Kent's Viewfinder: July 2023

The Trip

My wife and daughter and I visited Brooks Falls/River/Lodge in Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. We saw lots of bears.

I’ve wanted to visit the Brooks River area for years to see the bears during the salmon run. The pictures on the Internet are cool. The videos on YouTube are cool. The webcams videos are cool.

My daughter is in the Air Force, currently stationed in Anchorage. I researched a trip to Brooks. It’s hard to get there and really expensive. I’m not getting any younger; it’s not getting any cheaper; my daughter will not be in Alaska forever. It was time to try to go to Brooks.

It’s possible to stay (cheaply) in the campground, but my wife wouldn’t camp and it’s hard to get a camping permit. So I did a lottery submission to get into the lodge. No luck. But a few months after I failed to win a lottery slot, the lodge concessionaire offered me a cancellation, which I took.

With the lodge dates firm, we then had to figure out how to get there. The options are:

Take a floatplane from Anchorage directly to Naknek Lake.
Take a commercial airline flight from Anchorage to King Salmon, followed by either a floatplane trip to Naknek Lake or a water taxi trip on Naknek Lake.

Floatplanes on Naknek Lake

We opted for an Alaska Airline flight to King Salmon and the water taxi. The weather is highly variable in that area. Flights in small aircraft frequently are cancelled and there’s a very strict weight limit. At least the water taxi can go in low cloud ceilings and there are no weight limitations. However, the water taxi is a flat-bottomed boat because of the shallow depth of the area it needs to traverse; it’s subject to cancellations when the winds are strong and the waves are too high.

Katmai Water Taxi

The flight to King Salmon was uneventful. The water taxi company provided vans to take people to the dock. Actually, we boarded the water taxi at a boat launch. The ride to Brooks was really rough, with the hull repeatedly pounding on the waves. When we arrived at the lodge area, we immediately went to required orientation in the welcome center, then checked into the lodge.

Our home for 3 nights

We spent three days watching bears. There were bears on the beach. There were bears on the riverside. There were bears at the falls. There were emancipated juveniles. There were adults. There were sows with cubs. What there wasn’t, was a lot of fish. As luck would have it, we got there about a week too early for the salmon run. We saw lots of fish, but not in the numbers that attract dozens of bears to the falls.

The lodge is adjacent to a bridge over the mouth of the Brooks River where it flows into Naknek Lake. After crossing the bridge, there is a gravel road that leads to Brooks Lake. A short distance down that road, there is a path that leads to Brooks Falls. The walk to the falls from the lodge is a little more than a mile.

Bridge over Brooks River

Once we got there, we spent our time at the falls and exploring the lodge area. There were several times a day in which bears passed through the lodge area or walked along the beach or lingered around the mouth of the river. The rangers were often busy keeping people away from the bears or “encouraging” the bears to leave.

Dining is in the lodge. The food is expensive, but good. It’s buffet style, with seating in a crowded room with wooden tables and benches.

Rooms are comfortable, but small. There is a pair of bunk beds for up to four people per room. There’s a shower, sink, and toilet.

There is no cell phone service at Brooks Lodge. There is no customer WiFi service. Neither my phone on AT&T nor my daughter’s phone on Verizon worked in King Salmon.

The weather was highly variable. I was constantly adding/removing layers. The temperatures were in the 50-70 degrees F range. The wind, when it picked up, was welcome because it blew the mosquitoes away. I was glad I brought mosquito nets.

Events of Note

Shortly after arriving, my daughter and I took a walk around to explore. We stepped onto the beach and noticed two bears in the distance, one on our right, another on our left. We retreated into the woods to wait for them to pass. When the larger of the two passed, we presumed the smaller one would turn around and we proceeded toward the beach again. We were wrong: the smaller one suddenly appeared, running away from the larger one. This was our closest encounter of the trip, with the smaller bear only about 20 yards away. We were concerned that the larger bear would soon follow, so we left the area.

One afternoon we were on the bridge at the far end away from the lodge. We saw a sow and two cubs at the mouth of the river near the parked fishing boats. We watched as the bears approached the bridge, slowly. The Valley of 10000 Smokes bus arrived and had to stop because of the bears close by, stranding the passengers aboard. The bears eventually passed under the bridge and went to a spot nearby on the riverbank, where they settled down for a nap. The rangers were about to take the people off the bus when another bear appeared. It too, slowly approached from the same area from which the sow and cubs had come. Once again the bus passengers were stuck. We watched from the bridge as this new bear, apparently an adult male, followed the sow/cubs’ path. Suddenly the sow and cubs became aware of the new bear’s presence and watched as the big male approached. All at once they ran into the woods. The male lingered in the area where the sow/cubs had napped, smelling the rocks where they had lain. Eventually that bear too wandered into the woods. Finally the bus passengers could get off the bus, after being stuck for about 45 minutes. I posted a photo of this family on the Facebook “Bears of Brooks Camp” page and the moderator declared that this is bear #94 with her yearlings.

On alert for an approaching male bear

On the morning of our last day at the lodge, a sow and three cubs wandered into the area along the beach, but also going into the woods near the lodge/dining room. The rangers kept people back as the bears ate grass and the cubs briefly climbed trees. The bears went along the lakeshore and up the riverbank, offering another chance to see them as they approached the bridge. A crowd gathered to watch them. Something spooked them and they ran away into the woods near the lodge office and store, and I never saw them again.

First year cubs

Also on the morning of our last day at the lodge, I went to the beach. I saw some rangers about to launch a kayak. They had not noticed that a bear was approaching along the beach. I called to them, “There’s a bear.” They looked at me, and I pointed behind them. When they saw the bear, they immediately grabbed the kayak, took it into the woods, and reappeared, calling other rangers on the radio to help with crowd management. This bear eventually wandered into the woods near the river.

Photographs

This is (probably) the one time I’m ever going to Katmai National Park, so I wanted to be sure to take the best camera gear that I could. I brought my 500mm, 300mm, 70-200mm, and 24-70mm lenses, not knowing what to expect. I tried the 500mm but it was too much reach for the falls. Maybe it would have been useful if there was more action at the falls. I could have gotten some frame-filling closeups. I didn’t even take the 24-70mm out of the bag. I ended up with two cameras at a time, one with the 70-200mm, and one with the 300mm. The 300mm was useful most of the time. The 70-200mm was great for times when the bears approached the platforms and bridge. For shots around the lodge, I used my phone.

The lighting conditions were highly variable. Sometimes (most of the time) the skies were overcast, sometimes with drizzle. Sometimes there were partly cloudy skies. I was constantly adjusting ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.

Shutter speed was tricky - too slow and the lunging bears were blurred. ISO was tricky - sometimes up to 2000 so I could get the shutter speed/aperture combination that I wanted. Dark bears in the white, foamy water made for exposure selection challenges. I usually just went for the brightest water that I could get without blowing the highlights out, resulting in really dark bears that I had to recover in post.

OK, lets see some bear photos…