Our expedition to Katmai National Park (Alaska), August 2001
grizzly bears galore!!

First, to set the stage...some of you may recall a one-day floatplane ride to Katmai that we took last year while we were in Alaska. We had a tremendous afternoon with the bears that day, and it whetted our appetites to spend some lengthy quality time in Katmai National Park. We did our research, located the right ecotour operator, and after waiting impatiently for months we headed off on our magnificent adventure in late August.

Katmai National Park is remote, unroaded, and accessible only by floatplane or boat. It's located on the long Alaskan peninsula that sweeps out into the Bering sea, and is best known through the world-famous McNeil River and Brooks Falls areas, where brown bears congregate for the salmon runs every year. All those famous photos of salmon leaping into the bears' mouths come from here. We wanted a more out-of-the-way trip than those two spots, and we got it. 

There isn't much to Kodiak Island. Much of the island is devoted to the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge and the famous Kodiak bears - the largest brown bears in the world. We didn't see any.

You're looking at most of the town of Kodiak - it's a small town strung along a rugged shoreline, and most of the inhabitants depend on fishing for their livelihoods.
 

Kodiak Island harbor

I love flying in Alaska. We had a low ceiling and rain when we left, so the gorgeous old Beaver spent most of the flight around 250 feet or so. I was counting bald eagles and sea otters as we passed over the many Kodiak inlets and then headed across Shelikof Strait. We found our boat in a bay along the Katmai coast, whisked ourselves and our gear into the skiff from the boat, and began our adventure.

The orange Beaver

Fortunately, the old converted tugboat we were living on had a nice, hot engine room where the mighty diesel powerplant and the generator thundered away, and gear that got wet during our excursions could be left overnight to emerge as if from the dryer.
 

The next morning the rain had let up, and we were lucky to spend a couple hours with a female bear that was wonderfully adept at catching fish. No lunging and splashing about, or other energy-wasting heroics - she just waded into the river and, seemingly without effort, stuck her head under to emerge with a salmon time and time again.

Each time she caught a fish she would disappear into the steep woods bordering the river. After a while, when she was comfortable with our presence across the river, we learned why.

When she reemerged after having gone into the woods with her sixth or seventh catch, 3 spring cubs followed her out. These goofy little guys followed her around as she tried - patiently - to go about her business, though the cubs were purely a hindrance in this.

Finally, she caught a gigantic dog salmon - at least 30 inches long - and disappeared back into the woods, as usual. The cubs, who had been bumbling around on the gravel bar, didn't notice her departure - and when they saw that she was gone they immediately clustered together for comfort, taking turns standing up, looking at us, looking for her, and generally looking worried.

They finally trooped back the way they had come and disappeared into the woods after her.
 

Fishin' mama

...and the reason why mama's fishing

 
Bear boat

Here's a classic - our boat anchored in the Geographic bay, with a brown bear out on the newly-exposed tidal mud, fish in mouth.

Our next stop was one we called simply "The Waterfall". Each of the locations we traveled to was a secret place that the skipper had visited previously and found bears. We were among the very lucky very few who have ever been to these magic spots. "The waterfall" proved a windfall for us.
 

Where are those damn salmon??

We had many, many opportunities for great shots; the bears usually walked right by us to forage in the cascade. At one point the female in the upper left photo caught a fish, took it up on the bank behind us to eat it, and then started back towards the stream. Her path brought her perching up on top of the boulder at whose base Paul was sitting, just a few feet down from her. She paused as if she had forgotten we were there, was now reminded, and walked a few yards upstream to get back into the water.  We, of course, were delighted.

Severe clear - skiff at dawn 

The weather was also steadily improving, so our light and our shots just got better and better. 

Bear spray
 

There's more, of course, but I'd probably end up overwhelming all of you with the download times for more photos. A few tidbits from the rest of the trip:

• Standing in a stream filming a bear charging after a fish...straight towards me. Needless to say, this made for some dramatic sequences! I am sure there's at least one painting I'll do just from that experience

• Watching two young bears practicing "catch-and-release" fishing - they were just so full that they would catch a fish, pinch it with their mouths to see if it had eggs, then drop it...especially when another salmon went by. We were walking downstream behind a screen of reeds when one of these bears burst from a channel on the other side of the reeds and caught a fish just a few yards away. He paid us exactly zero attention.

• At one point I saw Paul pick up his tripod and move it in order to get it out of the way of a bear chasing a fish.

This was the trip of a lifetime. I will be painting from this reference material for the rest of my career.