I have seen the photos and heard the stories of Brooks Falls for years and yearned to go there myself. So, this year, after completing my safaris at Katmai I headed to Brooks Falls. We were about a week too early as the salmon had just begun running but were not at the falls jumping. However, that did not stop us from having a wonderful time and capturing some great images. The bears kept cycling through the falls area checking to see if the fish had arrived yet. This guy posed for quite awhile staring into the water waiting…

The bears would walk right below the platform we were standing on giving us the opportunity to photograph details like the claws on this big guy…

There was one bear they had named Snaggletooth because he had broken his jaw in a fight a couple of years ago. That could be fatal to most bears but, from the looks of old Snaggletooth, I don’t think he missed too many meals.

We had a sow with two second year cubs hanging around the lodge. She seemed to know that it was safer around people than at the falls where the boars hung out.

When she sensed another bear in the area she would send her cubs up a tree and guard them from below. Normally the rangers would keep folks away from the treed bears but, we had one ranger who got us back to our cabin where we could photograph the treed cubs from the required distance.

All in all it was a successful trip to Brooks Falls and I have a reason to return to capture the classic fish jumping into a bears mouth.

Images captured with Nikon D3, D3X, AF-S 70-300mm, AF-S 200-400mm, TC-14E on Lexar Digital Media