Alexandra Owens
March 25, 2025

Wildlife, drama, and a whole lot of fish – this is Fat Bear Summer.

“Keep close,” the guide whispers. She doesn’t have to tell us twice.

Our group of seven huddles tightly among the tidal flats of Hallo Bay in Alaska’s remote Katmai National Park as a shaggy bear meanders our way. She’s calm, purposeful, and much more interested in eating sedge grass than us, the humans 150 feet in front of her. Behind the sow, more bears fill their bellies with vegetation. Surely, these aren’t 1,000-pound predators grazing in front of me like a herd of cattle?

Scientists and travelers come to this untouched, food-rich stretch of coastline in the southwest corner of the state to observe one of the world’s densest brown bear populations. Around 2,200 individuals fish, play, mate, and do all the things happy bears do. The area is a critical stronghold for the species, which faces habitat destruction, loss of food supply, and negative human-bear interactions globally. In North America today, brown bears occupy less than half of their former range.

It’s easier to get to the park’s more popular Brooks Camp – a tamer bear-viewing location complete with designated platforms, a visitor center, and a restaurant – but Kirsten Dixon, owner of Tutka Bay Lodge, suggests the rawer Katmai experience. After a one-hour floatplane ride from the five-cabin retreat, a handful of fellow guests and I head into the bush with a naturalist. There, at eye level, the bears feel as essential and timeless as the snowcapped peaks of the Aleutian Range behind them. “You’ve removed the artificial barrier,” says Larry Aumiller, a pioneer of brown bear ecotourism in the area. “‘Intimacy’ is a good word for it.”

Tutka Bay Lodge, a 25-minute water-taxi ride from Homer.Acacia Johnson

A note to readers: Don’t try this with a random bear. Safe interactions like my group’s are possible thanks to decades of meticulous habituation and research by the likes of Aumiller, who served as camp manager at the neighboring McNeil River State Game Sanctuary and Refuge for 40 years. “When I started in 1976, there were no formal bear-watching programs in the state,” he says. Aumiller and his colleagues sparked a new era for brown bears in Alaska, helping them become valued as far more than mere hunting trophies.

Today, the guidelines are simple: Go in a group. Stay together. Be alert. Make noise to warn bears of your approach. Always listen to your guide. Never run or make sudden movements. While approaching a bear within 50 yards is prohibited, the animals occasionally need a gentle reminder of the rules. Our guide stands up and raises her voice to reinforce boundaries as the sow concludes her meal and ambles off, giving us the stink eye.

“Bears are extremely intelligent animals, so if people learn to behave predictably, then bears learn that they can behave in predictable ways around us,” says naturalist and former National Park Service ranger Mike Fitz. “It’s a two-way street.”

Interest in Katmai has surged exponentially in recent years, thanks in part to the social media phenomenon that is Fat Bear Week. During the single-elimination tournament held every October, fans vote online for the chunky bear that’s packed on the most pounds to prepare for winter hibernation. Created by Fitz, the annual contest also educates the public about bear behavior and promotes conservation awareness. Any viral attention that promotes these charismatic animals as worth saving is good news.

Along with Fat Bear Week, Fitz credits the park’s webcams (run in partnership with multimedia company Explore.org), situated along the Brooks River and Brooks Falls, for boosting the bears’ popularity. Fans around the world tune in to see their favorites – including reigning champion Grazer, whom rangers estimated at 700 pounds in October 2023 – jostle for prime fishing spots and eat up to 30 salmon a day.

“The webcams get millions of views every year,” Fitz says. “I think that helps increase visits to Katmai, although that’s not their purpose. We want them to give people who can’t visit a meaningful wildlife-watching experience.”

Tutka Bay’s seven-mile fjord.Acacia Johnson

More people than ever are willing to make the journey to observe Katmai’s famous residents. According to Fitz, Brooks Camp visitor numbers have more than doubled, to 18,500, since he became a ranger in 2007. While most travelers fly in on day tours from Anchorage, the park is also accessible by boat or bush plane from smaller towns such as King Salmon, Kodiak, Dillingham, and Homer, where I am.

My home base, Tutka Bay Lodge, sits on a private cove at the mouth of a fjord and, beyond the bear access, immerses guests in the beauty of the Alaskan backcountry. My cabin is cozy, but I spend most of my time outside: tide pooling, listening to birdsong among the swaying Sitka spruce, and forest bathing with the lodge’s wellness director. According to Dixon, a passionate advocate for the great outdoors and everything it has to teach us, I have the right idea. “We want our guests to experience the natural world,” she says. “Our hope is that, through our work, we’re encouraging them to preserve and protect wild places.”

During my time at Tutka, Dixon and her team send me on a marine safari in pursuit of orcas, puffins, and sea otters. I learn how to forage for seaweed and use it to make tamales with one of the kitchen’s talented chefs. I even don a semi-dry suit and snorkel among a cathedral of kelp and anemone-covered rocks.

On the hunt for salmon in Katmai National Park’s Moraine Creek.Acacia Johnson

And, of course, there are the bears. Going off the beaten path in Katmai has practical advantages too: While Brooks Camp is most popular in July and September, with the greatest peaks in bear activity along the river where they fish for salmon, other parts of Katmai provide a less crowded alternative and remain active when the salmon runs quiet. Fitz recommends coming in June for mating season, or at the end of the summer to spy those fat, photogenic bears. But as a general rule, if the bears are out of their dens, it’s a good time to go.

“You have an opportunity to see these animals as individuals rather than anonymous creatures,” Fitz says. “That helps us to better understand their needs and their world.”

His words resonate as I watch a harried sow usher her two cubs across the coastal sand, sniffing the air for potential danger. After they make safe passage onto the cliffs, a male bear emerges (males are known to kill cubs that aren’t their own), thrown off their trail. Emotionally invested in the little family’s fate, I shake off the tension – and hope that they’ll find shelter in Katmai for years to come.

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2025 issue of Virtuoso, The Magazine (U.S./Canada edition).