Brown bears at Brooks Falls

Ever since I have seen it in TV documentaries, I have been fascinated by that classic spectacle of salmon jumping up on a waterfall and a line of brown bears standing up on the fall waiting to catch. Later I came to know that the place where those shots have been filmed is in Alaska. The falls are called Brooks falls and they are in the Katmai National Park. During salmon runs, certain spots in this park see the largest congregation of brown bears anywhere in the world. Brooks Falls, McNeil river are two of the famous ones.

Having planned a trip to Alaska from July 4 to 14, I set July 7 as the date for my tryst with those brown bears. At the beginning of July, these bears migrate from coastal areas and move to the Brooks falls area. Katmai Park is almost 2 hrs float plane ride away from Anchorage. You can either do a day trip to Katmai, or camp out for a few days. Camping for a few days does give you a chance to see more as you can see the bears in the morning and evening when the day trippers are not there. However, I was reluctant to camp as I was traveling alone and didn't want to set up a camp in the tall wet grass in a mosquito infested area!! I knew day trip will give me only 3-4 hrs of bear viewing. As long as I got to see them, 3 hrs seemed good enough.

After flightseeing Mt McKinley on July 5, I had driven to Seward on the scenic Seward Highway. On July 6, I did a boat tour of Kenai Fjords National Park. There I got to see a glacier and marine wildlife including humpback whales. After that 9 hr boat tour, I drove to Homer. Stayed in Homer hostel for the night. Next morning, I had the bear viewing flight scheduled with Bald Mountain Air. I reached the float plane dock a little late. The owner of the company was giving an orientation when I reached there. Around 20 people were ready to fly on two planes. All armed with their camera gear and backpacks. The flight was delayed by an hour due to rain. At 10am, we did take off. Taking off and landing on water is really smooth. It was a scenic flight.

We landed on a lake. We then took a trail to the park HQ. Just a few small buildings there. Here you get some orientation on bear etiquette. You cannot carry any food with you, keep at least 60 ft distance from a bear, make noise when walking on a trail, etc. I followed a party of 3. The lady had attached bells to her belly to warn bears! I didn't see any bears on the trail. I did see bear poop everywhere on the trail. It seemed that they considered the trail as their potty! No respect for humans. One interesting fact I noticed. Brown bears have black poop and black bears (which I encountered in Harding Icefield trail) have brown poop!!

There are 3 platforms from which you can see bears. I stayed on the Falls platform all the time. It was drizzling all along. Not many people there. About 15-20 bear watchers had trained their cameras on the bears in the river. When I reached there, I saw only one bear standing on the falls. Same pose that I had seen on TV many times. It was exciting.

There were 2-3 bears near the falls. 2-3 more were downstream. I watched and photographed them for the next 3 hrs under a constant drizzle. I saw only 2 salmon being caught by bears near the falls. It seemed that the salmon run had not really begun. No salmon jumped up the falls in the 3 hrs I was there. So the bear standing on the falls was not going to get lucky. Lack of salmon made the bears roam around a lot instead of just standing or sitting in one spot. I did see one bear sitting in one spot for a long time and he never got anything. Tempers were also getting frayed between these bears. And they were also trying to bully each other to grab a prime spot. As soon as a bear caught a fish, it would run away to the woods and skin the fish there. Sometimes the bear would walk right under the viewing platform. At that point, it would be barely 25 ft away!

3 hrs passed very quickly. It was time to walk back to the park HQ. This time I was alone. It can get a little scary walking alone on the trail. But no big brown bear popped out of the bushes onto the trail. It was time to fly back to Homer.

It was really a treat to watch these brown bears from such a close distance.

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