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King Salmon, AK → Brooks Camp → King Salmon, AK 8.0 mi (12.9 km) |
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One heck of an adventure’s kicking off, everyone!
Fourteen years into my national park quest, and I’m getting down to the nitty, the gritty, and the downright difficult! I haven’t adventured since since February, which is wild for me, but that’s because things are getting expensive! And so, in the middle of June, on the heels of the history-making nationwide No Kings Protest, I found myself landing in a place with King unmistakably in its name: King Salmon, Alaska!
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King Salmon is a tiny town, so after bursting out of the one-room baggage claim, where everyone at the front of the crowd—mostly seasonal salmon fishermen—was charged with unloading the bags from the carousel, it only took me a few minutes to walk from the terminal to the Antlers Inn and check into Apartment 12. The apartment was truly perfection, with a full living room, master bedroom, kitchen, and in-unit laundry! It was a few minutes away from all the essentials in town, from the grocery store, where a can of soup cost $5, to the Sockeye Saloon, where each dish was a good 50% more expensive than in the lower 48! In short, the Antlers Inn was a fine place to wait for news about the weather.
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And what was I waiting for? Well, King Salmon is the main jumping off point for trips bound for Aniakchak National Monument, the least visited of all the national park units! There are two reasons for this: cost (charter flights only) and weather (which can doom a trip before it begins). General wisdom says to book a buffer period of at least four days, but with only two and a half allocated, I cast my lot with the quickest email respondent of all King Salmon’s air taxis: Branch River Air Service. The moment I set down my bags, I checked in with Nanci who’d been answering my questions since March, and she told me to be ready… just not today.
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Unlike lots of other air services, Branch River had a contact named Phil who ran a fishing lodge very near to the Aniakchak caldera, and like a famous groundhog by the same name, Phil provided boots-in-the-ground prognostications for how likely a flight would be able to land in the caldera on any given day! Today, it was raining and blustery at Aniakchak, so Nanci presented me with an alternative: tag along with another group heading to Katmai National Park and get dropped off for an hour at Brooks Camp for a chance to see its famous waterfall fishing bears! It wasn’t going to be a lot of time, but by joining their group, Nanci said, I’d be saving $700! On a trip like this, any discount is worth snatching!
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I walked the mile and a half back to my apartment, swarmed by summer flies, and shortly after lunch, Nanci texted me that a van was on its way to pick me up. Ha ha, flies! I joined white-haired Mr. and Mrs. Frey on a Cessna 206, co-piloted by Ian and Michael, my first time on a float plane! We motored out onto the Naknek River, and with a roar, the single propellor took us up, up, up, into the air. The terrain was flat to the horizon, covered at first by skinny pine trees that melted into vast, pond-speckled plains. From above, the many, many lakes, ponds, and streams make the ground look so fragile, like if you stepped on it, you’d break right through and send ripples out for miles! This idea was disproven by the lone bear far below, wading through one of those ponds without a second thought of breaking through the crust!
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Ian and Michael were expert pilots, and about twenty minutes later, they turned and headed down toward the vast, glassy surface of Naknek Lake, making the smoothest-as-butter landing, the likes of which would make the most seasoned airline pilot blush! The plane motored in to the shore, using the rudders attached to the back of the floats to steer, then backed in as easily as a sedan in a shopping mall parking lot!
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I climbed down onto the float and scampered all along its length to shore, hopping off without even getting my feet wet! Once my toes touched sand, Michael told me to meet them back at this spot by 3:11. The Cessna pulled out, revved up, and took off, and I set my timer to make sure I caught the plane home from this remote spot.
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“Remote” is up for interpretation, though. While only accessible by plane or boat, Brooks Camp, named for geologist and surveyor, Alfred Hulse Brooks, is also the most visited part of Katmai National Park! Over half of the annual 30,000+ plus visitors that come to this 4-million acre park each year do so at this one spot, and now I was part of that half! I stopped off at the visitor center, right on shore, to stamp my passport and go through a crash course “Bear School” from the ranger at the counter. Because I was there for such a brief moment and wasn’t carrying any snacks, he sent me on my way much faster than usual. He warned me to hurry, because Brooks Falls was a 2.4-mile round trip, and the visitor center clock read 2:30!
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First, I’d have to cross the boardwalk over the Brooks River, secured by gates that required wrist dexterity to open, but I just climbed over! In a place so famous for its bears, the Park Service really did a thorough job developing spaces for crowds of humans to observe these top predators in the wild without either group ruining the other’s day. With more time, I could have easily loitered a few hours here just watching the river and the early salmon making their way to Brooks Lake.
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I was surprised to see a bunch of fishermen wading in the river on both sides of the boardwalk! Just to look at, it was a spectacular place to be fishing, but given the area’s famed popularity among brown bears, I’d never have imagined anyone would feel comfortable hanging out and casting lines in the hip-deep water. As it turned out, though, the mass migration was still a month away.
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So I continued my hustle down the boardwalk, past a ranger who was happy to see another traveling animal heading for the falls. Like human visitors, a fair number of us animal adventurers pass through Brooks Camp, and she said she liked guiding us along. At this moment, though, she was heading in he opposite direction and waved me on because it was already 2:45!
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Past the gates at the other end of the boardwalk, I had a short jaunt up a dirt road, past the van that normally takes folks on driving tours of the Valley of 10,000 Smokes, until I spotted the branch trail leading to the Falls, where there were no boardwalks, gates, or fences to separate me from a beaver-hungry bear. The trail sign warned all would-be hikers that the park could not guarantee anyone’s safety! I took that to heart and hustled, keeping my ears and whiskers primed for danger!
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I made it to the platform gate without incident, seeing neither a single bear nor the wolverine that had been reported in these parts recently. I passed only four people the whole way. One said she’d seen a bear slide down the bank and cross the river, but that had been hours ago. All of this was a far cry from the high season, made extra clear when I bypassed the dangling chains where folks had to wait their turn during peak bear times!
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There were two platforms for viewing the Falls at different angles, and from the farthest, the Riffles Platform, I couldn’t see any bears, just the rushing river and one very patient seagull. The waterfall itself looked way smaller than I imagined after watching years’ worth of nature documentaries about this specific spot! Maybe this was just because I was so far away.
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Nope! After navigating to the next platform overlooking the falls, the only roar I heard was that of the cataract itself. This view of the falls was unmistakable from all those documentaries, if wider and shorter than expected, and with 100% fewer bears! They’re all gradually journeying here—maybe the one I saw from the plane was heading this way—but the main event isn’t expected to peak until July. Maybe I’ll come back one day to try again, but on this day, I experienced something few visitors to Katmai have: a completely empty viewing platform, which reminded me of visiting Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park during the COVID-19 pandemic! In some ways, this was the best possible scenario, because when I checked the time next, it was already 3:02! ‘Til next time, Brooks Falls! Make some fat bears by autumn!
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My own feast awaited at the Sockeye Saloon that night, where I chatted with some of the locals, one of whom knew all about “Håfa adai” from his time in Guam! He’d come here from Hawaii, while his friend had moved here from New York with her husband to work on the Air Force base! Tomorrow’s forecast, whatever a forecast really means on the Alaskan peninsula, says sunshine, so I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll be feet-in-the-sand in Aniakchak for my 32nd birthday! I may be getting older, but I’m still hyper-excited for this adventure!
I’ll Aniak-check in tomorrow!
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Total Ground Covered: 8.0 mi (12.9 km) |
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