Right place, wrong attitude I stood on the walkway over Steep Creek, in the shadow of the Mendenhall Glacier. A popular spot for Juneau locals and visitors alike. This late summer afternoon, sockeye salmon finned in the clear shallows, flashing their deep red spawning colors; a bald eagle perched in a spruce, framed by the autumn-tinged slopes of Mount McGinnis: the whole scene a giant, living postcard. I gazed out, feeling my pulse and breathing slow to match my surroundings. An incoming clump-clump of footsteps signaled an end to my moment alone. No big shock. After all, the bus-packed parking lot for the Glacier Visitor Center lay just a hundred yards away. Amazing, I told myself, that this little chunk of country could absorb so much traffic, day in and out, and stay this good. “Where are the bears?” A New Jersey voice in the crowd demanded. “They said…
Bears are creatures of habit, and create trails through Alaska visible as ruts in the earth and marked by scents along the route.
The bears noticed our absence during the pandemic and took the opportunity to throw a party, with some bruins behaving better than others.
Adventure Medical Kits offers a wide variety of ready-made first aid kits targeted to different pursuits and scenarios.
Nick Jans encountered more bears than usual during his three week stay at home out the Haines Highway. And he wasn’t alone.
The Cross-Admiralty Island Canoe Route is a 32-mile hike and paddle across lakes and trails from from Mole Harbor to Angoon.
A wild brown bear forced its way into the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage and killed a 16-year-old alpaca named Caesar.
Alaska’s Senior Editor saw 17 bears at Brooks Falls when she was one of the first visitors to Katmai National Park when it reopened in early August 2020.
Nick Jans shares tales of caribou soup, moose nose, fermented walrus flipper, and other Eskimo foods he’s encountered through years of Inupiaq hospitality.
An adult female bear peers through a dense thicket of cow parsnip. During the summer months, Kodiak turns a lush, vibrant green as thick vegetation carpets the island. Kodiak bears balance their diet with a variety of plants, including grass. Photo by Lisa Hupp. With 1.9-million acres to wander and no portion more than 15 miles from the Pacific, Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge includes some of the most diverse habitat on the planet, covering the southern two-thirds of Kodiak Island, all of Ban and Uganik islands, and a section of Afognak Island. Though notorious for its famed denizen, the Kodiak brown bear, a genetically distinct subspecies of browns/grizzlies, the refuge protects more than just big bruins. Consider that among the lush fjords, valleys, wetlands, and 4,000-foot peaks, more than 1,000 pairs of nesting bald eagles claim the area as their home, along with 250 species of migrating or breeding fish,…