USKatmai National Park, United States
The salmon run at Brooks Falls
The most watched wild animals on the internet, in front of you.
Watch it live firstWhen the light is best
April, October, May
Computed from five years of daily cloud, rain and temperature at 58.55, -155.78. Some cloud is what makes a sky burn, so this is not the same as the driest month and often disagrees with one.
- Cloud then
- 71%
- Wet days
- 12
- Daytime high
- 4°C
When to actually go
Bears fish the falls in July, then return heavier and calmer in September. There is almost nothing to see between those two windows.
This is the window for the reason you are going, and it is a different question from the light. Where the two disagree, this one wins. An empty river under a perfect sky is still an empty river.
- Nights
- 4
- Getting in
- Anchorage, then a float plane to Brooks Camp
- From, per person
- $6,800
Why here
There is no road to Brooks Camp. You fly to Anchorage, then to King Salmon, then a float plane lands you on a lake, and then you are standing on a platform above the same falls you have been watching all year. Very few places reward a webcam obsession this directly, because the frame you have memorised is the frame you walk into.
What you actually do
- The platform at Brooks Falls, which is the camera's own view
- Float plane over the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes
- Bear safety school, which is mandatory and genuinely good
- Dumpling Mountain at dusk, above the whole basin
However many of you
On your own
The easiest wildlife trip in the world to do alone. The platform is communal, the camp is small, and everybody there is there for one reason.
Two to six
Four people fills a float plane and splits the charter cleanly. This is the right size for Katmai.
Seven or more
Brooks Camp is capped and books out a year ahead. A group over eight should look at a chartered lodge on Naknek Lake instead and fly in daily.
Book it
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