Katmai Bear Trip, part 2

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We continued snapping away at the huge, beautiful, blonde female bear on the beach at Hallo Bay.

When oddly enough, in a national park of almost 4 million acres, we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a 4 person BBC film crew. They were filming a documentary for the BBC and Discovery Channel. The special will be called, "The Great Bear Stakeout" and it is set to air later this year. Who knows- we may make the final cut and be on film. The host, Chris Morgan, is someone you might not know by name but will recognize from several documentaries he has made in the past for PBS, Nature, and others. He had a great show, The Bears of the Last Frontier, in which he traveled across Alaska on a motorcycle and filmed all 3 types of bears.

 He seemed like a really nice fellow and was genuinely delighted that we knew of his work and were fans. As the clouds began to roll in, we decided to trek across the meadow in search of a big male bear we had spotted as we landed. For those of you that have seen the movie, Grizzly Man, or are familiar with Timothy Treadwell, this meadow is also known as The Grizzly Sanctuary. As we crossed many creeks and rivers in the Grizzly Sanctuary, we were so astounded by the rawness and beauty in which we found ourselves that it didn't really matter if we caught up to the other bear or not. Thankfully, we did get very close to a male brown bear. Our guide estimated this huge bear to be about 9 feet tall and weigh about 900 lb. It really made you feel small to be in such a wide open space near such a gigantic and wonderful creature.

We found that he was not interested in us in the slightest as he was following a massive female. She probably weighed 100 lbs more than the female on the beach. This bear had a massive head.




 At one point, the male bear flopped down in the river to cool off.

This is when we were at our closest to this mammoth beast. As we tried to cross the river side by side with this bear, the current nearly swept us off our feet! Yet this strong current did not faze this big guy in the least.

 We all made it across and he continued on to a meadow where his prize was grazing. We watched in awe at these 2 creatures until our time ran out.

 The tide would soon be returning to the beach and we had to hike back to the plane for our ride back to Homer.