Locking eyes with a 400-pound brown bear can send shivers down your spine, but it can also be a heart-warming experience for anyone. If you love to experience this, then you must visit Alaska and enjoy great bear watching with full safety, accompanied by professional bear guides.

For seasoned expedition leaders and adventure enthusiasts, an Alaska bear viewing trip is one of the best experiences. There are many places in Alaska where you can watch bears, but Chinitna Bay, a sliver of Lake Clark National Park, is among the best bear-watching locations. At Bear Camp, you can enjoy crossing a gurgling stream and hiking to a viewing ridge, with guides ensuring safety from bears, such as one local bear that moved on to chase a mother and cub, who evaded it by climbing a tree.

In an Alaska bear viewing trip, you can encounter bears, likely in June, at south-central Alaska’s early summer bear mating season. They are the prelude to the bulking season before hibernation, which was made famous by Fat Bear Week in Katmai National Park. The annual March Madness-style bracket tournament invites the public to virtually follow and then vote on the year’s plumpest bruins. This year’s edition marks the event’s 10th anniversary, yet Fat Bear Week merely scratches the surface of ways to enjoy the region’s four-legged giants.

Planning Your Alaska Brown Bear Trip

Alaska is home to more brown, grizzly, and black bears than any other state, totaling more than 100,000. Many visitors spot them on hikes, cruises, paddle trips, and road trips, but the safest and likeliest way to appreciate these giants, particularly the brown bears Fat Bear Week made famous, is on a guided trip to south-central Alaska.

This small area of habitat at the base of the Alaska Peninsula is one of the best bear-watching spots in the world. It has sedge meadows and salmon-rich rivers that concentrate these brown bears. I chose Bear Camp, a 14-person glamping escape on a private homestead just beside Lake Clark – one of America’s least visited national parks – for its remoteness and safari-style approach to bear watching.

At Bear Camp, guests sleep in the wilderness in cozy glamping tents, then spend mornings, afternoons, and evenings on guided ambles or drives to animal-viewing platforms, including public national park overlooks and private observation decks reserved for Bear Camp guests. At Alaska Bear Camp, a safari getaway operated by Natural Habitat Adventures, a World Wildlife Fund travel partner, you can observe bears climbing trees, digging for clams, and mating during the season. Guests can start their day without leaving camp on special mornings by watching clamming bears as the sun rises over the Chigmit Mountains. Katmai National Park, around 150 miles south of Lake Clark, is the site of not only Fat Bear Week but the famed Brooks Falls salmon run.

This frenetic spectacle draws dozens of voracious brown bears angling to catch the fish on their upriver spawning journey. If they're lucky, visitors can stay at Brooks Lodge, which is just a short walk from Brooks Falls. The lodge requires a lottery that books out at least one year in advance. Intrepid visitors could also snag a coveted permit at nearby Brooks Camp; reservations open in early January, and like Brooks Lodge, get scooped up quickly.