Brooks Camp - Bear Viewing

We flew to Brooks Camp at Katmai National Park & Preserve for our first week of bear-viewing with the veterans and their spouses. As we came in for a landing, we saw there wasn't a single float plane tied off on the beach. Through my earphones Mark Lang (bush pilot, head guide and the director of Samaritan Lodge) said "Mmm, not a good sign."

But as I dodged through the passengers to the back of the plane in preparation for docking, one of the veterans exclaimed, "A bear!" Through the rear window, across from the mouth of Brooks River, we could see a sow and her two cubs walking along the beach. We had managed to arrive along with the first bears!

Brooks Camp is on the shore of the Naknek Lake. Sockeye Salmon run through Naknek Lake and up Brooks River on their long journey to spawn. The salmon reach a set of falls about two to three miles up the river. Where the salmon congregate, bears congregate. And where bears congregate, so do bear-watchers. That's us!

When we arrived with our first group, a

visiting photographer had set up camp on the bear-viewing platform by the falls. He had been watching all day and remarked that the sow (in the photo above) had spent the whole day at the falls and had only caught one fish, poor gal.

Two days later, the salmon had definitely made their debut at the falls in record numbers. My photo shows about two fish, but over the course of an hour, we saw thousands of fish attempting to ascend the falls. In his 28 years of guiding, Mark had never seen so many fish. In a one minute interval we counted 143 fish and that was a fraction of the total.

Somehow the bears haven't gotten the memo yet. We flew to Brooks twice last week. We only saw three adult bears and two cubs on the first trip, and two adults on the second (one of whom was sleeping). But with the arrival of the salmon, the bears will begin arriving and things will get exciting.

We did have a little excitement on our second trip to Brooks. We saw a sow charge halfway into the river toward a group of fly fisherman. She clearly took exception to the fishermen (who are allowed to fish one mile from the falls in either direction). It will come as no surprise that they gave way to the bear and slowly backed out of the river and back onto the trail. Fortunately for the fishermen, the altercation ended peacefully with the sow returning to the shoreline and sitting down. Another group of fishermen were also trying to return to the trail and away from the bear, but only after taking photos and video of her first.

The trail that the fisherman take diverges from the main trail and shoots off through the forest, meandering through long sedge grasses to the river's edge. The grass grows above the height of a man's head as the summer progresses and hides even the largest bears from sight. One of the Katmai rangers (half-jokingly/half-not) calls the fisherman's trail the "Hall of Terror."

To check out Brooks Camp go to: www.nps.gov/katm/planyourvisit/brookscamp.htm