With bears, volcanoes, and glaciers, not a single road enters Katmai National Park

It’s the last truly unreachable Alaska

Katmai National Park sits 260 miles southwest of Anchorage on the Alaska Peninsula, and you can’t drive there. No road connects it to any town.

You fly in by floatplane or come by boat, and that barrier is exactly why the place still feels like it did a century ago.

Four million acres of volcanic peaks, tundra, glaciers and coastline wait on the other side of that flight. Most people come for the bears.

They stay because everything else is just as wild.

Four million acres with 18 volcanoes and no roads in

The park stretches about 4 million acres across the Alaska Peninsula, bordered by the Shelikof Strait and Kodiak Island to the east. The landscape doesn’t pick a lane.

You get volcanic peaks, boreal forest, glaciers, tundra, lakes and nearly 497 miles of rugged coastline all in one park. Eighteen volcanoes sit within its boundaries, seven of them active since 1900.

To get in, most visitors fly commercial to King Salmon, then board a floatplane or boat to Brooks Camp.

A volcanic eruption buried this valley 700 feet deep

Before anyone came for bears, they came because of what a volcano did here.

In 1912, Novarupta erupted in the largest volcanic blast of the 20th century, ejecting roughly 13 cubic kilometers of magma in about 60 hours. Ash shot more than 100,000 feet into the atmosphere.

Pyroclastic flows buried a 40-square-mile valley under deposits up to 700 feet deep, 30 times the output of Mount St. Helens in 1980.

The summit of nearby Mount Katmai collapsed entirely, leaving a caldera now filled with a lake more than 800 feet deep.

Griggs named it the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes

For years after the eruption, steam vents covered the buried valley floor, shooting jets into the sky by the thousands.

Botanist Robert F. Griggs saw it during a 1916 National Geographic Society expedition and named it the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes.

President Woodrow Wilson established Katmai National Monument two years later to protect the volcanic landscape.

The fumaroles have since cooled, but a 23-mile dirt road, the only road in the entire park, leads from Brooks Camp to the Three Forks Overlook above the valley.

The Alutiiq people lived here 7,000 years before the eruption

The 1912 eruption rewrote this landscape, but people had already lived here for at least 7,000 years.

The Alutiiq, also known as the Sugpiaq, built settlements along the rivers and shores, fishing salmon, hunting marine mammals and drawing from everything the land gave them. The eruption forced their communities out.

The park today protects 9,000 years of human history, including an archaeological zone near Brooks Camp with a replica of a semi-subterranean dwelling Sugpiaq and Alutiiq people used up to a thousand years ago.

Brooks Falls: 80 bears in one square mile at peak season

Brooks Falls is a 6-foot waterfall on the Brooks River, connecting Naknek Lake and Lake Brooks. Every summer, sockeye salmon fight upstream through it, and brown bears show up to intercept them.

At peak salmon season, the National Park Service estimates 80 to 100 bears gather within the square mile centered on the river.

Three elevated viewing platforms connected by boardwalks put you close enough to watch bears catch salmon in midair.

The walk from Brooks Camp to the platforms covers 1.2 miles through boreal forest and is wheelchair accessible.

These coastal bears can weigh 900 pounds by September

Katmai holds an estimated 2,200 brown bears, one of the largest protected populations in North America.

Technically the same species as grizzlies, the coastal bears here run bigger because salmon gives them far more calories than the inland diet. Mature males can hit 900 pounds.

Bears start arriving at Brooks River in late June, and they keep feeding through September. Come fall, they go into hyperphagia, eating almost nonstop to pack on fat before hibernation.

At Brooks Falls, where salmon pile up, bears that would otherwise avoid each other fish peacefully side by side.

Fat Bear Week pulls votes from more than 100 countries

Every September or October, the National Park Service runs Fat Bear Week, a bracket-style online tournament where the public votes on which bear gained the most weight over the summer and fall.

Former park ranger Mike Fitz started it in 2014 as Fat Bear Tuesday. By 2024, more than one million votes came in from over 100 countries.

A separate competition called Fat Bear Junior runs just before the main event, featuring cubs only. Live webcams at Brooks Falls and along the river let you watch the bears from anywhere with an internet connection.

Naknek Lake is the largest lake inside any U.S. national park

Naknek Lake stretches about 40 miles long and sits entirely within Katmai, making it the largest lake wholly inside any U.S. national park. The water runs turquoise, and the shoreline turns up bear sightings regularly.

You can rent kayaks and canoes at the Katmai Trading Post at Brooks Camp.

If you want a longer paddle, the Savonoski Loop covers more than 80 miles, winding through Iliuk Arm, the Savonoski River, Lake Grosvenor and the North Arm of Naknek Lake.

The full loop takes four to 10 days depending on your pace and the weather.

Five salmon species and year-round trout on fly-fishing-only water

Fishing drew the first visitors to Brooks Camp, long before bear viewing took over as the main event. All five Pacific salmon species run through Katmai: sockeye, king, silver, chum and pink.

Salmon enter the Naknek River drainage from Bristol Bay in June and July and spawn from August through October. Year-round, the waters hold rainbow trout, Arctic char, Arctic grayling, Dolly Varden and northern pike.

The Brooks River runs fly-fishing only, and access to most of the best water means getting away from the camp and into the backcountry.

Wolves, puffins, humpbacks and 42 other mammals share the park

Bears get the headlines, but Katmai holds 42 documented mammal species. Moose, caribou, wolves, lynx, wolverine and river otter all live within the park.

Gray wolves along the coast have been observed fishing alongside bears at Brooks Camp. Offshore, the Shelikof Strait supports sea otters, harbor seals, sea lions, humpback whales and orcas.

More than 100 bird species have been recorded, including bald eagles, puffins, black oystercatchers and kittiwakes.

Salmon tie it all together, feeding the bears, eagles, trout and much of everything else in the food web.

NASA sent Apollo astronauts here to train for the moon

In 1965 and 1966, NASA brought Apollo astronauts to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes for geology field training.

The barren, rocky volcanic terrain looked close enough to the lunar surface that the agency used it to prepare crews for what they’d find up there.

The astronauts collected geological samples and practiced communicating findings back to scientists. The valley no longer smokes, but it still looks like another world.

From the Three Forks Overlook, you can hike down to the valley floor along the Ukak River Trail to see volcanic deposits, wildflowers and a waterfall cut through the ash.

Hallo Bay’s bears have never been hunted

Along Katmai’s Pacific coast, Hallo Bay draws bears year-round to graze sedge grass, dig clams and fish salmon in the tidal flats.

Because no hunting has ever taken place here and humans have visited peacefully for decades, the bears have become habituated to people.

You approach on foot with a naturalist guide in a small group, floatplaning in from Homer or Kodiak. Other coastal viewing spots include Swikshak Lagoon, Geographic Harbor and Moraine Creek.

It’s a different experience than Brooks Falls, quieter and more open, with bears moving through the grass at their own pace.

Visit Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska

You can start planning your trip through the official National Park Service website, where you’ll find current trip planning details, seasonal information and reservation requirements.

The park runs no entrance fee, but a reservation is required for the Brooks Camp campground, and spots go fast. The summer visitor season runs June through mid-September.

Most visitors fly commercially into King Salmon, then transfer to a floatplane or boat for the final leg into Brooks Camp. Floatplane day trips are also available from Anchorage, Homer and Kodiak for those short on time.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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