The day dawned cloudy and overcast so we we were hopeful of going to Brooks Falls - I looked at all the forecasts including aviation forecasts on my iPad. It looked like low cloud and rain at Brooks Fall which could impact on visibility and their flying rules......
Anyway we made it to the Bald Mountain Dock - waited around with 18 other people - when the pilot - with 32+years experience said yes they thought they could get us into Brooks today - yippee - the whole incentive for the trip - hopefully seeing bears fish at the falls wasn't going to fall at the last hurdle!
We took off from the lake and headed over the Cook Strait, we passed the active volcano Mt Augustine in the middle of the Strait - and headed on to the McNeil river. It became cloudier and merkier as we made our way through the mountain passes -luckily the passes were clearer than the surrounding peaks - we then crossed a lake and followed the American River - again the only really clear view was lower down along the river - on our head sets we could hear all the pilots talking to each other plotting the best route with the best visibility and following Pete, our pilot.
We finally landed on Naknek Lake - it was drizzling hard - so once off the plane my over trousers went on and that is where they stayed until we got home!
We then headed along the trail to the ranger station for our briefing - and ate our lunch while listening and watching the video.
We collected our pin - to prove we had been briefed - and headed along the trail, walking the 1.2 miles to the viewing platforms. It was now just after 12 noon and we had to be back at the plane for 3.30pm - so not long really given the 30 minute walk to/from the platforms.
On arrival we went to the lower Riffles platform and put our name on the list for the upper platform. As we arrived so did a young skinny bear - must be his first year on his own - he endeavoured to fish before being chased off by a big brown bear that came along the trail.
We could see the falls up river - not as big as on TV documentaries - they are caused by a fault line which dropped part of the riverbed - it makes the salmons life harder as they have to jump over them to get to their spawning grounds! Indeed it was nearly as much fun to watch them leaping upstream as the bears. We had a total of 4 bears at the falls during our time there, all old scarred males - one with only one ear, Otis the old 18 year old with only a few teeth and two others in varying stages of dishevelment.
It was interesting to watch their different fishing styles.....Otis just stayed sitting in the river, where he also snoozed, and with minimal effort put our a paw and caught fish seemingly at will - he was by far the biggest bear - but due to his age they think this might be his last year. Another big bear stood in the falls and again fishing seemed easier as he caught them as they passed with little fuss, while the one with no ear dashed around and pounced in the water like a mad thing - which made for better photos but he got less fish and expended more energy. When our hour was up we went back to the lower platform and put our name on the list for a second visit which we got - allowing us to return for almost 40minutes before going back to the plane - if we had done the full hour catching the plane would have been marginal! We were lucky with the weather - the walk to the platform was very wet but once there we dried out and only had intermittent drizzle events - and towards the end the sun came out making the trip back much easier. Enroute back we went over mountain streams where the trips will go to in the next month as the bears spread out from Brooks Falls - we could see bears dashing around in the rivers trying to catch fish from the plane.
We landed back on the lake just after 5pm and tried to find a restaurant for supper - not easy on a Sunday evening but we found a family restaurant and had egg and hash browns before heading back to the B&B for packing!
Overall a great day and a really good experience - seeing bears in a different environment doing different things!
(Today's photo is a bear successfully catching a salmon at Brooks Falls.)