Katmai National Park, Alaska

Earlier this summer, in July, some of my family members and I took a trip to Katmai National Park to see the Brooks Falls. Brooks Falls is most famous for its brown bears, which hang out there in the summer catching salmon. If you have ever seen a photo from Alaska of bears catching fish in the water, chances are that the photo was taken at either Brooks Falls or the McNeil River. Every summer, brown bears gather at the falls to catch the sockeye salmon that are swimming upstream.

We took off from Anchorage for an hour long flight. When we landed in King Salmon we took a quick bathroom break and boarded a float plane (a plane that takes off and lands on water). Our second flight was about 30 minutes in length. Once we landed at the lake near the falls, we carried our gear up to one of the ranger stations. As we were making our way up the beach, a ranger started yelling at us to hurry up, as there was a brown bear swimming through the water right behind us. Needless to say, we moved pretty quickly after that. 

We were given our “bear orientation” by one of the park rangers. This included safety precautions, like leaving all food in the building and only eating outside in an electric wire fenced area. There is no real danger at Brooks Falls and you can probably count on one hand the amount of people that have been injured by a bear. In most of those circumstances, people were doing stupid things and getting too close to a bear. 

We walked about half a mile to the viewing decks. There are two viewing decks, the Riffles viewing deck and the Falls viewing deck. In order to get into the Falls viewing deck, you have to get on a waiting list. We ended up waiting over an hour to be able to get onto that viewing deck. While we were waiting, we stood on the Riffles viewing deck. You could see the bears from both decks, but you were able to get closer to them on the Falls viewing deck. 

We had about 30 minutes on the Falls viewing deck. It was really neat to see all the bears in the river and on the falls trying to catch fish. We even saw a mama bear with her cub fishing as well. 

Back by the beach, we had lunch in the electric fenced area on a picnic table. Just a note, the park rangers will not allow you to eat outside of the fenced area, neither will you be allowed to sit in the restaurant, unless you purchase food (and no a Coke does not count). Then we visited the little national park store.

On the first flight back, we stopped in King Salmon before heading to Anchorage. All of the planes we flew on this trip were very small, seating no more than 12 people plus a pilot. 

We were pretty luck;, the day we flew out was a very clear day. We were able to see Denali (the tallest mountain in North America) and flew right by Mt. Redoubt (the volcano that erupted in 2009 and spread ash all the way to Anchorage and surrounding towns).