Alaska possesses more than half of America’s national park lands with 17 national park units, 8 of which are designated national parks (green on the map), and 16 national wildlife refuges.

I had only spent time in one of them, Denali, until I had the opportunity to visit both Kenai Fjords and Lake Clark National Parks (arrows on map) during a Max Waugh Photography tour last September. The primary focus of this trip was to photograph Alaskan Peninsula Brown Bears (Lake Clark) as they prepared for winter hibernation with a secondary interest in viewing scenery and ocean wildlife (Kenai Fjords).

Click images if you want to enlarge them.

My trip began by flying to Anchorage where I met up with the rest of our small group of five photographers and professional photographer/tour leader Max.

Our day on the water took us south through Resurrection Bay viewing scenery, wildlife and eating lunch at the base of a massive glacier after which we turned around retracing our route. Along the way, we saw a lot of interesting rock formations, sea caves and waterfalls. The day started out gray with fairly high cloud cover and deteriorated, until eventually, the clouds dropped, and we were in a constant rain.

A glacier is a downhill moving, frozen river of ice. Glaciers begin to form when snowfall in an area, year-after-year, far exceeds the melting that can occur in summer. As the snow continues to accumulate, its weight compresses the snow into ice. These rivers of ice are so heavy that gravity pulls them downhill as they grind out the land beneath them.

This glacier is blue because the ice is very dense. As glacial ice compresses, it forces out the pockets of air between the ice crystals. When there is little air in the ice, it absorbs all the other colors of the visible spectrum while reflecting blue light. Since we see only the colors that are reflected from an object, it appears blue. When glacial ice is white, there are many air bubbles still present in the ice.

We had hoped to see and hear the glacier calve, but that did not happen for us. The bay in front of the glacier was filled with small icebergs and large chunks of ice which were being used as resting places for harbor seals and gulls.

Kenai Fjords National Park is home to a wide variety of wildlife including water-dwelling mammals such as orcas and other migrating whales, Stellar sea lions, harbor seals, Dall’s porpoises and sea otters; birds such as gulls, bald eagles and puffins; and terrestrial mammals such as mountain goats and bears. We were lucky to encounter a variety of these animals.

These are substantial animals with females weighing up to 800 pounds and the larger males up to 2,500 pounds. How do these animals that are designed for swimming manage to get to the tops of these huge rocks?

Sea lions have a flexible pelvic girdle that allows them to rotate their hind flippers beneath their bodies so they can move on land like clumsy four-legged animals. They are relatively mobile and able to climb.

Both seals and sea lions are superb swimmers. Sea lions use their large front flippers for propulsion while seals use their hind flippers in a side-to-side motion.

My favorite of the marine mammals is the sea otter. Northern sea otters are the subspecies that live off the coast of Alaska typically floating about where there are submerged forests of kelp. Although they are the largest member of the mustelid or weasel family, they are the smallest of the marine mammals, averaging 4-feet in length and weighing 65 pounds. In contrast to other marine mammals, sea otters do not have a thick blubber, or fat, insulating layer.

So how do they keep warm in frigid northern waters?

Dense fur is, however, not enough to keep them warm. Sea otters groom air bubbles into their fur which provide extra insulation and keep their skin dry from heat robbing water. About 10% of an otter’s daily activity is spent maintaining this layer of trapped air. The heat-generating metabolic rate of these otters, when resting, is three times greater than other mammals of similar size. To fuel this high rate of metabolism, sea otters have to eat more than 20% of their body mass daily in contrast to humans who only need to eat about 2% of their body mass.

Sea otters spend their resting time floating on their backs. They prefer kelp forest habitats where they can anchor themselves to the kelp while sleeping.

Infant fur is so dense that a pup is incapable of diving under water until it transitions to adult fur. This is useful to the pup’s mother who can leave it floating on the surface while she dives to forage for food.

In addition to marine mammals, we saw many gulls, a few bald eagles and a couple mountain goats in high places. Unfortunately, our naturalist guide told us that the puffins had left for their winter at sea about a week earlier so I did not get to see what was one of my desired targets. I have never seen a puffin in the wild.

We had seen no porpoises or whales until we stumbled onto a small pod of orcas or “killer whales”. They are termed killer whales because they are carnivores in contrast to other types of whales and are actually the largest member if the dolphin family. Unfortunately, they did not breach for us, but it was still fun to see them despite trying to photograph them in the pouring rain.

The next morning we were off before dawn for Anchorage and our charter, small plane flight to Lake Clark National Park.

The scenery from the plane on the flight was spectacular, especially with the fall colors.

The cabins were very comfortable, and the meals served in the dining hall were excellent.

A Little About Bears

There are three species of bears found in North America, the American Black Bear (Ursus americanus), the Brown Bear (Ursus arctos) and the Polar Bear (Ursus maritimus).

As you can see from the maps above, brown bears, in Alaska, have the largest range. They are found everywhere black bears are found plus in a range that extends further north and west. There is only a small region of Alaska where brown bears do not roam.

Using color is an unreliable way to try to differentiate between black and brown bears. Black bears come in various shades of black, white, red, gray and brown. They are the smallest of the North American bears with an average adult male weighing about 180 to 300 pounds. An average brown bear male weighs between 300 to 650 pounds.

Structural features are much more reliable species identifiers. The most notable feature differences are the profile of the face, the size of the ears, the size and color of the claws, and the presence of a hump between the shoulders on the brown bear. These differing features are adaptations that have occurred for the habitats in which they live and their life styles. Black bears tend to live in forested habitats while brown bears prefer more open environments. The shorter claws of the black bear make it possible for them to climb trees to escape danger while the long claws of brown bears make tree climbing nearly impossible.

The shoulder structure and muscle of the brown bear hump adds strength for digging and also provides power for running down prey mammals. Brown bears can run in bursts of 35 mph while the black bear tops out at about 25 mph. Running from either species is not a very good idea!

Coastal brown bears and “grizzly” bears are technically the same species (Ursus arctos horribilis) although they do display some notable differences. The brown bears of the Kodiak Archipelago (Kodiak bears) are actually a distinct subspecies (Ursus arctos middendorffi) because they have been isolated for thousands of years, basically since the last ice age, doing no interbreeding with other populations. Brown and grizzlies do on occasion interbreed.

The differences between coastal brown (generally referred to as just brown bears in Alaska) and grizzlies stem from geographic location, which influences diet, size, and behavior. Coastal bears have access to an abundant food supply rich in fatty salmon, clams, berries, and an array of vegetation whereas the bulk of the inland grizzly’s diet is vegetarian with limited or no access to marine-derived food resources. The richer diet of the coastal bears allows them to grow much larger than their grizzly counterparts. The Alaskan coastal bears can be massive, weighing up to 1,650 pounds and standing 9 feet tall. The impressive size of these bears has lead to the Fat Bear Week competition at Katmai National Park & Preserve where the public votes to choose their favorite who has impressively fattened up for winter hibernation.

It has been proposed that competition over a less abundant food supply requiring a more extensive home range for survival causes the inland grizzlies to react more aggressively to other bears (and humans). Despite their differences, coastal brown bears and grizzlies have the same distinctive body shape.

Bear viewing at Silver Salmon Creek is different from most places where people go to see the bears.

Yes, except for one day of sun, it was cold and wet most of the time we were there. Rain gear over heavy winter clothing and waterproof boots was the uniform of each day.

In the early mornings, the bears wandered on the beach. When the tide was low, they would go onto the mudflats and use their long claws to dig for razor clams. They then moved inland so, during much of the day, we hiked through meadows and wetlands following the bears as they foraged for sedge grasses and other vegetation. Unfortunately, we did not get to see them fishing as Silver Salmon Creek had a lower than normal salmon run in 2022, and it was finished.

These brown bears were impressively huge animals with serious claws and teeth, but they did not seem to care at all about our presence. We were always accompanied by a local wildlife guide who knew these bears intimately (several even had names) and was an expert in reading the behavioral nuances of them. When he told us to move, we moved! Our guide provided information about bear behavior and helped us find good photographic positions. While these bears are completely wild, they would, on occasion, walk passed us at a distance of 20-40 feet away. I would never intentionally get anywhere near that close to an inland grizzly.

Although the primary targets of this tour were brown bears, we did take one morning to look for other wildlife such as red foxes, beaver, and the elusive gray wolf.

Although we did not find a beaver, we did happen upon a trumpeter swan (white) and her cygnet (dark colored). We watched them for a while until the cygnet decided it was time to go! Mother and cygnet will stay together for the first year of the baby swan’s life.

Each morning, well before sunrise, we boarded our Alaskan taxi and headed to the beach to wait for the bears to arrive.

On our one sunny morning, we watched as one sow (named Agro) took her twin cubs on a beach walk while another bear just sat soaking up the sun.

The population of bears in the area seems to be doing well as there were several sows with current year cubs and at least one with a yearling. The cubs typically stay with their mother for at least two years. The current year cubs were quite cute. Although they were still nursing (we actually got to watch this), they were also learning how to forage for food.

Due to our ability to freely wander the territory, we were able to see many behaviors of bears that are less frequently seen in other places.

After spending five days at Silver Salmon Creek Lodge, it was time to return to the beach to board our plane for the flight back to Anchorage. We were very lucky that the dense cloud cover lifted just enough for our charter to be able to land and pick us up. It was a close call as earlier in the day there would have been no landing. The charter for another group that was scheduled to leave a few hours before had been unable to land and pick up their clients who ended up having to stay an additional day.

Our time at Silver Salmon Creek in Lake Clark National Park & Preserve was filled with fun and adventure. Despite the cold and wet, watching and photographing the bears was a wonderful experience.