Bear Tour in Alaska (2023)
I set aside my nervousness about flying in small planes for the opportunity to visit Lake Clark National Park in southwest Alaska and photograph its coastal brown grizzly bears. The tour operator smoothly landed his Cessna plane right on the sandy beach, far away from civilization. We donned hip waders, which allowed us the freedom to walk in the shallow water and hike in the thick mud of the grassy marshland. The main rule for viewing bears in this protected wilderness is that you keep a minimum 50-foot distance from them, unless the bears come to you…and boy did they!
The Beach Family
Our first encounter was a mama bear and her two cubs walking along the beach, venturing into the shallow waters digging for clams. Her two cubs followed along, occasionally glancing up in curiosity at our group. By wearing hip waders, we were able to walk out into the water and view the bears with a gorgeous landscape behind them.
The Marsh Family
Just over the hill from the beach is a large grassy and muddy marshland. We spent time slowly following a completely different bear family than the one on the beach.
This mama bear was anything but a helicopter parent, as her cubs bravely approached our group multiple times, coming in as close as approximately 20 feet away. These fearless cubs snacked on grasses, rolled around to scratch their backs, wrestled with each other, and played king of the hill on a tree stump — they put on quite a show for us.
At one point, Mama bear brought her cubs nearby to nurse them - it was surprisingly loud! They were SO close to us, but alas, we did not have a good view because of the high grasses.
Our time with this bear family was the highlight of the tour!
Even more bears!
Although I personally could have happily spent all day with the highly entertaining bear cubs, we pushed forward on our exploration and came across a few other bears. In one instance, a frisky visiting male bear tried to chase down a resident female bear who was not too impressed with his moves. She ran away and looked back proudly at us once the male bear gave up on his advances.