2. Bear necessities - Alaska - the Last Frontier

 

If you want to see brown bears and watch them catching salmon leaping, then Brook Falls is the place. This is the story of an expedition to see the wildlife of Alaska. It doesn’t venture up into the Arctic and so no polar bears were seen but the variety of wildlife was extraordinary. Flight by float planes to the remote Brook Falls in the Katmai National Park revealed the bears catching salmon is the Brooks River. Then excursions to Denali National Park , with its towering Mount McKinley, added caribou, grizzly bears and cubs, moose, arctic ground squirrels, Dall mountain sheep, wolf and beautiful Fall flora. Further north migrating Sandhill cranes amongst spectacular mountain scenery were encountered, whilst a voyage into Prince William sound provided amazing glaciers and sea animals – sea otters, breaching humpback whales, three varieties of puffin, guillemots, gulls, seal lions and harbour seals.  At Valdez sockeye salmon in their millions made the sea boil with activity and bald eagles satisfied their hunger. Finally at Homer, a four-mile spit into the ocean and the capital of halibut fishing, gave even more bald eagles a chance to gorge their stomachs on more salmon and for us to sample halibut fresh from the sea.

Duration 1 hour plus