A northern exposure to bears

The bear was in focus: a powerhouse of brown fur, loping through the water. Close and closer, then only a mass of fur visible through the lens. I gasped and dropped the camera, only to find that the bear in front of me was, in fact, still yards away in the stream, searching for the Pacific salmon that would fatten it up for winter. I had forgotten I was using a zoom.

Seated on a nylon camp pad on the banks of a stream in Katmai National Park in Alaska, I was rooted to the ground, legs splayed in front of me, with 20 people hunkered alongside. We were on a bear hunt, armed only with cameras, tripods and lenses.

Gary Porter, owner of Bald Mountain Air and our guide, had brought us in by bush plane and promised us bears. He didn't disappoint. Three dozen or more crossed my path during four remarkable hours.

More than 2,200 brown bears call Katmai (pronounced KAT-my) home, with its 4.1 million acres of wilderness. The park lies about 300 miles southwest of Anchorage and is accessible only by plane or boat. It sits atop the Alaskan Peninsula, that slim arm on the state's west side that gracefully trails off into the Aleutian Islands. The park lies just west of the Kodiak Island archipelago, Alaska's better known bear habitat, with 3,500 bruins on its many islands.

From June through September, Katmai serves as home to tourists, too -- hikers, photographers and fishermen, among them -- who visit the remote backcountry and rugged coastline to experience the exhilarating scene of bears gorging on salmon from the park's rivers and streams.

Over the summer, as bears shift from one spot to another, so do the tourists. The bears, least visible in June before the salmon spawn, can be found in grassy meadows in early summer. In July and again in early September, when the salmon head upstream in a crazed frenzy, Brooks River at Katmai becomes the spot to see bears congregate, the well-photographed site where fish use all their might and muscle to leap up the falls, only to be devoured by the bears in wait. An observation platform, built and operated by the U. S. Park Service, has become such a popular venue that at its busiest, visitors are restricted to an hour of viewing at a time.

By happenstance, I landed in Alaska in August, when Bald Mountain Air offers its most bear-centric trip. A visit to Geographic Harbor, on the eastern coast of Katmai, guarantees that a visitor will be close to nature: just you, the bears and an airplane in a setting straight out of Jurassic Park, on tidal flats surrounded by the densely lush Aleutian Mountains and, in all likelihood, no other humans in sight.

Having second thoughts

I was nervous before heading out to Katmai. Only days before, former Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska had been killed when the single-engine DeHavilland Otter floatplane he was aboard crashed into the side of a mountain. We also would be flying in an Otter, a workhorse among bush planes used for group travel.

And at other well-known bear areas -- Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks -- grizzlies had mauled hikers. These stories gave me pause.

But relatives who lived in Homer, Alaska, encouraged me. As 20-plus-year residents of the state, they had recommended both the trip and Bald Mountain Air. With their reassurance, I boarded the plane for the 90-minute flight to Katmai, joined by my daughter.

The sky was overcast as we lifted off, gaining altitude as we flew over a moose in the marshes along Homer's spit. From my window seat, I peered at a companion plane, its second batch of 10 passengers flying alongside. Below, islands and water came in and out of view among the heavy clouds.

"Everyone out," said Porter as he dislodged the rear bulkhead of the boat and turned it into a ramp from which we walked into knee-deep water, thankful for the thigh-high rubber boots handed out before we got on the plane.

Once on dry land, we ambled along the sand flats off the shoreline, each of us wearing a backpack stuffed with rain gear, warm clothes, food and water that we would later truck out. The lesson on bear etiquette that Porter had given in Homer ran through my mind as we walked among the clams and seaweed of low tide.

"Bears don't like surprises. Always let bears know you are there." Well, that sounded like a truism, if ever there was one. We were hiking to a spot where Bald Mountain Air brings groups daily in August. The bears would not be surprised to see us. They would, in fact, be preoccupied with eating, we were assured.

Brown bears have access to plentiful coastal food (salmon primarily, but also clams). All that protein makes them grow big -- some of them rival polar bears, stretching to 9 feet tall on their hind legs and weighing more than 1,000 pounds by fall when they hibernate.

Their full bellies make them safer to watch than, say, grizzlies (the genetic twin of brown bears), which hunt for berries away from the water. But make no mistake, this wasn't Gentle Ben and his pals that we were watching. And Katmai isn't a theme park. In fact, only days after my trip, at the same stream, a photographer witnessed one mother bear killing -- and eating -- the cub of another.

The bears were in the distance -- but not that distant, maybe 100 yards or so -- digging up clams with paws the size of my head and claws up to 4 inches long. There must have been at least 10 of them, though I was so startled I forgot to count. Even more surprising were two photographers, chatting and framing their shots, as they slouched in fold-up chairs in the midst of all the activity.

"Do you carry a gun?" I asked the guides, fearing it was a little late to be asking a safety question. "Nope. Not allowed in the park or in the plane. Been coming here for 16 years and never had a problem," said Tony Dolbert, the second pilot.

"Do you carry pepper spray?" I asked, remembering I'd read somewhere that it was recommended for use with attacking bears. "Nope. Not safe. If you're close enough to spray a bear in the eyes, you're too close. And it's not allowed on the plane."

From the sand flats, we tramped over gravel and through ankle-deep water until we reached a grassy area near a stream. There we sat on the ground in a straight line, shoulder-to-shoulder. "Sit close so no bear can walk between you," Dolbert said. "And when you are all sitting down, don't stand up alone. It makes you look aggressive."

We no sooner had sat down than one in the group stood up to take a photograph. Then another. I was worried. Could bears smell fear?

A view from shore

The drama that afternoon, however, was only in the water as the bears bounded through the stream, their eyes fixed not on us but on the salmon -- pinks and chums this time of year. The bears zigged and zagged through the water as they chased the fish upstream and down, following first one salmon, then another. With a pounce, the bear pinned the fish to the bottom of the stream before grasping it with claws and teeth. Not until the bear got to shore did it delicately strip pieces off to eat. Seagulls, perched nearby, waited for scraps.

We watched as a mother and two cubs across the river tried to infringe on the fishing grounds of a bigger bear, presumably male, which was sitting on shore, leisurely watching for salmon. Brown bears are normally solitary. But in feeding areas they tend to co-exist. As the mother and cubs came close, the bigger bear got up and lumbered toward them, making it clear that this was his spot.

A drizzle began and we were thankful for our rain gear, which covered us from head to toe. Indeed, rain and cool weather are the summertime norm at Katmai. Each hour we stretched and moved further upstream before settling into our row of safety.

Hawks flew overhead. A bear glanced at us and lay down. The wind whistled through the marsh where we sat, the rushing water drowning out much conversation. Seagulls screeched on wing and as they floated past on the water. Only the constant clicking of cameras broke the natural silence as bears suddenly appeared, one after another, from behind mounds of sedge grass and headed to the water, a reminder that our guide's advice was sage: "Expect a bear behind every bush."

By the time I had become habituated to the bears, we were headed back to the plane. As we walked to our pickup point, two backpackers emerged from the bushes, nodded and went on their way.

While we waited for our skiff, the tide came in, first a glimmer of water on our boots, then moments later our ankles were covered. By the time the boat arrived, the water had passed our knees and I was nervously searching for a dry spot on the shoreline, where bears had already retreated.

Back at the Bald Mountain storefront on Homer Spit, one visitor noticed a sign for the bear trip that read "Experience of a lifetime."

"So what if you do it twice?" he asked the clerk.

"Then it will be two experiences of a lifetime," she laughed. Or, for my daughter and me, an experience of two lifetimes.