Katmai National Park (Bearfest)

For several years, we had been talking about going to Katmai National Park, home of a large population of brown bears and to the Valley of 10,000 Smokes. The park is only reachable by float plane or private boat from the small town of King Salmon, Alaska (normally, a pretty pricey option) but we have an ice friend who works for Katmai Air, the flight service that handles the float plane traffic. Tom was wonderful in providing us with good advice on when to come, where to hike, how to prepare and we were treated as VIPs by the staff of Katmailand who referred to us as “Friends of Tom”.

My 40^th birthday was as good an excuse as any to make the trip – as well as the accumulation of Alaska Airlines frequent flier miles, which made the flight from Anchorage to King Salmon free of charge. The additional fact that the bear population is at its highest in September during the week between my birthday and Michiel’s clinched the deal.

We arranged to spend a week at the park with 3 days camping within the electric fence at Brooks Camp and 4 days backpacking out in the Valley of 10,000 Smokes, the site of the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history (1912). Landing on Naknek Lake by float plane was smoother than expected and we floated toward shore, watching the bears roam the rocky beachfront, completely unperturbed by the plane or human traffic.

After attending the mandatory bear protocol lecture and video presented by the National Park Service we got settled in the campground. The area protected by an electric fence is a fairly natural (ungroomed) wooded area with one structure for food and aromatics storage (garbage, toiletries) and another for gear. Three lean-to structures sheltered picnic tables for cooking and food prep, which was a blessing not only because of the rain, but, more importantly, because of the incredible winds that gusted to over 50 miles per hour and created white caps on the lake. The winds were so strong on the first day that we almost didn’t notice the biting flies that are the bane of one’s existence on the Alaskan peninsula. (Once the winds died down, however, the flies were back in full force, and we were extremely grateful for the head nets that we borrowed!)

Within moments of arriving at the campground, a large boar (male) bear sauntered along the beach, just a few feet from the electric fence and we got our first (of many) up close views of these incredible creatures.

During the day, we spent our time at the camp at one of the raised viewing platforms or walking between them. The pathways are the scariest part of being at Brooks Camp as the bears roam freely. The Park Rangers do a good job of monitoring the camp and try to stop traffic when bears are present but occasionally we would stumble upon a sleeping bear or, in a couple of instances, a pair of male bears sparring. Michiel had a harrowing moment when a huffing bear backed onto the trail just feet away. He quickly realized that the bear wasn’t huffing at him but at another bear. Yikes! He backed away stealthily, heart pounding. But really, the bears weren’t at all interested in humans, they were solidly focused on eating salmon, sleeping and establishing or reinforcing the hierarchy of the social structure through sparring.

At one of the platforms at the Brooks River floating bridge, a park ranger gave commentary and status updates on which bear was where and a bit of background on the gender, age and history of each bear. There was almost always a park biologist present, as well, who was focused on recording the activities of each bear. The bears were given code numbers in order to attempt to avoid anthropomorphizing of the bears’ behavior, but nicknames were almost always used by the rangers and photographers. “Oh, there’s Sadie with her two cubs, Tundra and Maggie. Tundra has made an incredible recovery from the deep wound she had around her eye earlier this summer,” was something we overheard one of the photographers uttering to anyone who would listen. We quickly discovered that the only negative to being at Katmai (we could withstand the wind, the rain, the bugs and the cold) was the obnoxious photographers with their tripods and massive lenses. They would set up on the platforms in the morning and camp there for the entire day, leaving only for meals at the lodge. While viewing, several photographers asked, “Are you shooting?” as if to say “if you aren’t taking photos, get out of the way so I can!” Of course, this just made me want to take up more space on the platform by wearing my backpack and spreading out my elbows.

Escaping the Mega-Lenses

We did manage to escape the photographers by heading out into the back country of the Valley of 10,000 Smokes. Access to the valley is by bus tour (23 miles) and we arranged to take a bus out on one day and return with a different tour on the way back. The day we arrived in the valley was misty and rainy and we were in no big hurry to get out into the rain so we took our time eating lunch in the small visitor’s center. The center sits on a hill overlooking a deserted and desolate valley of pumice, ash and deeply carved river gorges. We couldn’t see much of the valley on that first day, but as soon as the rain eased, we descended through autumn-colored woods to the valley floor.

Aside from the beautiful fall colored fireweed, which begged for taking more pictures at every other step, our first obstacle was an extremely cold river crossing (aren’t all Alaskan river crossings cold??). We had gotten a good briefing from the ranger on where to cross but the river looked pretty high and fast so we spent a while scouting for a better crossing location. We ended up crossing at the recommended spot where, at least, the river bottom was level. The screaming didn’t last long….in just a few minutes after we reached the other side of the river, our feet were no longer stinging and we changed our socks and shoes to continue into the lunar landscape. We both concluded that heavy cursing really helped deal with the stinging cold of the water.

We spent the next couple of days marveling at the colors of the pumice – lavender, orange, brick red, sulfurous yellow – it was beautiful but also haunting. It was almost as if we had discovered the remains of a Roman mosaic. The sky above us changed so quickly that at one minute the clouds filled our vision and in the next, the strong wind parted them to give us glorious views of the snow-covered peaks bordering the valley.

On our second night, we stayed in an old US Geologic Survey hut on a windswept hill. The outhouse was an old A-frame structure. The constant winds had long before taken the door off which was okay with me. The views of the mountains across the valley made for an outstanding excuse to leave the protection of the hut for a bathroom break.

Fortunately, the day we were planning on viewing the site of the 1912 eruption was bright and sunny, with large patches of blue skies. We made the short hike to the saddle overlooking Novarupta and were treated to unbelievable colors, geologic patterns and a smoking plug of lava. Hard to believe that that little plug produced such a massive amount of smoke, ash and pumice (estimated to add up to 6 cubic miles). The wind nearly knocked us off our feet, but we stayed long enough for some photos and to take in the views.

On the way back to our first tent site, we were surprised to see a brown bear on the hillside not too far off the valley floor. He was about one mile from our camp site and his presence reminded us that we weren’t on the moon. We had been using a bear-proof canister for our food and aromatics and we’d been practicing good camp craft by cooking far from our tent, but his presence and the lack of an electric fence, made me a bit uneasy that night. The wind direction was in our favor and the bear was traveling in the opposite direction, so we, gratefully, have no further excitement to report.

After our backpacking trip, we returned to Brooks Camp for another couple of days of bear-viewing before returning to Anchorage, then Hope.

We were going to upload some bear movies, but are currently unable to do so because of the limited bandwidth. Maybe we will succeed in doing so a little bit later.