bear viewing in alaska

Photographing bears in Alaska Both black and grizzly bears (known locally as brown bears) are abundant in Alaska, British Columbia, the mountainous west of Alberta, and the Yukon. You're likely to glimpse bears on extended trips in these regions, whether in national parks or grubbing alongside the road. Bears congregate in those places where the feeding is best: salmon streams during the run of fish and tidal estuaries where they can dig for clams. Many such locations exist, but the best photography is to be had in a handful of places where the bears have become habituated to human presence, and / or where viewing platforms have been set up that allow you to watch bears safely at close range. This page provides basic information about the best bear viewing locations in Katmai, Kodiak, and elsewhere in Alaska.

Brown and black bear viewing sites in Alaska and Canada

A map of some of the best places for photographing bears in Alaska and Canada. Click on the icons for basic access and permit information for these locations. If you're simply looking for the best of the best, most great photos of fishing bears are taken in just two spots: the McNeil River Game Sanctuary or Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park. I've listed half a dozen other developed locations with large icons, while the smaller icons show sites that are either less developed (take care!), less well-known, or even more remote. With just a couple of exceptions - Steep Creek in Juneau and Fish Creek outside Hyder on the British Columbia border - you can't drive to any of these places. You'll either have to charter a small plane (easy though not cheap in Juneau, Anchorage, and many smaller Alaskan towns), or take a commercial tour by air or boat.

Fish Creek Wildlife Observation Site, Hyder, Alaska The Fish Creek bear viewing observatory, run by the US Forest Service, is the easiest of the premier bear watching locations to visit. It's a few miles outside Hyder, Alaska, with good road access (paved on the Canadian side) from British Columbia via Highway 37 / 37A. Bear viewing here is best between mid-July and September, with the peak of the salmon run typically occuring sometime in early to mid-August. Permits are sold at the gate, but there's no quota. I'd recommend staying in Stewart, British Columbia (my brother and I stayed at the Ripley Creek Inn, which is very pleasant) and driving to the site for dawn and dusk each day. Have a look around before you get out of your car, as bears are thick on the ground here and brazen enough to head to the creek via the parking lot. There's no border control entering the US in Hyder, but you'll need a passport (and an answer to the question "why are you here") to re-enter Canada. We experienced no problems taking our rental car back and forth across the Canadian border. This is a remote and spectacular area, and it's well worth taking the time to drive up to see the stupendous Salmon glacier from the overlook. It's about 15 miles past the Fish Creek site, along a rough road that's passable if you turn a blind eye to the fine print of a rental car contract.

The rhythm of a day watching bears at Fish Creek follows a fairly predictable pattern, with the action being best early in the morning (plan on being there as soon as the site opens, at 6am Alaska time) and in the couple of hours before dusk. Even during these peak hours, bears are not always visible. One waits on the boardwalk for a bear to appear, typically from down stream, and then watches as it moves along the creek past the viewers. When a bear catches a fish, it may boldly eat it on the bank or retreat out of sight into the undergrowth with its prize. For adult bears there's not too much drama involved, whereas with youngsters there's plenty of enthusiastic splashing through the water and lots of near misses before they snare a salmon. Occasionally you may see unrelated bears show up at the same time - when this happened during our visit all three bears (a mother and cub, and an interloper) rapidly disappeared into the forest after which some blood curdling bellowing ensued. Black bears are warier, but may be seen when there are no grizzlies around. Eagles frequently show up to scavenge on the left overs, while wolves are also possible visitors. We had the amazing good fortune to see a lone wolf - pictured above - late one night after the bears, and almost all of the visitors, had left. The wolf was just as skilful a fisherman as the bears, and we watched as he caught a huge salmon before vanishing into the dense undergrowth.

Photography: Bears pass very close to the viewing platforms at Fish Creek, though the angle is not always ideal - normally you'll be looking down and it's not so easy to get an eye-level perspective. Good images can be made with any camera. With an SLR, focal lengths of about 500mm (full frame) or 300mm (using a crop sensor) are probably optimum. On occasion that will be too much lens but often it will be about right. The main challenges at Fish Creek are the light and the weather. Expect it to be gloomy, especially in the evenings, when a fast lens and a body with good high ISO performance are useful. Rain, possibly of biblical proportions, is very likely; rain covers for your equipment are essential. Many regulars had jury-rigged umbrellas to their tripods, likely a good idea unless it's windy. For more pictures, check out my brother's Fish Creek gallery.

Seeing bears in the National Parks Black and grizzly bears can also, of course, be seen and photographed elsewhere. In the lower 48 states, healthy numbers of grizzlies inhabit Montana's Glacier National Park and Bob Marshall Wilderness, and Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. North of the border, grizzly bears can be seen in all of Canada's mountain parks, in the Yukon, and in Alaska. As for black bears, they can be found almost everywhere in both the east and west of the US and Canada. In my experience, sighting bears in the National Parks is largely a matter of luck, though chances are best if one's out and about in good bear habitat at dawn and dusk. I've typically seen grizzlies in open meadows or avalanche chutes. Black bears tend to inhabit forested regions, but seeing them there is hard - most of my sightings have been of bears foraging near (or crossing!) the road.

Personally, I've had the best luck sighting bears in Montana's Glacier National Park - which has a relatively large population of relatively habituated grizzlies in a small space - and along highway 37A east of Stewart in British Columbia. Other sightings have come in Alaska's Kenai Fjords (right hand picture above), Jasper, Denali (at considerable distance), and near the Yukon's Kluane National Park. Getting a good photo out of such encounters is hit and miss. If you spy a bear along the roadside, your best bet (for several reasons!) is to stay in the car and use your vehicle as a blind - bears are likely to pay less attention to a stopped car at close range than a human. If you instead encounter a bear - especially a grizzly - out on the trail, safety has to be paramount, and there will probably only be time for a few frames before the bear is gone.

References Bear Viewing in Alaska (Stephen F. Stringham, Kent Fredriksson). This is a short but useful guide to where to see brown bears in Alaska. Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance (Stephen Herrero). Generally considered to be the definitive reference on how to hike and camp safely in bear country, this is worth reading if you're planning to venture beyond the managed bear viewing sites out into the wild. Hopefully the sections on what to do if you're charged by a bear remain of academic interest...

photography, text and design by Phil Armitage