Once we’d seen images of grizzly bears catching salmon we were sold. We had to go see for ourselves and try to capture similar images.
After a bit of research on the web and through photographic forums we came up with only a few options where we could view grizzlies in the wild, have guaranteed sightings (well almost!), and be safe all at the same time. We chose Brooks Falls in Alaska, within the Katmai National Park, for our adventure of a lifetime. Further research lead us to our tour operator Katmailand at
www.katmailand.com. [As a wee aside - the salmon start their "run" upstream in June/July and that's when you see the grizzlies stand at the top of Brooks Falls and catch the salmon as they leap up the falls. Traditionally our main holiday is in September and we wanted to stick with this. The grizzlies hang around Brooks River until late September when the salmon have spawned and "float" downstream again into the bellies of the bears. We had no fears therefore of going in September and not seeing bears]. We booked 2 nights at Brooks Lodge in Katmai NP in September 2007. Incedentally, we had to book about 10 months in advance to secure places. If going in July you need to be off your marks 18 months earlier. Katmailand’s tour starts in Anchorage, Alaska so we chose to combine our visit to the see the bears with a tour of the Seattle/Portland area (the Pacific North West) - more of this in later blogs.
Our travel itinerary from Scotland comprised the following. We flew Zoom Airlines from Glasgow to Vancouver, picked up a car and drove south to Seattle. After 1 night in Seattle we flew Continental Airlines to Anchorage where we hit the sack for another night. Next day we flew Pen Air to King Salmon then by float plane into Katmai NP and Brooks Lodge itself. As soon as you step off the float plane onto the beach you see the bears and all the travel weariness disappears and turns into adrenaline.
After a safety induction (on bear sense, etc) we and all the other visitors (around 20 “ish”) were shown our room for the next two nights. It was basic but perfectly comfortable. After all, we were on an adventure!
We were able to move relatively freely around the Lodge area and beach. The most basic rule is to stay at least 50m from any bear. We were sheperded past any bottlenecks, where bears were on paths or in the river near paths, by the NP Rangers. The bears always had ”right of way” and the Rangers policed this rigidly. You feel very safe and provided you have a long lens on the camera you still get great photos. For the photograph buffs anything shorter than a 300mm lens is pretty useless and a tripod/monopod is more-or-less essential. Brooks Falls is about a mile upstream from the Lodge along a forest land rover track. You had to be vigilant when you were on the track and whilst we never saw any bears en route between Lodge and Falls you could never be sure you wouldn’t. The only saving grace is that there are so many salmon in the river that the bears don’t need to eat humans!! Also, in September, the bears have had a summer of plentiful food making them rather plump and lethargic.
Food is not included in the package from Katmailand but Brooks Lodge has a cafe/restaurant. Although the visitors have literally no option other than to eat at the lodge the food there is good, wholesome stuff and reasonably priced. This was a great place to share the days experiences with other visitors. My guess is that 80% of the visitors were photographers so there was plenty of good chat around the open fire.
It was a huge adventure for us and we were thrilled to be there, feeling priveledged to view these beautiful creatures in their natural habitat. We will go back - next time in the July, to see the salmon leaping into the waiting jaws of the grizzlies.
Now for the photos. If you would like to see more images from the trip go here: http://www.pbase.com/davidleask/brookslodge.
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