Fear and Loathing in Katmai

The Brooks River is a meandering 1.5-mile cut-bank waterway, a minor sinew draining from Lake Brooks to the south and flowing into the much larger Naknek Lake, which finds its headwaters nearly fifty miles to the west in Alaska’s famed Bristol Bay. It is this path that millions of spawning salmon reverse each summer, swimming against the current, returning from the ocean to procreate and then complete nature’s most noble death in the precise places in which they were born. By July the salmon are flooding mercilessly from the ocean into the Naknek River, hugging the shores of Naknek Lake in waves, cramming into the narrowing mouth of the Brooks River and congregating finally, inevitably at Brooks Falls where they huddle impatiently like New Yorkers log jammed at the base of a subway staircase.

It is here, slowed by the height of the falls, that the salmon arrive to toil anxiously with dozens of hungry brown bears.

Overlooking this life-and-death struggle at Brooks Falls is an elevated wooden platform allowing visitors to observe bears as if in a zoo. The National Park Service constructed a network of platforms and decking near the popular Brooks Falls in the early 1980’s as visitor traffic began to surge. It was built to strategically control the flow of people in the natural world, yet it also serves as a microcosm of the development vs. nature conflict that in many ways has come to define Alaska in the modern age. Even as we trekked through Brooks Camp a debate was raging over the National Park Service’s plans to replace a 300-foot floating bridge across a lower section of Brooks River. The floating bridge had become a hot spot for lengthy and inconvenient bear jams. The proposed new raised structure would put two permanent 800-square-foot platforms on either side of the river and allow people to move more seamlessly to and from Brooks Falls. Opponents argued that the structure was an impediment to the natural habitat of the bears, just another example of the forces of money and politics chipping away at the real Alaska, they claimed. It’s a conflict that symbolizes just what a grand riddle Alaska has presented to humanity. Ever since explorers, pioneers and native peoples began etching footprints into Alaska’s unfathomable sprawl, pushing out into its storm-ravaged shores, its bear-infested woods, its roadless untouched frontiers, its forbidding arctic territories or its punishing high mountains, there has been but one simple question: How do we solve this place? 

As I stood inside the campground staring at three flimsy electrified wires, it struck me that the answer is almost always inadequate.

We left the security of the campground and John again lowered his head and charged down the narrow trail ahead of us, his hands slapping the air with each step. With every blind twist I cringed, certain that we would be eye-to-eye with a towering brown bear at any moment. John never broke stride, strolling casually around trees, breezing past steaming piles of bear excrement and giant impressions in the brush where massive animals had clearly paused to sleep. Along the way, John pointed out a spot where on a previous trip he had to quickly jump off the trail to avoid two adolescent bears running towards him, evidently chasing one another. “That was pretty fun,” he said.

“Well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen to us, right Brad,” Sue said. While every logical bone in my body wanted to agree, my feeling was that I could only go so far with Sue on this shared sense of fear. Something in her tone made me feel like a fraud. Here I had been living in Alaska for nearly two decades and she was an east coast city-dweller, a visitor, an outsider. How could she see me as an ally?

“Right, yeah. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen,” I mumbled as we continued behind John.

But in reality, I wasn’t an expert in Alaska’s backcountry. I spent the majority of recent years inside an undecorated office at the Anchorage-based television station where I worked as a marketing manager. When our local news reporters and camera crews traveled into the depths of Alaska, I was the guy who wrote the “teases” for their adventuresome stories. And Brooks Camp was the exact type of place I regularly pretended to know all about. It may seem like a simple walk in the woods, until you come face to face with a fearsome predator, I might have written about a reporter’s walk through the forests of Brooks Camp. See the gory details TONIGHT at 10!

Yet here I was, trudging through the forests of Katmai National Park, seeing it all in something much sharper than high definition. As we approached the viewing platform above Brooks Falls the baritone rumble of rushing water was punctured with an unsettling dissonance: The harsh, almost prehistoric, echoes of guttural huffing and barking. We stepped onto the safety of the raised platform, crested the stairs and the river came dramatically into view. My attention was immediately drawn to the source of the barking, an alarming specimen—a hulking brown bear, shoulder-deep in the river, engaged in a shouting match with another equally impressive creature, who seemed interested only in occupying the same fishing spot.

We’d turned a corner and abruptly entered a three-act drama, unfolding on the grand stage of Brooks River. And the cast was, quite simply, exquisite. The soundtrack too was something to behold—wind rustling through birch leaves, the low growl of water tumbling over the rocks, seagulls fluting erratically along the banks, a lone bald eagle trumpeting a staccato screech from a high perch and the hushed whispered tones of humans, spellbound on the small platform underneath a slow drizzle. And, of course, the unmistakable chest-rattling bark of our show-stopping stars. Here they were, standing center stage in the onrushing river, warring with each another one moment and dipping their heads into the water the next, only to emerge ever so casually with a writhing salmon in their jaws.

Whether we were witnessing a comedy or a tragedy was a matter of perspective.     

The bears—ten of them scattered like confetti across the river—were even larger than I’d envisioned, the size of smart cars it seemed. From a distance I was surprised to see their movements so dog-like. Each one was submerged partially in the water, yet still appearing to bulge with muscle, like a heavyweight boxer poised for the ring. Their close-cropped fur was a brindled gradient of chocolate brown and platinum blond, feathered by the drizzling rain. Their large round heads hung low and looked as heavy as truck tires. Narrow eyes bore piercing dark holes above a snout that surged forward, occasionally revealing a snarl of jagged white teeth. It was all so appropriately Alaskan—like a postcard sprung to life, only more dazzling and real and unpredictable.

The small crowd of visitors gathered on the platform was pure animal paparazzi, cameras poised for the slightest hint of movement from these gargantuan creatures. When an underweight adolescent male effortlessly skipped up an eight-foot rock outcropping and posed atop the waterfall the crowd erupted into a dissonant mess of camera clicks and raspy inhales. It was a commotion, it occurred to me, more commonly associated with Hollywood red carpets than any remote Alaskan wilderness.

One thing was abundantly clear: There were a lot of salmon here. An incomprehensible number. Hundreds, maybe thousands jumping, literally every minute, out of the water and into the rushing falls. Each one leaping with its mouth agape, its eyes wide, its body twisting through the air, with facial expressions that could only be interpreted as grave concern. It was hard not to root for them. I wondered—should their brains be capable of rational thought—if the salmon even knew what menace awaited them as they leapt out of the water. Or was the sudden emergence of a burly brown bear and the abrupt clench of an unforgiving jaw an impossibility they never could’ve imagined?

Early on a ranger told us that bears in Brooks River will eat upwards of thirty salmon per day as they fatten up for hibernation during winter. But it wasn’t conveyed that there was a complex menu of fishing styles as well. The most popular was the simple dip of the head into the river—effective enough, so it appeared. A different technique involved the bear pinning its prey to the river bottom with a timely flick of the paw—a wave of concentration flashing across the bear’s face—before raising the salmon up, dangling, impaled on a single claw.

There was the strategy of standing at the top of the falls letting salmon jump directly into open jaws. But a clean catch seemed a rare occurrence, and invariably a secondary technique would have to be deployed. We watched a very cautious sow with two cubs foraging for fish carcasses floating toward the banks—unwilling to leave her young alone for fear they would be killed and eaten by a boar. Yet another bear prowled shallow pools before running, lunging and splashing down into the water, although it was unclear whether this was a fishing tactic or simply a wild bear having fun. 

Beyond the varied fishing styles, there seemed just as many ways to eat a salmon. Most went straight for the meaty parts—tearing into those bright red filets that, back in Anchorage, might run me more than $26-dollars for a serving the size of a deck of cards. I noticed one plump bear snagging salmon and deftly using his teeth to strip the skin from their still-living bodies in the same nonchalant way that one might peel the plastic off a Snickers bar. Another bear nearby was biting the heads off of the salmon and coolly discarding the carcasses. Both styles were a behavior, I learned, called high-grading which reflects a preference for high-quality fats like those found in a salmon’s brains or skin. It was one of those delightful truths found in the animal kingdom, and at the time I recall briefly thinking: Just how did the bears manage to figure THAT out? And without use of the internet?

This was survival disguised as gluttony.

Suddenly emerging from the brush across the river I saw a dark round mass lumbering out into the water. “Look! I think that’s bear 747,” someone whispered as if Bono had just emerged from his dressing room. He was the largest bear we’d seen, built low and wide like a four-wheeler.