Did you miss me?
For bears, it’s time to think about hibernating, but for me – I’m just emerging from my self-imposed pandemic isolation.
My photography is oriented around travel adventures, so the last nearly two years put a serious crimp in my motivation. A trip to Scotland was postponed two years in a row (now rescheduled for June 2023). I also chickened out on a trip this year to Africa where vaccination rates are still abysmal. But for a brief time this summer things were looking promising and I took advantage of that window to squeeze in an Alaskan photo workshop with our intrepid leader Denise Ippolito of A Creative Adventure Photography. Denise does all the hard organizational work and all we have to do is show up for an amazing photography oriented experience! The showing up part can be a challenge however, as you will read shortly.
My photographer sister Patty Hosmer (HoofPrints Fine Art Photo) and I traveled together to the Katmai National Park and Preserve, a four million acre wilderness in southern Alaska. Alaskan brown bears fishing for salmon were the focus of the workshop. Sharing the experience with my sister was double the fun.
Just getting to the site is a challenge in itself. From Tucson we flew on Alaska Airlines to Seattle, connecting to a flight to Anchorage where we spent the night before boarding a third flight to King Salmon, Alaska. Never heard of it? Not surprising – King Salmon is a very small airport that services commercial fishermen, cannery workers and intrepid tourists in that order.
We spent another night’s layover in a rustic apartment in King Salmon. I think we had the last available rental in this very small town and we were lucky to have been offered the chance to share it with another workshop participant. Finally we boarded our fourth and final ride aboard a DeHavilland Beaver bush plane that carried us to our week’s lodging at ATA (Alaskan Trophy Adventures) Lodge.
The pilot strapped us in, told us “don’t touch anything” and took off, leveling off a mere thousand feet or so above the terrain on the 30 mile flight to the lodge. This afforded us a terrific aerial view of the unspoiled landscape and meandering waterways that constitute part of the Bristol Bay Watershed.
Bristol Bay has been in the news for the past few years due to controversy over the construction of the Pebble Mine – a massive undertaking that would destroy the pristine environment in the watershed, and also the thriving salmon fishery – the last one surviving in the world. This past season a record 64.5 million salmon were counted during the salmon run in Bristol Bay as the fish swim upstream from the ocean to the headlands where they spawn and die, but where a new generation hatches. Permits for the mine have been on-again, off-again, but currently the project has been squelched, hopefully forever.
Alaskan brown bears are the 2nd largest species of bear on the planet behind polar bears. Genetically identical to mainland grizzlies, they are bigger because they live in an environment with bountiful food supplies. Bears are omnivores and will eat anything from grass and berries on up the food chain. They even dig up clams on Katmai’s beaches. Salmon season in late July through September is their opportunity to really pack on the pounds before disappearing for months into winter hibernation. At nearby Brooks Falls there is an annual online Fat Bear contest in which hundreds of thousands of votes are cast for the chunkiest contenders. This year’s champion was a 25 year old bear named 480 Otis, who is now a four-time winner of the contest. Otis weighs more than 1,000 pounds and his success even at his advanced age can be attributed to his technique of sitting in the falls, apparently napping, but in fact sharply alert to the prospect of any salmon headed his way for an easy catch.
Our lodge was located on the Alagnak River, a designated Wild & Scenic River. Salmon season had already peaked at our location before we arrived. The biggest, strongest bears had moved on to better fishing grounds. The bears that remained worked hard to catch the few remaining fish. Sows led their small spring cubs on what must have been exhausting treks pacing up and down the well-worn paths for miles along the riverbank. Adolescent bears were especially active and prone to frequent head-first plunges into the shallow river in often futile efforts to pin down a salmon.
We spent seven days, from 9 to 5 each and every day, cruising up and down the river in small open fishing boats that held a guide and two or three photographers. It was a bit on the chilly side but we were squished into multiple layers of clothing topped off by waterproof chest-high waders and boots, hats to keep our ears warm, and mosquito netting to protect our faces from the huge and voracious Alaskan mosquitoes! The skies were grey but somehow we never got rained on – a stroke of luck! I even managed to crack a rib trying to awkwardly exit one of the boats and instead falling flat on the shore, half in and half out of the boat, directly on top of my camera which I was trying to protect from the water.
Back ashore each evening in our rustic cabin, we peeled out of our waders, jackets, sweaters, boots, gloves and hats, and headed off to a hearty dinner in the main dining room of the lodge where we could compare bear sightings and enjoy gourmet cooking (with a heavy emphasis on salmon) and a much anticipated glass of wine. Then back to the cabin for some rushed photo processing before the generator shut down and we were subjected to a mandatory lights out.
One night we were even treated to the fringes of the largest earthquake to hit Alaska in 50 plus years – an 8.2 tremblor that struck some 250 miles away but gave the lodge a good wake-up shaking, cracking a plate glass window and tumbling waders to the floor from their wall hooks. It also did in the septic system for the ‘luxury’ lodge accommodations high on a hill, forcing those occupants to utilize an outhouse for the duration. Patty and I were obliviously happy down by the river in our cabin that featured indoor plumbing.
I took about 20,000 photographs in those seven days. My Sony a1 camera has a high-speed mode that can take 30 frames per second, which comes in handy when action is at its peak, but isn’t so much fun when it’s time to dig through the files looking for the keepers. I’ve been processing bear photographs for the past few months and posting favorites on my Facebook page. There is now a nice collection of these on my website that displays a variety of special moments in the lives of Alaskan brown bears, as well as some other Alaskan wildlife including bald eagles and a red fox that frequented our lodge for scraps. I love to capture intimate moments revealed by the behavior of wild animals as they go about their daily lives. I feel my new collection succeeds in portraying a collage of these small moments frozen in time by the camera’s lens.
Just this past weekend I finally got around to creating my 2022 Alaskan Bear calendar after taking votes on Facebook for crowd favorite images. And once I made one calendar, it was pretty easy to make more – so I can now offer eight different calendars featuring Alaskan bears, African wildlife, seascapes and the Sonoran desert all available for purchase.
