Katmai National Park

Ever heard of "Fat Bear Week?" That's Katmai National Park. Ever seen the iconic pictures of bears standing on top of the falls and catching salmon that jump up? That's Brooks Falls at Katmai National Park. If you want to see brown bears, go to Katmai National Park (or anywhere in that region of Alaska).

We had to wait about 15 minutes for a bear to move away from the sign before we could take this picture

Brooks camp is remote. You can't drive there. It's on a lake that connects to the ocean via various rivers, but it's well inland, so boating isn't really a viable option either. That means you are flying. And with no airstrip, you are landing in the water.

Getting to the park involves a few hops in a small planes. We were only doing a day trip, which means we started in Anchorage early in the morning.

Our first flight was to King Salmon, which was about an hour. Once there, we took a shuttle bus to the river and swapped our wheeled plane for a seaplane.

The park rangers are very serious about giving the bears their space, so our arrival was slightly delayed when there was a bear taking his sweet time meandering down the beach where we were trying to park. Once he cleared the area, we were able to park and deplane.

Seaplane parking lot

There are two main attractions at Katmai: Brooks Falls and the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. It's not possible to hit both while doing a day trip, and we wanted to see the bears, so we chose Brooks Falls.

No matter where they are headed, all visitors need to attend "bear school" upon arrival. This consists of watching a video about how not to act around bears (don't run away!) along with a brief presentation from a park ranger to make sure we all understood. We even got pins at graduation!

Once the ranger turned us loose, we headed towards the falls. The hike to get to the falls is just over a mile, and much of it is boardwalk. The trail starts with a boardwalk that crosses the mouth of the river, dumps onto a smooth path that heads up river, and ends with another boardwalk and viewing platform at the falls.

Crossing the mouth of the river

We had already spotted numerous bears since landing, but the boardwalk over the mouth of the river provided our first close encounter. A large bear was slowly floating the river and passed right under us. He even turned over and did a brief back float for us while passing under the bridge!

Floating the lazy river

This is a good time to mention why the bears are here. As you likely know, bears hibernate through the winter. This isn't really a 6 month long nap but instead a state of severely decreased activity, and more importantly, severely decreased food. As in, no food at all. That means they need to put on as much weight as they can before the first snowfall, when much of the food will disappear.

Bears love fish, and fish are high in the fat they need to pack on the pounds.

Fun fact: Not all brown bears have access to fish. Brown bears that are inland are called "grizzly" because of the effect their diet has on their fur, but they are technically just brown bears.

Bears love fish, and fish love rivers, especially salmon. Salmon are unique in that they are born in rivers, spend their adult lives in the ocean, and then return to the place of their birth to spawn and die.

There are five species of salmon in Alaska, and each species spawns at a slightly different time during the summer, but each member of a species will spawn together. That means that spawning season is an easy time to catch salmon. They are literally cheek-to-cheek in the river. I have never seen so many fish in my life.

When we were at Katmai, the sockeyes (also known as reds) were running. We were actually at the tail end of the sockeye run, so the ranger said the fish we saw were the ones that were too infirm or lazy to make it up river. That made it even easier to catch them. It's not legal, but I could have walked down to the river and used my bare hands to pull out enough salmon to feed my family for a year.

And if it's easy for humans, you know it's no trouble for bears who do this for a living. The odd part of it is that most bears chose not to stay at the mouth of the river where the salmon were just milling about; they chose instead to fish at the falls. Why? Beats me. It's more fun to watch, but it's also more work for them!

People come to Katmai for this view

After speaking with the ranger on the bridge, we headed to the falls. There are hikes at the park, but the real reason most people are there is to stand on the overlook and watch the bears.

Only the most experienced bears stand at the top of the falls and catch the fish as they jump. And those that do expend very little energy. If a fish doesn't jump within a few inches of a bear's face, the bear will ignore it. It's an energy conservation technique. After all, there's no value in catching a bunch of fish to fatten up if you burn too many calories doing so.

Many other bears hang out at the base of the falls and grab them out of the water. This uses slightly more energy but is a fairly successful strategy.

The least experienced tend to hang out on shore and pounce when they spot a fish. This strategy is rarely successful and takes a lot of energy.

The lazy (but smart) bears will simply steal food from other bears. This is actually pretty rare, though. Brown bears are solitary animals, and they only come together in groups like this because there is so much food available. But even when in close confines, they still tend to stick to themselves, giving other bears plenty of space.

The rangers normally limit a person's time on the overlook, but it wasn't busy when we were there, so we were able to stay as long as we wanted. After we started to get hungry, we headed back to the visitors center to eat. We had to stash our food in food lockers at the center before venturing out into the park. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out why!

Lunch was in a small pen surrounded by an electric fence. Yes, really.

We still had a few hours, so we headed back towards the falls after lunch. But we didn't make it very far. We were unable to leave the boardwalk over the mouth of the river due to a half dozen bears playing at the end of it.

If you are wondering, there are double gates to keep them off of the boardwalk: One where the boardwalk ends and another about 100 feet up the boardwalk. Try to picture this because it's about to become relevant.

We spent a good hour watching them play, and as neat as the falls are, this was probably my favorite part of the visit. There were far fewer humans around (they were all at the falls), and the bears were just off the boardwalk. In fact, one bear enjoyed hiding under the boardwalk and then smacking any bear who came looking for him in the face!

Once the bears started to leave, we headed down the ramp towards the end of the boardwalk. This put us in between the two aforementioned gates. As we approached the lower gate, which would dump us onto the path, we heard a commotion. I turned around to see a ranger frantically yelling at us to come back. Sure enough, there were multiple bears charging at us! Well, not at us, per se, but in our direction. They were still just playing.

As we quickly made our way back up the ramp, the bears passed within feet of us, crossing under the boardwalk right where we were walking. We were never in any real danger because they had zero interest in us, but they were close enough that it would've gotten ugly if they would have had bad intentions! I'm thankful for the salmon, which gave them all full bellies.

We finally did make it back to the falls for another session of viewing. After that, it was back to the beach to board the plane back to King Salmon. After another short shuttle ride, we were on our way back to Anchorage.

All of the national parks in Alaska are amazing in their own unique ways, but if you were forced to pick just one to visit, make it Katmai. Trust me.