Katmai National Park coastal cruising adventures offer the incredible. That being North America’s Apex Mammal, the Alaskan Brown Bear.

Your adventure begins at the Kodiak City Float Plane Basin. There you will board an Island Air float plane. Enjoy your 60 min flight across Kodiak and Shelikof Strait to M/V Dream Catcher.

Once you step on board, your incredible 7-day expedition begins! We’ll confidently navigate the breathtaking coastline of Katmai National Park. Each day, we’ll anchor in different beautiful coves, harbors, and bays, each with its own distinct environment. We will explore the impressive bays of Halo, Kukak, Kuliak, Kinak, Amilik, Devils Cove, Hidden Valley, and the harbors of Hidden and Geographic Harbor. Weather can affect travel to various spots. Prepare for an unforgettable journey!

Your booking date has a direct impact on what areas we visit. June finds Halo hopping with lots of spring cubs romping in the grasslands. By mid to late August the bears move out of Halo. In late July, the salmon start running in Kukak, Kuliak, Geographic, Hidden Valley, and Hidden Harbor. Bears work these areas until the salmon run ends in early October. While we normally spend June in Prince William Sound we will do custom trips to Katmai upon request.

Very little time is spent cruising the coastline as we hop between areas. 95% of your time will be spent anchored in protected waters. We do our best not to move between areas when the weather kicks up.

Katmai has the highest bear density per mile in all of the northern hemisphere. Why? Food! These bruins feed on abundant coastal grasses, salmon, berries, and clams. One interior grizzly has a territory of 60 sq miles. In Geographic Harbor tidal flats during the salmon run we’ve seen as many as 40 bears feeding. Due to the high concentration of bears they are very tolerable of each other. Normal days always seems to find at least a dozen bruins working the area.

A typical day’s outing in Katmai will be two beach landings, duration of 3 – 4 hrs. We skiff to the beach, then walk as a group to a viewing area. There are NO Solo Adventures on these excursions. We stay together, pick our vantage point, and sit in one line. The bears will come to us as they feed. We become part of the environment on our outings. The bears feed, moving around us as we blend into the terrain. Our goal is to never have the bears react to us. To them we are just a piece of drift wood, they just want to gorge themselves on salmon.

It has been said more than once Katmai bears are the laziest bears in the world! We’ve watched them lay in the streams. They wait until a fish swims up, then they plop a paw down and have a meal. They never move! Bears seem to all have various techniques. They chase, splash, snorkel, and even create waves to splash fish up on the beaches! Late one the fall, we observed a bear catch a dozen salmon one after another, yet he was so full he never took a bite!

Over the last few decades there has been an adaptation by the sows with cubs. The sows have determined boars stay farther away from groups of people. Sows will place a group of people between their families and a boar. And as incredulous as it sounds they will use groups as baby sitters. It has happened many times to us where the sow will park the cubs close to us and go fish. The pay is low but the experience is priceless. The next short video shows one family where my groups acted as the babysitter for two months in Geographic Harbor. The last bear you will see is the mom. The cubs, or Three Stooges as I called them, saunter past my group. As you will note, mom did not see us as a threat. Her back is to us while she fished. She’d parked the kids just below us!