Thursday 11 July
We were up early as Tayla and Danika were going on a flight to Brooks Camp to view the bears. We had to have them down at Beryl Air’s office on Beluga Lake by 7:45 am. We met Stephanie, the pilot, who was just lovely! Ross and Chris went back and worked in Kay and Joyce’s camper for the day.
We flew for an hour and a half from Homer out to Brooks Camp in Katmai National Park. Just as we were pulling up to the shore, we saw a bear walk across the path up to the Ranger Hut and along the beach past the other float planes, and up into the forest. We realised that this would be the first of many up close encounters with the bears. We walked up along the same track the bear just took, up to the Ranger Hut where we listened to an enthusiastic guy and listened to a bear safety video. This means we gained our badge for Bear Safety Orientation for 2019 and we were ready to go out by ourselves. We were not allowed to take any food out on the track with us, as they didn’t want the bears to learn they would get any reward if they approached or attacked humans. We locked up our food in a food cache and out our excess gear in the gear cache. We then started our 20 min hike from the Ranger Hut out to Brooks Falls where it was likely we would see bears along the tracks we were also walking on. There was a lot of evidence that bears had been there – with lots of bear poo on the tracks. We walked along an elevated walkway careful to close gates that keep the bears out. There were platforms off the walk-way where we could safely view the bears in close range. There are no words to describe the experience. It was INCREDIBLE. There were bears all along the falls including a sow and her three cubs which were 18 months old. We saw them sleeping, swimming and catching salmon (or attempting to). There were people fishing in the river, very close to the bears and sometimes the bears got a bit too close, causing the people fishing to move!
We had an hour to be on the platform by the falls but had free range on the other platforms. We walked back to eat our lunch in the locked area with an electric fence and then went back to the plane. It was a lovely flight back with view over Aleutian Mountain Range and Katmai National Park.
Mum and Dad met us at the plane and we went down to the spit and caught up with Kay and Joyce. They showed us around a bit, where the fishing trips and commercial boats come in and saw them filleting the fish. We enjoyed an Alaskan beer at the ‘Salty Dawg’, one of the original buildings on the spit, a small log cabin where the fishermen would go at the end of a long day at sea, have a drink, and often drown their sorrows when some of their colleagues were less fortunate and didn’t make it back. Some of the fishing is at its best in winter (e.g. Dungenes Crabs) out in the Bering Strait! The walls and ceilings were lined with dollar notes with peoples names and messages on them. Although it was a real touristy place, most of the people were locals.
We came back and had American hot dogs and salad with Angel Cake, cream and strawberries for dessert.
