Katmai National Park

Katmai has been on my bucket list since I moved to Alaska over 26 years ago. Scott and I are celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary this year and we decided to each pick something we've wanted to do...
http://www.nps.gov/katm/index.htm

Flying in - the campsite is above the buildings (but on the beach). The buildings are the lodge and cabins. Across the floating bridge there are two platforms for viewing and then you follow the road around about 1 mile to get on the path to Brooks Falls.

This young bear had separated from its Momma and kept hanging out near the lodge. The NPS rangers had done a few blogs on it and in fact were taping a web video when we were there.

The campground - they are very strict about how clean this is kept. There are two outbuildings for food and camping gear. Basically the only thing allowed in your tent is your sleeping equipment.

The electric fence around the campground. At first I was a little skeptical - but, at least when we were there, no bears came near the area.

Home for 4 very rainy days. We stayed nice and dry - thank you REI. We did end up giving some tourists tips on how to stay dry (hint - don't leave your tarp out - tuck!)
The most difficult part of planning a trip to Katmai is getting reservations - especially in July.

This beautiful path ran parallel to the beach. The bears mostly stayed on the beach.

There are four bears in this picture - momma & 2 babies and then another way in the back.

She's coming towards us but we are all up on the platform.

Momma is popping her jaw and making it clear to her babies that they need to get out of the tree and listen to her. At this point the bear that had been following them went the other way - but there were four other bears in the immediate area.

Momma is checking us all out...

Come on babies - hurry it up

So many baby pictures...I just couldn't cut out any more (Scott and I took almost 800 pictures during the four days we were there - there are 81 pictures in this blog)

The bridge was closed for about 1.5 hours because of all of the bear activity. Many of the tourists were quite upset - the park rangers do a really good job of keeping everyone safe. There were a few tourists I would have liked to bean over the head with their own tripods - I was impressed at how much patience the rangers had with them.

Brooks Falls!

It was interesting to watch how each bear had it's own way of fishing - and of eating the fish.

It was very mesmerizing to just sit and watch the bears...

Love this bears ears...

This picture was taken from the platform by what is called the riffles. As you can see it's just a little ways downstream from the falls.

Lots of sea gulls in the area - they were entertaining to watch as they tried to get any of the left over fish. The younger bears would chase them off any chance they got. The older bears must have figured out it was a losing battle.

 



There are six bears in this picture - but there were seven in the area. We just don't have a wide enough angle lens to get them all.

They looked like they were having a meeting...

I was within probably 10 feet of this bear - but again on a platform. He just wanted to eat his fish on the shore.

I need to take a minute to mention the negative part of this park. I always thought the only folks in the park were the people in the campground and at the lodge (which is actually a series of cabins). Adding all of those people plus employees of the lodge and the park there are probably around 250 that are in the area at any one time. That would be fine - but then there are multiple flight seeing trips that come in every day which I'm guessing bring in another 300 people? One day we were there the wait to get onto the Brooks platform (only 40 people at a time are allowed) was 2 HOURS. We didn't wait - we found that doing that platform in the evening was a better bet. I just think it's a bit much...

So many cameras - this is just a small sampling. Some of the folks brought out two cameras and would go back and forth taking pictures between them. Tripods take up a lot of space - 40 people don't fit on that platform when there are 20 tripods. I was also a little surprised at how cut throat some of these folks were - they made it clear that they were there to do a job and we should not get in their way...

25 years and still very glad I married this guy!

These pictures are from the platforms near the floating bridge.

Bear love? or Bear fight?

Bear Love! We watched these two play for a couple of hours.

Who is going to catch a fish first?

These are the two that were in the water. The smaller one is a young male - the rangers were surprised this female was paying attention to him.

Katmai is bigger than Yellowstone and Yosemite combined!

The original reason Katmai became a National Park was not because of bears - it's because of a massive volcanic explosion that happened in 1912.  http://www.nps.gov/katm/planyourvisit/exploring-the-valley-of-ten-thousand-smokes.htm

That's all ash...

If you look at the confluence of those two rivers you'll notice one is clear (snowmelt) and the other is muddy (glacier fed).

Some of the tour operators that do day trips...

THE END
(I couldn't resist...)