Grizzlies!

 

Nothing says true wilderness like a grizzly bear. These wide-ranging predators are found from Alaska to Wyoming and across northwestern Canada. Few animals inspire awe and excitement like a brown bear.

🧸 🧸 🧸

I knew something was up when I saw a park ranger frantically waving his arms over his head as our bus pulled up to the Eielson Visitor Center. Even in Denali, everything comes to a stop when grizzlies wander into the parking lot. The ranger hopped onto our bus to get out of harm's way until the mama bear and her two grown cubs crossed the road and headed back into the mountain tundra. The surrounding trails here already had been closed during my last visit because a panicked hiker dropped his backpack after seeing a grizzly. The bear was able to rummage in the pack for a free meal. The park does not want grizzlies associating people with easy food.

Most Denali grizzlies are light brown with darker legs, but some can be blonde. A bicyclist on the park road about 100 feet away was a bit flummoxed about how to proceed with a hungry bear on the road. Our bus driver called him meals on wheels, ha.

Grizzlies like this one get their name from their grizzled fur. This bear dug up tasty roots in a snowstorm in Denali National Park. They will hunt everything from ground squirrels to moose, but spend most of the day eating vegetarian.

I love photographing wildlife in the snow, so getting up close with a grizzly in a snowstorm (from the safety of a park bus) was fantastic. That was a snowy year for me. I got to see the first snowfall of the Arctic winter while photographing polar bears. And Denali was completely snowed in for days. New Jersey had a Super Bowl blizzard. And there was even snow on Tax Day on April 15, giving me eight months of white stuff.

A portly bear seems ready for hibernation. Look at that Disney butt!

One of my most memorable bear trips was to the remote reaches of Katmai National Park. I took an Emerald Air float plane from Homer across the Cook Inlet and past Kodiak Island to the wilds of Katmai. It's one of the most remote places I have ever been and it felt like it. Check out the bear tracks on the plane's tail.

We saw bear tracks before we saw bears. This one was the size of a dinner platter. Wow.

Grizzlies have enormous paws but walk with one foot in front of the other like they're on a tightrope. This probably helps them squeeze through thick scrub. Their routine travels create trails that are too narrow even for me to walk on comfortably.

The bears fed on fresh spring grass in a drenching, persistent rain that did not relent. It was one of those days that ordinarily would keep me inside all day. Instead, it was the adventure of a lifetime.

A beautiful coastal brown bear gets up from her nap on the grassy meadows of Katmai National Park. This is one of my favorite bear pics.

I accompanied a bear guide when I visited Katmai. We saw six bears that day, including this one that gave me a sniff as he walked past. The guide didn't bring bear spray but road flares, which can withstand the brutal Alaska winds. As this bear approached, I glanced at the guide, who was relaxed. And the bear was relaxed, so I just kept shooting. Wowza!

I resisted the urge to boop this grizzly's nose.

Where do grizzlies sleep? Wherever they want.

The bruins in Katmai are some of the biggest brown bears in the world. Only those on nearby Kodiak Island are bigger. 

A grizzly cautiously approaches another bear for a friendly bout wrestling on a deadfall of logs in Katmai. Bears have to read body language to tell friend from foe. 

The bears sparred in the rain as we watched on the other side of the deadfall. They were playing but they didn't seem to pull their punches much. 

Grizzles sometimes kill other grizzlies, particularly cubs. But these two seemed like old friends.

At the end of the day, we followed a bear trail a couple miles back to the waiting float plane. As it happened, a grizzly ahead of us was heading in the same direction and we followed it at a respectful distance. Tired and happy, we continued to chat as we walked. After a few minutes, you almost forgot you were following one of the world's biggest carnivores. Only in Alaska!

A pretty two-year-old grizzly digs up roots along a park road in the autumn scrub of Denali. This was my favorite photo that year.

I visited Yellowstone in April hoping to photograph winter wolves. Instead, I spent most of the week with this family of grizzlies. I wasn't mad. I found them around Hellroaring Creek on four consecutive days.

A mama bear nuzzles her cub. The bears were just out of their dens and the mama bear was still very sleepy.

Bears have limited food choices in the spring. They will graze on grass, dig up roots and follow their noses to bison and elk that starved over the winter or fell through the ice.

The twin cubs are constant companions, looking to each other for reassurance and a playmate.

A grizzly wanders the fall tundra in Denali. The berries can get thick here in August.