100 Bear Summer?

When I used to guide polar bear trips, it was easy to see more than 100 individual bears in a single summer because I could count on see 40 to 50 polar bears at the end of the season. Going into last summer I wondered if seeing 100+ bears was realistic, so made a bit of an effort to keep track. How did it go?

Well my first trip is my Kenai Fjords Photo Tour. We saw 5 bears from the train, at least 6 more from the helicopter, and had one visit us in our mountain landing location! So I was in double digits after day one of a trip where I don’t even promote bear sightings! We saw a couple of more from the yacht in the park, so off to a good start.

Next are my two Bear and Puffin trips which always bring lots of bears. I think we had 20 bears in one day! Since it is hard to not double count bears from day to day, much less over a couple of weeks, let’s just say we had 20 on the conservative side. This doesn’t count the 5 we saw from the plane thanks to a pilot who did some low flying for us!

Now on to my Southeast Bear and Whale trips. We ended up doing the same bear viewing locations on both the trips, so I’ll take the best day from each spot to avoid double counting. Pack Creek had around 12 if I remember correctly, the salmon fishing location had at least 15 and the waterfall location another 10 or so. Plus another 10 at other overnight locations.

Next up, my Wrangell / Anan Bear Observatory trip. Here the exact number is easier to come by since a ranger is sitting there keeping track of each bear, and they are really good and recognizing individual bear that I might miss. We had 20 bears on each of our days at Anan, and I know there were a number of bears that weren’t over-lapping. So I think 25 bears is a conservative number. Wow, I’m already over 100 with my Katmai Photo Tour yet to come!

So I don’t even need Katmai to meet my goal, however we saw lots more bears on this trip. Easily 20 plus and Geographic Harbor, maybe 14 more at Halo Bay, plus bears at other bays. So all and all, 2021 was a great summer for bears! 2022 season is just about underway, I’ll be hoping for another 100 this year!

There is still space on our 2023 trips if you want in on the fun!