My boyfriend has always wanted to visit to experience Alaska and especially the bears. The national geographic channel is always on! So I%26#39;m planning a trip on his behalf, as he is all talk and no action.
When would be the best time to visit to see the most? Places to go that would be unspoilt. Also, I am very worried about those midgies that are rampant during certain periods, which I would prefer to avoid, as they seem to like me a lot. Any hints or advise I would be very grateful.
When to go to Alaska?
Since seeing bears is a priority, start here for the ';wheres'; and ';whens';: explorenorth.com/library/nature/alaska_bear_鈥?/a>
When to go to Alaska?
Hi Pez,
We just returned from Alaska and we did a bear viewing. Like your boyfriend, going to Alaska and seeing bears has been a dream of mine as well.
We booked with Bald Mountain Air out of Homer and they flew us over to Katmai where we spent about 4 hours on the ground with the bears. It was an amazing experience! What I like about this company is that they will take you to where ever the bears may be, so depending on the time of the year they fly to different locations. Everyone we dealt with was very helpful and friendly. Even answering non-bear questions when we had them.
I have only been to Alaska once but I thought we picked a great time going the first two weeks of September. The weather was perfect. There were about 15 to 20 bears feeding at the river and there were few people watching the bears. Besides that the fall colors were stunning and made for some great pictures. And the bugs weren%26#39;t a bother at all.
If you have any other questions I%26#39;ll do my best to answer them.
Tahiti
My favorite times up here in the interior are late June/early July and then early September. In June, I love seeing all the blooming flowers, the baby animals, and having almost 24 hour sunshine. In very late August/early September, I love our Fall colors . . . bugs are of course, worse in June . . . but we have had a wet year and there are still bugs around right now. Some areas are worse than others, so you just need to be prepared. Hope this helps you some. :)
Just returned from trip, we were in Alaska from 9/5 thru 9/16. Had only a couple of hours of rain the entire trip. Did 5 days on land and then 7 days at sea ending in Vancouver. Denali was visable from our hotel in Anchorage and when we were in Denali we got within 36 miles of it with beautiful sunshine. Never had any problem with bugs, temps were in low 60%26#39;s all the time and we actually got hot a couple of times.
Note: In Fairbanks we went on the Riverboat, its not worth going to Fairbanks if thats the only thing your going to do. I wish we could have skipped Fairbanks...
Thank you so much for the advise so far. I think I will definately have to do some major reseach as I haven%26#39;t a clue at this point of all the places other people have posted and written so passionately about.
fsulli01, I agree with you that it is not worthy to visit Fairbanks just to go on the Riverboat. Fairbanks is a great destination for at least a couple of nights as long as we don%26#39;t expect to see similar scenery to what we see in Homer or Valdez and high mountains or glaciers and brown bears right in town. There is a lot to do in Faribanks and each of us planning on going there should do research before hand and find out what this town has to offer. many things available
Places - Your info on bear trips is amazing! I now understand so much more about them. I will recommend this post to become an Inside page.
Pez - I hope you realize that bears are seen in many other places in Alaska, not just on these expensive bear trips. There are just less of them and there is no guarantee that you will see them.
By the way, it%26#39;s Fish Creek in Denali National Park, not Fisher Lake. Great alpine tundra hiking there. In the middle of August there were no biting mosquitos at Wonder Lake campground, but a lot of annoying in your face kind of mosquitos or some other kind of bugs.
Travel10000, you are so right. Of course it is Fish Creek
LOL! Fisher Lake? Where this came from? Thank you for being so kind and correcting me.
I also agree about seeing bears in other places but to have guarantee sightings and a chance to sit in front of them and observe them for hours one needs to schedule an expensive trip. There is another option I failed to mentioned and that%26#39;s camping on McNeal River but only a few chosen ones who don%26#39;t mind cold and wet camping and are prepared to bring own equipment may count themselves among those fortunate to stay there.
We must have really lucked out going with Bald Mountain. I have to say it was a tough debate between Bald Mt and Emerald Air though. I think the reason we may have lucked out though is because we went towards the end of the salmon season. There were only 8 people on our flight and the crowds on the viewing platform by the lodge were very small. No one had to wait and there was no rotation for viewing. I imagine if you went during the peak summer months you%26#39;d be in the rotating situation. The only down side was that the floating bridge was closed for much of our visit due to sleeping bears. So we were stuck on one side of the river and limited to the platforms. Not complainng mind you, we still saw many, many bears of all shapes, sizes and ages. Those spring cubs are a riot!
One couple on our flight had been to other locations within the Katmai with Bald Mountain Air, namely Geographic Bay. Their experience sounded very similar to what Places described. Our next bear adventure will be to a more remote location. Once you%26#39;ve seen these amazing animals you%26#39;re hooked.
I also agree with other posters, yes there are other options for seeing bears besides the expensive tours. But my thinking is if you want to see bears, spent the extra money and go with an operator who knows where the bears will be and can make good on the promise of bear viewing. If this is a dream to see the bears, don%26#39;t take a chance....go with the pros.
We saw 8 grizzly bears in Denali, three right next to the road and the others a little ways away. We were very happy with that. But seeing them up close in the Katmai made all the difference in the world. And that adventure was worth every penny we spent.
No comments:
Post a Comment