasn’t a big deal as he or she moved along quickly. The interesting thing was this fenced in lunch area didn’t seem like it would protect anyone from a rabbit, let alone a bear. There was a tiny wire running along the perimeter that was supposedly electrified. It just didn’t seem like much of a deterrent. Anyway, it protected us just fine while we enjoyed our PB&Js over the two days. I think we’ve eaten more PB&J in the last 3 years than we ever did as kids. And we’ve savored every one.
Seeing the bears at Katmai’s Brooks Falls was one of our favorite National Park experiences ever. And since we’ve returned, we’ve been captivated by “Fat Bear Week,” an annual contest recognizing the prodigious weight gain of Katmai’s bears. Visiting this park is truly a bucket list item and not for the faint of heart. But if it has any appeal and you can pull off the expense, it’ll be worth it. If you want to stay at the lodge, you’ll need to enter the lottery in December for 18+ months in the future. We just punched our ticket to stay at Brooks Falls for two nights in 2023. Hope to see some of you there.
So glad you enjoyed Katmai. It is my favorite place! The bears are truly a lifetime experience. The ride to the Valley of 10000 Smokes and the hike down into the valley is amazing too. Will be there in Sept. 2023 too!