At Katmai National Park, With Thousands of Bears Near Campground Every Summer, Visitors Must Follow the Rules

Can't be too careful with those bears. Big bears. Hungry bears, heh.

Here's video, "The Bears are Back!"

And at the New York Times, "At Katmai National Park in Alaska, Bears Rule":

Katmai National Park sprawls over four million acres in southern Alaska. So why does its only established campground allow for just 60 people per night — a limit that leads to an online booking fray every January? The answer is also one of the park’s main draws, and its primary claim to national fame: bears. Lots of them — about 2,200 at the National Park Service’s last count, with 60 or so regulars that hang around Brooks Camp every summer. In theory, you can camp elsewhere in Katmai, but the campground has an electric fence and constant activity, making it an unlikely place to find a bear too close to your tent for sleeping comfort.

By last spring, just about a year into my life as a full-time Alaskan, I had designs on spending time at Brooks Camp, long considered one of the state’s premier bear-viewing spots. Campground spots for July — peak season for viewing brown bears fishing, establishing hierarchy and practicing their version of flirting (the boys can be such pests) — can be reserved as of Jan. 5 every year, and go quickly. So by early May, having missed my window, I had long given up on making it, figuring I would have to spend another season watching the bears via webcams.

Streaming since July 2012, Katmai’s webcams, set up by Explore.org, (there are four trained on brown bear fishing areas) have turned the local bears into social media celebrities and, for their most loyal followers, the biggest incentives to board a floatplane to Brooks, where dozens of bears return each summer to bulk up on salmon in the Brooks River. (Bulk is the operative word; by November, when the bears start turning in for their long winter’s naps, the males can weigh 1,000 pounds or more.)

My Facebook feed had been lighting up with bear news for weeks — friends across the country all playing a seasonal parlor game trying to figure out if bear 32, a.k.a. Chunk, had improved his fishing skills or if bear 814, a.k.a. Lurch, was going to calm down this year, or if he would continue to intimidate other bears out of their prized fishing spots. The live streams had interrupted more than a few of my own work hours, too.

While on a spring camping trip in Denali National Park, an acquaintance casually presented a near-miraculous offer: “I reserved a camping spot for two people at Brooks Camp in July but can’t use it. You want it? I think it was about $50.” I recruited my Anchorage-born friend Tara Stevens, an experienced angler, and we were off. The virtual experience, I hoped, would soon be real.

After an Alaska Airlines flight from Anchorage to the town of King Salmon, we collected our bags stuffed with layers of clothing, rain gear, camping and cooking gear, and food, and headed to the Katmai Air Service office for the flight to Brooks Camp, which sits at the confluence of Naknek Lake and the Brooks River. After weighing in for the flight — when traveling by floatplane in Alaska, you get used to people telling you to hop on a scale — we were soon climbing skyward in a blue and white 1962 de Havilland Otter, its single engine drowning out any conversation.

Thick clouds hung overhead and even the grassy areas below looked slightly gray. Color broke through now and again — bright green roofs on a small group of buildings below, a pale aqua river threading through the glum landscape.

Twenty minutes later, we descended onto Naknek Lake, the plane bumping along on its floats toward the driftwood-strewn beach and the Brooks Camp employees waiting there. (Brooks Camp also has cabins run by a park concessionaire, Katmailand; they’re spare and pricey but a good option for the camping-averse.) Everybody on the plane, which holds 10 passengers, was a bit giddy as we rolled toward the start of the summer adventure, like the first moments arriving at sleep-away camp.

We were directed to the visitors’ center for the “Brooks Camp School of Bear Etiquette,” meant to keep visitors and the bears coexisting peacefully. Orientation started with a 10-minute film. The clothing and hairstyles were delightfully out of date, but the how-to’s still applied: Keep 50 yards from any bear; 100 yards from a bear with cubs. Move back as a bear moves closer. When hiking, stay alert and make sounds — talking and clapping — so bears know you’re there. If a bear gets too close, don’t run — it may think you’re prey. Speak to the bear in a firm but calm voice. Then start to walk back slowly. Give the bear the right of way.

After the film, a ranger rehashed some of the key points, gave us lapel pins that indicated we had been through bear school, and sent us on our way.

We loaded our gear onto a wheeled cart and headed down the trail toward the campground. Though it was about a third of a mile from the visitors’ center, that first walk seemed quite a bit longer. Thick woods were on the left and, on our right, a thinnish strip of trees blocking our view of the beach, where, it had been made clear, bears loved to wander.

“How has nobody been mauled here?” Tara asked. We kept a slightly-louder-than-normal rambling conversation going. There might have been singing.

Soon enough we rolled the cart through the campground’s electric fence, which didn’t look as if it could keep out a kitten. It was tempting to touch the fence, but I decided to trust the park service and stayed shock free.

The tent up, we headed back down the trail to grab dinner at the lodge.

But before long: “Bear in camp! Bear in camp!”

A ranger’s shout went up outside the lodge, warning people to stay or get inside. The dining room tables emptied as people ran to the windows. Two brown bears, their long claws in clear view, loped through the camp, did a few circles just feet from the lodge porch, and ran back off. I had spent plenty of time in bear country before, but the pair’s romp made it so much clearer that we were playing in the bears’ world. I got ever that much giddier about spending two nights exploring the area...

A great story.

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