Other Resources

Katmai National Park on the National Parks Service website - NPS.gov

Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes - Ranger Guided Tours - NPS.gov

Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes - Tour - Katmailand Website

Katmai National Park

Katmai National Park is known throughout the world for its bears gorging on salmon at Brooks Falls. It's not an easy place to get to but worth the trouble.

Alaska

2015

About The Park

Alaska has eight national parks; two can be reached via paved road, one via dirt road and five don’t have any road into them and must be accessed via small planes. Katmai is one of those parks. To get there you have to take a flight from Anchorage into the town of King Salmon and from there you take a seaplane to Brooks Camp.

The flight from Anchorage is about an hour-and-a-half and the plane held around 50 people. The seaplane trip to Brooks Camp took about 25 minutes and held nine passengers.

Katmai is world famous for the brown bears that congregate at Brooks Falls when the sockeye salmon run in July. There’s been many nature shows with people sitting on lawn chairs on the banks of the Brooks River with 15 or 20 brown bears fishing for salmon just a few dozen feet away in Brooks Falls. While the bears seem to show little interest in the people so close by, the National Park Service built a viewing platform on the edge of the river to keep the people safe. It’s accessed by a long ramp with a double set of heavy gates to keep the bears from wandering up it.

Grizzly bears are a subspecies of Brown bear and the differences between them are not well defined. They call the ones that live in the coastal areas Brown bears and the ones that live inland Grizzly bears. These differences mostly matter to scientists and referring to either of them as grizzlies is common.

The coastal brown bears, with access to the bountiful salmon runs, tend to be significantly larger than the inland grizzly bears. The coastal brown bears can be upwards of 800 pounds while the grizzlies are more likely to top out at around 500 pounds. In either case it’s still a large fearsome creature when you meet one in the wild.

I had to make a choice as to whether I wanted to see polar bears in Kaktovik, Alaska, the best time for that being the beginning of September, or the height of the bear feeding season at Brooks Falls in July. I chose to see the polar bears knowing that I would still get to see plenty of grizzlies at Brooks Camp.

Katmai was first designated as a national monument in 1918 after a huge volcanic eruption that was ten times the size of the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980. The eruption took place in 1912 which, due to the remoteness and a lack of civilization, was little noticed by the outside world. It certainly was noticed by the local native tribes. It is believed to be the third-largest volcanic eruption in recorded history.

It left in its wake an area now called the Valley of 10,000 Smokes which is a 40 square-mile ash field between 100 and 700 feet deep. There’s a seven hour ranger-guided bus tour to the valley which leaves from Brooks Camp. After lunch at the Overlook Cabin there is an optional 3½ mile hike down to the valley floor. It’s a moderate to strenuous hike, with a 1,000 foot elevation change, and a very worthwhile experience if you can do it.

Reservations are highly recommended for this tour. There is a link at the bottom of the page to the tour operator’s website (Katmailand). The other Valley of the Smokes links are on the National Parks Service website and will inform you about the Valley’s history and other hiking destinations in the Valley available to back country hikers.

On the trip out to the Valley we did catch a glimpse of a lynx that crossed the road and went into the forest. It was a rare treat and over too fast to get a photo.

The Valley is quite a sight. It’s a place of walls of ash cut by rivers cutting through it. It got its name because the ash from the volcanic eruption took decades to fully cool and smoke columns arose from ash hotspots for many years after the volcanic eruption.

While the greatest number of bears come to the salmon run in July there are always bears in the area. They’re pretty used to people and basically ignore you. Of course if you invade any animal’s space that’s a potentially dangerous situation. That being said no tourists have ever been killed by bears at Brooks Camp. At the visitor center they give talks on bear etiquette and bear safety and it is advisable to attend one.

And over the three days that we were there we saw bears in a number of places. One that we saw while we were out at the viewing platform at Brooks Falls, according to the ranger, was about 800 pounds and was known to the rangers as ‘Lurch’. He was missing part of an ear as a result of a fight with another bear. The others that we saw were typically down by the beach at the edge of Brooks Camp and another fishing in a lake that we could see from the porch of our cabin.

There was one sleeping on the beach and two rangers had the unenviable job of rousting him from his slumber to send him on his way. They were worried that his presence might attract a small crowd and that could present a problem.

Bears tend not to like people and will avoid them if they know they’re there. We have run into them on the trail about a dozen times and never had a problem.

The problem is if you surprise a bear the bear may feel threatened and attack. And a bear with cubs can be even more dangerous. Of course every bear is different; some are naturally timid while others may have a more aggressive nature. The bears in Katmai, and in general in the South of Alaska where the salmon are plentiful, have plenty to eat and people are not seen as a food source. Further north where food is scarce running into a bear in the wild can be a lot more dangerous. At Brooks Camp the bears are well fed, quite used to people and have very little interest in them.

Wildlife

Brown bears, moose, snowshoe hare, timber wolf, coyote, beaver, weasel, fox, porcupine and marten. Caribou may be seen in winter.

Along the coastal areas of the park there’s seals, sea lions, otters, beluga whales, killer whales and gray whales. The coastal areas are a long way from Brooks Camp and the national parks tourist is not likely to get to these remote areas.

As with so many national parks they are mostly backcountry wilderness that tourists never get to experience. Alaska’s national parks total about 40,000,000 acres. A fraction of 1% of that is all that is visited by over 99% of the visitors.

Lodging

Brooks Camp Cabins

The only lodging options are cabins that sleep up to four at Brooks Camp and camping out.

The cabins are spartan but adequate. The plumbing is indoors. There is no cell phone service, radio or TV. I believe there may have been some limited internet service at the visitor center. Meals are taken at the dining hall which serves buffet style meals at set times.

Lodging at Brooks Camp is provided by Katmailad Inc and includes airfare and taxes. In 2015, 4 nights cost $3,560 for 2 people in a cabin with two sets of bunk beds (you can see a picture in the photo gallery). The buffet meals were not included and are paid for at meal times. You probably will not be able to bring your own food because you are limited as to the weight of the baggage that each person can bring on the 9-passenger seaplane. We were aware of this and packed what we would need in carry-on bags and backpacks before leaving Anchorage. As is typical on small planes they weigh everything and seat you according to weight. I believe that they checked our larger luggage bags in King Salmon before boarding the seaplane (or our Anchorage hotel held them for us).

Katmailand does have one day tours from Anchorage to King Salmon and on to Brooks Camp. This would be a long day as they attempt to maximize your time at Brooks Camp to see the bears. This would also be an option for those who plan to camp at Brooks.

The camp ground at Brooks can accommodate about 60 people. Demand from late June to September (best bear viewing season) is extremely high and reservations fill up sometimes within hours of the opening of the reservation period. There’s a link below that you’ll want to check out if you plan to camp at Brooks.

Grosvenor Lodge

The Grosvenor Lodge is a bit further out from Brooks and primarily serves fisherman. It is limited to 6 guests at a time and starts at $3,000 per person for a 3-day, 3-night stay.

There are other lodges out in the wilderness that mostly cater to hunters and fishermen. They, too, are accessed either by floatplane or boat.

Hiking

From Brooks Camp there aren’t a lot of day hiking trails. For most people the 1.2 mile one-way trip from the visitor center to the viewing platform at Brooks Falls is enough of a daily hike. Especially if you do it twice in one day. It’s not uncommon to encounter bears crossing the trail ahead of you on their way to the river and that can be thrilling and a bit unnerving.

Dumpling Mountain Trail

This is about a 3-mile round-trip out-and-back hike to the top of Dumpling Mountain. From the top you get beautiful views of Lake Brooks, the much larger Naknek Lake and the Brooks River. The trail climbs about 800 feet and is considered moderate to strenuous but more to the moderate side. This was a nice trail especially once it left the woods and you were more out in the open. With bears wandering around the Brooks Camp area we did have them on our mind so we were happy to meet another couple at the trailhead who were equally happy to hike with us.

Katmai National Park Photo Gallery

Picture of a panoramic view of the mountains in Alaska's Katmai National Park

Other National Parks Within a Day’s Journey

Alaska is America’s largest state. It has eight national parks. Of these there are five which have no roads into them and require bush planes to get to them.

From Katmai, if you can get an early flight back from Katmai to Anchorage, you could get to either Denali National Park or Kenai Fjords National Park that same day.

Kenai Fjords National Park with its tidewater glaciers and amazing sea life is 127 miles to the south and about a 2.5 hour drive.

Denali National Park known for its magnificent wildlife and gorgeous scenery is 236 miles north and about a 3.5 hour drive.

Lake Clark National Park with its beautiful blue lake would require flying another bush flight out of Anchorage to get there. This would probably best be done after spending the night in Anchorage.
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Updated 02/11/23 7:04 PM

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