At long last, our big day has arrived, the one that we have most looked forward to for weeks, the day that we have chartered a bush plane to take us to Katmai National Park to see brown bears, animals that neither of us has ever seen before in the wild. Be forewarned that this is quite a long post with 65 photos, but most of them are of bears and the mama and the baby, well, they're as cute as they can be. You'll need to click through a lot of photos to see details.
We're up early, needing to be at Sasquatch Alaska Adventures at the Homer Airport, six or seven minutes down the road from where we're staying, at about 7:15 to 7:30. Getting out of bed, I pull the black-out mask off my face and peek out the window.
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| Morning View: Neither the Bay nor the Mountains Visible |
It's clear (cloudy, actually) that we're not going anywhere at 0800 because all the bush planes fly VFR and there's no V, visual, yet this morning. We're going to have to wait for the fog to clear not only here in Homer, but 120 or so miles away over in Hallo Bay across the Shelikof Strait from Kodiak Island. Closer to 8, we give the owner Zach Tappan a call and he's pretty casual about the whole affair. "Hang loose and we'll call you when we get a flight window," he says.
With time to burn, for breakfast we went back to the Bagel Shop, just around the corner from the airport. After eating our bagels, we decided to pop around the corner to the office to see what was what. When we arrived, nobody was there so we made a quick call to Zack to try to get an ETD so that we could decide about doing something else before the flight.
Given an estimate of 1000, I thought perhaps to visit Bishop's Beach in town and check out the tide pools, if the tide were favorable. I checked the tide charts and determined that we were only a few minutes past low tide, so we drove through downtown to Bishop’s Beach. We certainly did not find any tide pools worth a view, but had a nice stroll on the expansive and largely deserted beach.
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| Deserted Bishop's Beach, Low Tide |
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| Sand, Unusual on an Alaskan Beach |
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| Young Bald Eagle Patrolling the Beach |
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| Greater Yellowlegs |
About 9:30 we went back to the airport and found one of Zack's sons in the office. He had us sign waivers and got us outfitted with ear plugs and hip waders, the former to block out some of the drone of the plane and the latter for crossing small streams. As we got ready, other people filtered in. We were a total of nine guests, I believe, and we would be going in two planes.
We selected Zack for our tour because his tours are not canned and they do not go to the highly-trafficked viewing areas such as the viewing platforms over on the Clark River, where you have seen the photos of bears snagging salmon right in the falls. The draw for us is that we would be walking right out into the environment with the bears, watching them be themselves.
Ann and I got split up between the two Cessnas fitted with tundra tires, large low pressure balloon tires to allow the plane to operate in rough terrain. My weight is a concern in small planes and choppers and I have to sit wherever necessary for balance. In my case, I was with Tim, the pilot of the second plane who is bigger than I am, so I rode shotgun to balance him. Ann also flew in the co-pilot seat in Zack's plane.
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| Ann and Zack |
A few minutes later, we took off east from the runway, one plane right after the other. We swung to the right off the runway and set a course southwest for Hallo Bay, where just after an hour later, we made a pass over the stony beach near Hook Creek and the Ninagiak River to check for obstacles. On our approach at just a few hundred feet over the Ninagiak River delta, I saw a couple of brown bears off to my right on the barren ground. After scaring an eagle off the beach, we circled around and landed.
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| Homer Spit, Leaving the Airport |
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| On Approach to Hallo Bay: Fourpeaked Glacier and Lake |
I thought long and hard about how to select and present a few photos from among the hundreds of frames that I shot. I decided to present sequences of photos that show the bears in action as we experienced them.
Immediately on getting out of the plane, we saw a young bear, most likely a male, wandering out on the sand. After a bear safety briefing on the beach, we turned our attention to this young bear who was trying to pounce on salmon, but having absolutely no luck.
After watching this young bear on his unsuccessful hunt for fish snacks, we spied another bear in the mist a few hundred yards up the beach back behind us near where we left the planes. As we walked back toward that bear, I shot a few other photos along the beach, including the rocky beach itself, adorned with ringed pink Macoma saltwater clam shells.
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| Beach Still Life ft. Baltic Macoma, Macoma balthica |
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| Western Sandpipers |
Off in the mist, we first spied this young male bear lying down in the sand or perhaps in shallow water. We walked towards him as he slowly got up and walked towards us, until he passed nonchalantly right by us not fifteen yards away.
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| Yawning, but Not Appearing Stressed |
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| Look at That Stride |
As the young bear passed us, we followed at a respectful distance as he went about his business, not worrying about us in the least. We quickly noticed that although it appeared that the bear was plodding along, it was moving way faster than we were. It is quite amazing how much ground they cover and how quickly they can do it without even appearing to try.
As the bear moved away from us, we saw another, perhaps the one that we had see fishing earlier, jump into the river to cross it. Although the river seems placid, it pushed this huge and naturally gifted swimmer downstream as it crossed, the current fierce.
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| Is That a Gator? Bear vs. Ninagiak River Current |
After this, we waded Hook Creek and followed along the shore of the Ninagiak across a muddy delta that clearly floods often. In this mud, we saw timber wolf and bear tracks. Although you expect bear tracks to be large (and brown bear tracks are huge), you do not really expect timber wolf tracks to be that much bigger than a big dog track.
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| Sea Sandwort, Honckenya peploides |
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| Timber Wolf Track, Size of Half a Boot |
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| Huge Timberwolf Track |
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| Boot-Sized Brown Bear Tracks |
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| Classic Toe-in Pattern |
Across the mud and several small streams running in the delta, we came to a point along the river where the sedges started growing in earnest and the alders and willows came within a few feet of the river bank. An eagle watched us approach as no doubt did several bears. We crept by these thickets very cautiously and as we passed, we could see massive bear trails leading into them. No doubt several bears were bedded down in there watching us go by.
As we rounded the point and got a bit of distance between us and the thicket, we proceeded inland between the trees and another small creek. Walking through the grass and the sedge, we started seeing purple pea-like flowers on pea-like vines. They are beach peas and are a primary bear food right now, as the pink salmon run is just getting started. Beach peas taste pretty good, sweet like most members of the pea family. The next bear that we would see was eating all of them that she could.
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| Beach Pea, Lathyrus japonicus |
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Bog Star, Parnassia palustris
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The next bear we would see at about 125 yards away, sitting in the tall grass stuffing her face with beach peas. Zach claimed he saw a cub with her, but nobody else in the group did. As she moved closer to us and as we moved closer to her, we all saw a tiny set of ears just behind her in the grass. Good eyes!
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| See the Tiny Ears in the Grass to Her Right? |
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| Cub Peeking out Behind Mom |
We were on high ground that hemmed in a flood plain and there was similar high ground a few hundred yards distant demarcating the bounds of the water flow in flood stage. As we were watching the mother and cub near us, I spied another larger bear, a male, walking on the natural levee directly opposite us.
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| Male Bear on the Levee Opposite |
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| Coming Down into the Low Ground |
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| Closer Still |
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| Mom Has Approached Us, Curious but not Scared |
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| A Pretty Blonde Bear, She Moves Down off the Levee |
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| Watching Us, but not Perturbed |
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| Junior Finally Appears Down in the Bottom |
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| Doing Cub Stuff While Mom Forages in the Sedge |
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| As Far as She Would Let the Tiny Cub Range |
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| Cub Curious About Log; Mom Wants Him Closer |
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| Oh Snap! She Smells the Male, Now on Our Side |
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| She Gives the Male a Warning: Woof! |
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| Heading out into the Delta |
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| Time to Hustle, Junior |
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| Wary Now of the Male; We are Too; We Cannot See Him |
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| Making Tracks, Using Us for a Screen |
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| She Takes a Dump; It Hits Junior on the Head |
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| And Here He is, the Male Taking a Peek at Us |
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| Oh Shit! There are People There! |
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| One Final Glance at the Female Before Running for the Hills |
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| We Scared the Male Off; Mom and Junior Rest with 360-Degree View |
It was quite amazing to watch the mother interact with her cub and the vigilance she used in protecting her tiny baby, who by all rights should be a lot larger at this season. I was just floored at how she was not scared of us humans and actively used our presence to keep the male bear at bay. And also amazed that she and her baby lay down on the sand in plain sight where nothing could approach without her seeing. This totally flies in the face of everything you hear about brown bears and very closely aligns with my experiences with hundreds of black bears.
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| Height of Bear Viewing Fashion |
As the mother and the cub rested on the sand, out of the very thickets that we so cautiously passed earlier, a massive boar wandered out to the beach. You can tell that he is a very big bear by comparing the size of his head against the size of his massive shoulders. Now look at the same thing on the small bear behind him. Ann and I really wanted to go see this bear closer, but the group we were with was not in very good shape and they were really starting to drag. We could have kept walking all day, but sadly, it was time to head back to the planes.
What a bucket list day!
Back at the Inn, we rendezvoused with Mike who wanted to take us to Finn’s Pizza down on the Spit. As we headed in on Kachemak Drive, we saw four eagles battling for unknown reasons. In nearly the same spot on the return trip, I had to slow to almost a stop to allow a porcupine to cross the road, our first live porcupine sighting outside a zoo.
Business at Finn's was pretty slow compared to what we had seen earlier in the week. You order at a take-out window on the back of the building and then sit at one of the handful of tables right on the boardwalk. They bring your pies out to you when they are done. With this tiny number of tables, most of their business is takeout. While waiting, we sipped on our pitcher of IPA, the first pitcher of beer that I have ordered in a good 35 years.
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| Waiting for Pizza |
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| That's a Handsome Beer Pitcher |
After dinner, we hit the bed in pretty quick order, having to be up at an obscene hour tomorrow on our final day in Homer to go fishing, really the only must-do thing in Homer that we had not done so far.
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