Katmai is a small park known for its brown bears and the Brooks Falls. The Brooks lodge (cabins) is on a lottery system that you need to enter one year before you want to take your journey. If you want to go in 2025 you need to have your lottery information in the 2024 year. Be prepared to spend a lot of money to stay at the lodge since a room with 2 bunk beds and its own bathroom (only room type) is about $1,200 per day! There is a small campground at the park but those sites fill up fast. If you want a bit more economical way to go to Katmai you can stay in the town of King Salmon and then do day trips into the park. I have stayed at the Antlers Inn twice and it has been wonderful both times. The owner is a wonderful native Alaskan who wants to make sure your stay and time in King Salmon is enjoyable. Getting to the park is done in really one of two ways from King Salmon. The first is Katmai Air who has daily flights into the park but will also take you to/from Anchorage so you could skip the King Salmon park but your time in the park would be less. You also can take Katmai Water Taxi to the park. It is on a 24 seat boat that makes the journey in about 45 minutes. The text does leave earlier to the park and departs the park later than the planes. You can also fly into the park with many of the float type plane companies in Alaska but I have enjoyed going to King Salmon.
Watching bears at the viewing areas at the park is done in two areas. The first area is the falls observation area that is less than 10 yards from the beginning of the falls and is the prime spot to watch bears and salmon. This is timed when busy to be only 30 minutes at this point. The second place is the lower falls observation deck and this one is much larger than the falls and you can stay here as long as you like, but most people just use this as the waiting area. The Park Service manages a waiting list for the falls viewing area and will go and search you out when your time to go to the falls happens but also tell you when your time at the falls is up. It is a very effective and efficient way to make sure all people get time close to the bears. The day I went to the falls after my bear class, all people have to go to bear class, I hustled to the falls. The upper viewing area was not busy so I was able to stay at the upper falls from about 0815 to 0930! Once the list started it was on the upper for 30 minutes then down to the lower for 30 then back to the falls as it was not crowded at all! The last time I was at Katmai it was about one hour to one and a half hours wait. Good luck this time as I spent almost ten hours on the upper viewing area. At 1800 when the Park Rangers shift was over I was able to stay on the falls for another hour and half. I saw lots of cool stuff at the falls.
Bear watching was great this time as the salmon were jumping up the falls and to see a salmon actually make the jump and then swim further on the way gives you a warm feeling. Seeing bears catching a salmon who just jumped the falls and then eating it is an interesting thing to watch. The bears need to eat over 40,000 calories a day in order to get the weight o to make their long slumber. Salmon is a way for them to get that done easily. The bears will catch the salmon with one of four fishing techniques. The first one and the one everyone wants to see is the catching on in its mouth when the fish is jumping the falls, hard to see but when you see that one it is really cool. The second is by feel in that the bear is standing/sitting in an area and the fish swim by them and hit them or just the water movement identifies the fish allowing it to be potentially caught by the bear. The third method is the stand up / and watch the water to identify a fish then pounce on the fish. The last is a snorkel method. This method is when the bear puts it entire head in the water looking for a fish and then catches it. I can’t say how it catches since I am not under the water but I would think it is with their paws and jaws. All of the methods are cool to see. I did see a yearling cub try and catch a fish but the fish was swimming away from it and the bear swatted it to shallow water. The fish and bear went at it for a period of time, say 1-2 minutes of the trying to get away/almost catching until the bear did finally get the fish.
One interesting observation is that the bears like to eat the head, tail and skin of the salmon but the actually meat not so much. The bears want fat and the filet of the salmon does not have much fat so it is not useful to the bear, in their mind. This feeding way then allows the seagulls and other creatures to eat the “leftover” salmon without working too hard. I saw a golden eagle eat the leftover filet of salmon among many seagulls.
Bummer part of the day was the taxi company stated there was bad weather and was running behind. They sent their two fishing guides to the viewing area of the falls, and the lodge areas to let everyone on the 2000 taxi, the last one of the day, know they had to get on a taxi at 1900 and to be on the beach at 1845. I get bad weather so I made the journey to get to the beach earlier than planned. You do have to go with the flow when on vacation and especially in Alaska. Well when I got on the beach Andy and Paul (see people along the way) were still on the beach and they had a 1800 taxi. Seems their boat did not come and the taxi service was going to combine both the 1800 and the 2000 due to the bad weather. The 1800 was not notified of the late boat to go enjoy the park but just had to wait on the beach. Well my 1900 boat did not arrive until almost 1945 and it seems that there was a passenger who should have been on but was not on the boat. The taxi company looked for them for 20 minutes before calling it a day and we went on our way at 2004! The ride back to the dock was fine and there did not seem to be any issues with the weather. I was not going to let this ruin my time at the park.
