The Real Housewives of Brooks River

Writer Kevin Grange has nurtured a passion for watching wildlife since he was 12 and his parents gave him a copy of Olaus J. Murie’s 1954 book “A Field Guide to Animal Tracks.” As Grange writes in “Grizzly Confidential: An Astounding Journey into the Secret Life of North America’s Most Fearsome Predator,” his father inscribed the title page with a note reading, “To Kevin, our family’s great pathfinder, fisherman, and outdoorsman on his birthday.”

Grange went on to work six seasons as a paramedic and park ranger at Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Yosemite national parks, an experience he mined for his previous book “Wild Rescues.” In his latest work, which comes out on Sept. 17, he delves into the world of the mighty ursid, participating in a bear defense class, joining a mission to recover GPS collars dropped by bears on Afognak Island in the Kodiak Archipelago, and watching a grizzly test (and eventually break into) a commercial cooler. He counts whitebark pine cones — containers of the nutritious pine nuts bears love — in Yellowstone, travels to Alaska’s Emerald Isle to learn about the relationship between brown bears and the Alutiiq people, and interviews a bear attack survivor and celebrity bear trainers.

In this excerpt from a chapter titled “The Chonkiest of the Chonky,” Grange heads to Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska shortly before Fat Bear Week, a wildly popular contest created in 2014. Every summer and fall, thanks to a plethora of well-placed solar-powered video cameras, thousands of bruin lovers tune in to watch bears feast on salmon at Brooks Falls, where fish famously hurl themselves upstream to spawn, and along the Brooks River. Grange likens the drama — the parrying, partying, stealing, snorkeling — to reality television: “The Real Housewives of Brooks River,” he writes. Then shortly before the bears trot off to their dens for a long winter’s nap, observers from around the world vote for the heftiest grizzly in a March Madness-style contest.

As Grange recounts, he and his wife, Meaghan Wheeler-Grange, take a floatplane to the park for a late September trip run by Willy Fulton, the pilot, and his wife, Jennifer Culbertson, a longtime guide who previously served as a National Park Service law enforcement ranger. After the flight from Kodiak Island to Brooks Falls, Grange and his group, including one woman who gushes about the fat bears as if they are human celebrities, attend mandatory bear school at the visitor center before heading to a viewing platform.

—Editors

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I COULD BARELY CONTAIN MY EXCITEMENT. I was about to witness one of the greatest wildlife spectacles on Earth and maybe glimpse some of the bears I’d fallen in love with on the bear cam — Otis, Chunk, Grazer and Holly.

“Honey,” Meaghan said, gesturing down to my hand on her knee. “You’re cutting off the circulation.”

“Sorry,” I replied, releasing my enthusiastic grip. “Just excited.”

At Brooks Camp, visitors coexist alongside the great gathering of bruins due to several strictly enforced rules: All food (and even scented items such as lip balm and gum) has to be left in a highly secure food cache. Food can be eaten only in Brooks Lodge or in one of the picnic areas, which are framed with bear-deterring electric wire. Visitors are also advised to keep gear such as backpacks with them always.

“Don’t set anything down and walk away,” warned Jasa Woods, a park ranger with red hair, freckles and a friendly smile. “A curious bear might tear these items apart in search of food or fun things to play with.”

As for human cubs — children — they should never be allowed to wander away. Toddlers must be carried in backpacks.

Woods reminded us to stay calm, step aside and speak softly if we encountered a bear on the trail. “Whatever you do, don’t run!” she said, suddenly serious. “That will trigger a predatory response, and you can’t outrun a bear.”

Before we were dismissed, Woods told us the platform etiquette: no smoking, no flash photography, no tripods (monopods only), and most importantly, no loud noises or cheering.

“What type of idiot would cheer?” I said to Meaghan as Woods dismissed our group.

“That’s it?” I asked, standing. “We can just go wander around now?” I felt as if we’d just been given the keys to Jurassic Park.

“We can,” Meaghan replied. “At least we have Jennifer and Willy to lead us.”

It was a cool, overcast autumn day, and the trees lining the river were a sorbet swirl of orange, maroon and yellow. Both Brooks Lodge and the Katmai Trading Post had closed the day prior, and an end-of-the-season feel was in the air. The number of bears and tourists usually peaks in July, when sockeye leap up the falls by the hundreds. It wasn’t uncommon to have over 500 people a day visit Brooks Camp around then. At times there could be a two-hour wait to get onto a viewing platform and only a 30-minute time slot allotted.

According to Leslie Skora, a Park Service biologist at Katmai, grizzly viewing at Brooks River is far different than it is in the Lower 48 or even a place such as Kodiak, where the bears are hunted during the spring and fall. (Historically, the term “brown bear” referred to bears that had access to the ocean and marine life, and “grizzly bear” was reserved for bruins found in the interior of North America. I use the terms interchangeably, however, since the genetic differences between these bears are negligible.)

“The bears here have a much smaller space bubble than you’ll find at Yellowstone, the Tetons or even Denali,” she told me prior to my trip. “Because of the abundant salmon resources, they’re willing to tolerate each other and people in a lot closer proximity. It’s kind of like the New York City of bears, and we’re able to have these viewing opportunities that don’t happen much else anywhere in the world.”

But they’re still dangerous and wild. From the moment the bears leave the den, they live under a ticking clock. “They have to eat a year’s worth of food in six months,” Culbertson explained, “and compete with other bears for those food resources.”

During our 1.2-mile hike down a dirt road to the viewing platform at the falls, Culbertson told us how grizzly bears are ecosystem engineers, tilling the soil with their long, excavator-like claws, dispersing seeds via their scat, and scattering salmon carcasses throughout the forest.

“They’ve found salmon DNA in all the trees around there,” Culbertson said, exaggerating — though not by much. “The salmon carcasses discarded by bears replenish the forest and surrounding ecosystem with nitrogen, carbon, phosphorous and other minerals.”

Bears can eat up to 40 fish per day, especially when they are in hyperphagia, a state of hunger that can never be satisfied, no matter how much they eat. “They may not eat the whole fish,” Culbertson explained. “When there’s an abundance of salmon, the bears ‘high grade’ by only eating the fattiest part of the fish: the brains, skin and eggs.”

After a mile, we reached the elevated walkway leading to the viewing platform at the falls. As we hiked, we saw hulking bruins in various shades of cinnamon wandering underneath us on their way to and from the river, or napping on their stomachs, with their forepaws forward and hind legs stretched back, a posture known as splooting.

Once we reached the viewing platform, Brooks Falls came into view. Sure enough, a behemoth brown bear stood on the lip of the falls, staring intently down at the water and waiting to catch a leaping fish.

“Do you know who it is?” Meaghan asked.

The large bear had a light brown coat with dark patches around her eyes. “I think it’s Grazer,” I replied. “Bear 128.”

A few grizzlies wandered below the falls, while others patrolled the shore, searching for fish scraps. I spotted one of the Fat Bears, Otis, in his “office” on the left side of the river.

At first, the bears appeared to be randomly situated along the river, but Culbertson informed us that in actuality, a chess game of hierarchy and dominance was taking place. The biggest, most dominant bears got the best fishing spots at the top of the falls (or just below in the jacuzzi), and the less dominant bears were spread out downriver. Dominance was a dynamic based on the bears’ age, size, health and attitude, and it could change yearly, seasonally or weekly. Typically, the big adult males were most dominant, followed by sows with cubs, then other adult males and females, on down to the hungry and hormonal teenagers. These so-called subadults were the curious, scrawny underdogs, struggling to stay alive in a harsh world, and I loved them more for it.

The bears had the same objective — Operation Binge on Fish! — and I could see their different personalities based on how they fished. The bear at the falls practiced the stand-and-wait method. Over in his office, Otis would wait patiently — as if in a seated, silent meditation — and then suddenly he’d pin a fish with his mighty paws before grabbing it in his mouth and waddling up the steep riverbank to devour it in the woods. Another bruin searched for fish with his head darting back and forth underwater — a technique known as snorkeling — while another went diving, submerging his whole grizzled body.

As for those sweet subadults, they weren’t above begging for scraps from more dominant bears or pirating (aka stealing) fish, then darting off into the woods with their treasure. A few bears tried the dash-and-grab method: leaping into the river, displacing a lot of water in the shallow section and hoping to pin a fish with their paws. This tactic burns a lot of energy but, sadly, isn’t very effective.

Suddenly, the bear named Grazer, standing at the lip of the falls, caught a leaping fish.

“Yes!” I exclaimed loudly, clapping.

Meaghan was more than embarrassed. “You’re that guy,” she said. “The cheerer.”

I was ashamed to have broken viewing-platform etiquette, but it was suspenseful watching the grizzlies fish, and knowing the stakes and the effort they put in did make you want to cheer.

After spending an hour on the platform — during which I happily also spotted Bear 132, Bear 909 and Holly — we wandered over and sat in the tall grass beside Lake Brooks. A few bears snorkeled and dove around for fish in the distance, and one blond subadult looked like he was just floating on his back, enjoying a moment of rest and the warm sunshine on his face.

Every now and then, we’d hear a noise in the woods behind us and spot an 800-pound grizzly ambling down the trail, mere feet from us. And on our hike back to Brooks Lodge later that afternoon, we passed within a few feet of a half-ton, silver-tipped grizzly sleeping in the shade. We always tried to keep a hundred yards or so between us and the bears, but there were so many of them — and they were often so quiet — sometimes we just happened upon them, or they upon us. They are apex predators, and I made no pretenses about their friendliness, but they are far from bloodthirsty killers intent on eating humans. Despite the proximity of thousands of people to the bears at Brooks, there have been few injuries and no deaths at camp. Having never been hunted or given access to human food, these bears simply didn’t care about us.

Following a picnic lunch — eaten safely behind an electric fence — we returned to the main viewing platform to discover the falls empty. My heart sank, and I recalled the famed conservationist Aldo Leopold describing Escudilla in his classic book, “A Sand County Almanac.”

Escudilla is a 10,912-foot mountain in Apache County, Arizona, in the eastern part of the state. Leopold started his Forest Service career in the Escudilla Wilderness, the site where the last brown bear in Arizona was shot in 1933 by a predator control agent who had been given orders to kill bears to prioritize ranching in the area.

“Time built three things in the old mountain,” Leopold wrote. “A venerable aspect, a community of minor animals and plants, and a grizzly. … The bureau chief who sent in the trapper was a biologist versed in the architecture of evolution, but he didn’t know that spires might be as important as cows. He did not foresee that within two decades, the cow country would become tourist country and, as such, have a greater need of bears than beefsteaks.”

Leopold discussed the harmful effect Manifest Destiny had on nature, Native Americans, and animals such as wolves, bison and grizzlies. “It did not occur to us that we, too, were the captains of an invasion too sure of its own righteousness.”

With the last bear gone, Leopold wrote, “Escudilla still hangs on the horizon but, when you see it, you no longer think of bears. It’s only a mountain now.”

When I gazed out at Brooks Falls without bears, the area lost its magic. I contemplated a bear-free future and recalled something conservationist Lynne Seus had said to me: “Without wildlife, it’s just scenery.”

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Taken from “Grizzly Confidential: An Astounding Journey into the Secret Life of North America’s Most Fearsome Predator” by Kevin Grange. Copyright © 2024 by Kevin Grange. Used by permission of Harper Horizon.

Fat Bear Week, organized by partners including the Katmai Conservancy, Explore.org and the Park Service, will take place this year from Oct. 2-8. You can find more information at explore.org/fat-bear-week and check out the live bear cams at explore.org/livecams.