The Katmai Bears are Back

 No, it's not a local sports team. :)

Some of Alaska’s most famous bears are back on camera. 

The Katmai National Park and Preserve webcams are rolling this season in higher definition and with more angles than in previous summers.

And the brown bears that feed on salmon have started lumbering into view.

The Brooks Falls camera on Tuesday showed a closeup of a bear panning its head back and forth at the foot of the falls as foamy white river water flowed past, with more than 1,000 viewers watching online.

The remote park on the eastern end of the Alaska Peninsula draws visitors to its campground and viewing platforms to watch the bears as they feed on salmon and prepare for the long winter. Bears can gain over 2 pounds of fat each day in summer and fall.

For those who won’t make it out to Katmai’s bear-watching platforms in person, the bear cams come in handy.

The Katmai bears have become even more well-known thanks to the annual Fat Bear Week competition. Last year’s competition — a bracket-style online tournament in which fans vote for their favorite hulking contenders — was said to be fattest of all Fat Bear Weeks. The bears gorged all summer, and Bear 747 reigned supreme.

Upgrades to the cameras were supposed to happen last year, but the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily upended those plans, said Candice Rusch, director of new media at Explore.org, which works with the park to livestream the bears.

There’s a new camera installed at Brooks Falls, and the picture quality should be “significantly improved,” Rusch said.

They also replaced and upgraded an underwater salmon camera; got the Dumpling Mountain camera back up and running; and upgraded the camera microphones, so the audio quality should be better.

“Basically, everything out there is higher picture quality for one reason or another,” Rusch said.

Plus, the park is also getting back to normal operations after a somewhat shuttered pandemic summer last year.

And it’s going to be busy, said Amber Kraft, interpretation and education program manager at Katmai.

“Our campground reservations are completely full, July all the way to the end of the season, and the same with the lodge reservations,” Kraft said. “So we do expect it to be a very busy, very popular summer here.”

Alaskan Critters

The Moose's Tooth & Grizzly Claws

The Moose's Tooth is a popular local pizzeria. Older Daughter is 26 today, and we're taking her there at her request to celebrate.


In local news, it seems that some grizzly bears have been causing problems in Eagle River, 15 miles north of Anchorage, and on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, here in town.

A couple of elusive, dumpster-tipping, aggressive grizzly bears have been causing problems in Eagle River and Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson neighborhoods for months. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game hopes the bears will begin hibernating soon, but with a reliable food source like trash, the agency said, the animals might stay awake a lot longer.  

“These bears have developed a habit of turning over dumpsters and visiting one or two particular trash-problem areas in some Eagle River (and) Birchwood neighborhoods,” Fish and Game spokesman Ken Marsh said.

Since April, Fish and Game has responded to  “sporadic complaints” about a sow and its yearling getting into trash in a “span of neighborhoods ranging from Artillery Road to Birchwood on the west side (the JBER side) of the Glenn Highway,” according to Marsh. 

Pesky critters.  :)

They're Awake

photo Alaska Dept of Fish & Game, courtesy Municipality of Anchorage- A group of four brown bears wander down the Rovers Run Trail in Far North Bicentennial Park in this photo taken by a remote camera.

Never mind that the first Alaskans often ran in the wilderness and survived, or that the data on bear maulings indicates that hunting -- not running -- is the most dangerous thing you can do in the woods.

Hunters sneak around in brush and forest. Sometimes they sneak up on bears. Surprise encounters with grizzly bears at close range are always dangerous. Take it from someone who shot a grizzly off his leg.

Yes, I was hunting at the time, which greatly increased the odds of a close-up encounter with a bear. It also meant I had a weapon with which to defend myself.

These days, the Anchorage area has a booming grizzly population. Typically, I meet bears while carrying only a container of bear spray. It's lighter and easier to pack than a firearm when running or mountain biking around the edges of the city.

Mountain biking is another thing some of those bear "experts'' frown upon.

Some would seem to prefer everyone stay home and only visit the wilds on supervised outings. But if you think staying in the city or only using "developed'' Anchorage recreation areas is safe, think again.

Read the whole story at the link.

Re-Post: "Grizzlies: A Very Close Call"

Some days, it just doesn't pay to get out of bed. Other days ... well, maybe you shouldn't go camping.

My friend Sandi stopped by to tell me about her weekend: she and a friend had gone to a campground in Williwaw, using a pop-up camper and a tent. She was bitten by a black bear through the side of a tent, at that campground several years ago ... but that never happens twice, right?

She was awakened by a "mmm, mmm" sound, repeated every few seconds. The sound seemed to be getting louder, then softer again. Sandy says she rolled over and peeked out the window, to see a grizzly walking down the road between their campsites. Being very quiet, she continued to watch as it passed by both sites, stopped suddenly, and then spun around to stare directly at her.

Sandi froze.

The bear walked over toward her camper, swiped by it with a brush of its shoulder against the side, and then went on down the road.  Once the grizzly was out of sight, she called her friend, who was also awake. "Did you see them?" her friend asked.

"Them?"
"Yeah, there were two grizzlies, but they kept on going."

Sandi jumped in her car to follow at a distance, wanting to know if they kept going. She didn't see anything, and came back to camp. It occurred to her at this point she was still in her nightgown, so she went inside to change.

As she finished dressing, she heard the "mmm, mmm" again. She raised one flap to look out, but didn't see anything. Keeping her eyes on the road, she backed into the counter where her .44 Magnum revolver and cell phone were. Feeling around, never looking away from the window, she found the pistol, but not the cell. She turned to locate the phone, and was face to face with an adult grizzly which was standing up with its front paws on the side of the camper.

About that time, her phone rang. She punched the "speaker" button without picking it up. Her friend said, "Sandi, there's a grizzly at the end of your camper, acting angry."

"Yes, I'm looking at it right now."

"No, there's another one. It's a good thing you don't have the end window open, because that's where the other one is. It's shaking its head and snapping its teeth."

Sandi figured she was dead; she realized she only had the six rounds in her pistol, with no backup or spare ammo, and figured she couldn't kill both bears with only six rounds.

She told me, "At that point, I figured five shots for the bear and the sixth shot is for me, 'cause I'm done." For whatever reason - and she believes it was her friend, who began praying at that point - the bears both went back to all fours, and walked away.

Once the bears were out of sight, the ladies packed up and left. But Alaska wasn't done with Sandi yet.

On the way home, she hit a moose.

Fortunately, it didn't disable her car, and she made it home. But that night, coyotes either killed something, or found something that had been killed, on the land next to her cabin, and set up a howling that kept her up all night.

Sandi's okay this morning, although shaky, and says she only got two hours of sleep last night - and that only after taking tranquilizers.

I told her, "After all that, I'm very happy to see you."  She replied, "Not as happy as I am to be here to tell you about it."

Any final thoughts?

"The only thing I did right was, I had all the food in the car. You know, it's never the way you think it's going to be. I've gotten lax, because it's been so many years since the time I got bit. I only had the six rounds, with no backup.
"And in all my imagined scenarios, I never planned for two bears."

"A Grizzly Ate My GoPro!"

"When using a GoPro to capture unusually close footage of grizzly bears for the Great Bear Stakeout for BBC, I had a young bear actually chew on the camera. Amazingly there was no damage to the camera! Some of this clip appears in the film Great Bear Stakeoout on BBC and Discovery Channel. Video copyright Brad Josephs."



This isn't the way I'd recommend spending one's vacation. But in bear country, as in life, you pays your money and you takes your chances ...

Katmai Bears are On the Air

Grizzlies in the Katmai National Park, Alaska, have been fascinating the few visitors who can afford a rather spendy visit each year.

Explore.org has a live webcam at the Brooks Falls, so you can watch the bears fishing for salmon, in their natural habitat.

Enjoy!