Best day ever.
I have lived in Homer, Alaska since 1985, so I’ve seen more than my fair share of breathtaking scenery and impressive wildlife, however, I have never seen anything like the views and the bears I saw yesterday when I went on the Brooks Falls trip with Emerald Air Service.
It started with a jaw-dropping scenic flight in the spacious Otter, with our skilled and knowledgeable pilot, Mark. We flew over Douglas Volcano, saw crater lakes and hanging glaciers, while learning about the natural history of the area and then, after an hour and a half, we landed at Brooks Camp.
After bear safety school, where we learned more about the Katmai bears, we hiked to the viewing platforms and on the hike, we had our first close encounter with a grizzly. It lumbered past us, an adolescent male, maybe two years old, its coat a shiny, healthy merle and its ears fuzzy round like a teddy bear. The look in its eyes, however, was no cuddly gaze. This bear was wild. Under the calm guidance of our capable pilot, we stepped into the woods off-trail, remained safe, and saw this bear close enough to smell him. Fish feasts and sun-drenched fur. Grizzly bears were everywhere then—meandering, sniffing, fishing, lounging, caring for their cubs.
With Emerald Air, we got five full hours on the ground at Katmai, which is enough time for at least two visits to the platform at Brooks Falls, where the fattest bears dive and snorkel and scoop for salmon, where mother bears usher their tiny cubs up trees to safety, where lean bears steal salmon from fishermen, where the grizzlies are living their best bear lives, and our presence on the platform doesn’t disturb them in the least.
It is another world out there and the five hours with Emerald Air are more than enough time to be immersed in it, to get to know the demeanors of individual bears—their fishing styles, their parenting styles, what turns them on, what makes them tick.
The journey didn’t end at the end of the day, however, for once again we were treated to another hour and a half scenic flight back to Homer, where we spotted dozens of grizzlies fishing for the thousands of bright red sockeye salmon that were swimming upriver to spawn. And then we flew through the steam rising from the active volcanos of the Ring of Fire, back to Homer, where the rad staff at Emerald Air greeted us with fresh-baked cookies.
Best day ever.
As a Homer local, I’m spoiled to have seen plenty of big wild animals and mountains up close, however I have never in my life had a day that was quite like this.
Alaska is a once-in-a-lifetime trip if you don’t live here, but the Brooks Falls trip with Emerald Air Service is a once-in-a-lifetime trip even for those of us who do.