[You may view a map of Katmai National Park and Preserve in PDF format here.]

We awoke early before the alarm, all excited to go bear viewing. There were some nice red clouds to the east as I was having my regular breakfast. We left at 8:00 in the Jeep.

We got to the Emerald Air Service facility on Beluga Lake in plenty of time for the 8:15 briefing for our bear viewing trip to Katmai National Park and Preserve with Ken and Chris Day. Ken and Chris are wonderful people and are featured in the IMAX movie Bears. Chris gave the briefing on bears, bear behavior, and good human behavior when around bears while Ken prepared their de Havilland DHC-3 Otter on floats. We were going out to see brown bears, which are Ursus arctos horribilis just like grizzly bears. The difference is that brown bears feed on fish and grow to be much larger than grizzly bears which mainly feed on grass and berries. Brown bears are commonly called "coastal brown bears" because they get most of their fish near the coast. However, they eat most of their berries away from the coast in the fall after the fish runs, and Ken and Chris prefer the term "brown bear." The Kodiak bear is now also officially Ursus arctos horribilis and is no longer its own subspecies (Ursus arctos middendorffi). We put on hip waders that they provided, then started boarding the Otter at 9:12. Tom Phillips, a biologist with the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary, joined us for the day. We took off at 9:23 heading east.

We made a left turn while climbing out, then headed west-southwest towards our destination just to the south of Kokhanok on Lake Iliamna. (You may view this map from the Alaska Volcano Observatory / Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys.) We left Kachemak Bay and flew over Cook Inlet where we could see Mt. Iliamna, a volcano, venting steam. We could also see Mt. Redoubt, a volcano west of Kenai, venting steam too. Ken took a serpentine path as we approached Mt. Augustine, an island volcano that was also venting some steam, so passengers on both sides of the aircraft could see it clearly.

We touched down at 10:43 on Crosswind Lake. (View map.) It's in Katmai National Preserve which forms the northern section of Katmai National Park and Preserve. It's due north of the Battle River Wilderness Retreat and northwest of the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary. It's the same lake where we landed in 2001 and I had my close encounter with Kara. (You may read more about my close encounter with Kara the brown bear in my blog entry for September 5, 2009.) The tundra didn't have as much color as usual for this time of year, and Ken said it had gone from green to the blah brown without any great color. The salmon run is also much smaller than usual this year, and the berry crop is almost non-existent, so the bears are having a hard time right now. The weather was pleasant for viewing, but the clear sky would make photography a challenge.

Shortly after we started hiking towards Moraine Creek, J and I stopped, with Chris to keep an eye on us, to photograph some willow ptarmigan. Yes, we were over there to photograph the brown bears, but we couldn't pass up some willow ptarmigan right on our way in a good location.
We caught up to the rest of the group atop a bluff overlooking the confluence of Moraine Creek and Funnel Creek. There were several bears visible, including a sow and cub (left). We kept watching and photographing the bears, and ate lunch — Clif Bars for me. The bears started to disperse as some fishermen moved into the area from upstream. They were fishing for rainbow trout that come into the streams to eat the salmon eggs. Chris took most of the group downstream to look for more bears, and Ken, J, and I stayed. The fishermen kept working their way downstream, so we left and headed downstream to look for more bears. J had developed a blister on her right heel, and we stopped so she could put an extra large Band-Aid on it.
We caught up to a sow with three cubs-of-the-year, and then got ahead of them before heading down to water level and out onto a sand bar in the middle of Moraine Creek. I had too much lens with the 500 and 1.4x tele-extender to get a nice image of the sow with all three cubs, and I didn't want to miss any of the action while taking off the 1.4x. The best image I got of the family was of just two of the cubs (left). When they got roughly perpendicular to us, the sow came into the creek to go fishing. At that point, I did take off the 1.4x tele-extender and I was able to get some full-frame face shots of her with just the 500! Unfortunately, she was a smart bear and didn't want to look into the sun, so the images aren't that interesting with her face in the shade. :(
The dominant cub was extremely cute with it's light-colored collar, and it stood up on its hind legs for quite a while. I think Ewoks are related to brown bears. The bears continued heading downstream and into the light, so we left and tried to get ahead of them again. They were moving too fast to do so, so we just watched them for a while before heading back to the airplane.

J was really dragging on the way back, and had developed a blister on her left heel too. J usually has a rule that everyone has to schlep their own stuff, but she relented after Tom Phillips kept insisting that he could carry her tripod. We reboarded the Otter at 4:00, and Ken assigned me the copilot seat for the return flight. :) Sitting up there brought back childhood memories of flying with my father who was a private pilot. We taxied around the small lake to warm up the engine, then took off at 4:26.

As we approached Homer, most of the area was covered by fog. Fortunately, the area around the airport and Beluga Lake was clear.

We touched down on Beluga Lake at 5:33. We took off our hip waders, and had a short debriefing where Chris showed us exactly where we had flown.
We returned to the RV at 6:02. I downloaded the images I took today while the water heater was getting our shower water ready. After showering, ...

I made dinner of Buitoni Three Cheese Tortellini with Archer Farms Vodka pasta sauce, and it was very tasty!

I did a quick edit of the images I took today, then processed images for a blog entry.