Haines-My first Live Bear Encounter!

For a very Small town I actually like Haines. The wildlife cant get any better besides actually being in the middle of some random woods. Lol. All the best tours are there.

When I did the Wildlife Kroschel Films center other ppl that were on the ferry raved about seeing these bears. So, I decided to take that tour and try my luck.

It was the Nature Hike, and wildlife expedition tour.



Our two guides were these enthusiastic chicks. Very cool. Very laid back. Made you feel comfortable. Straight away they said “Our goal is to look for bears. Is that okay with you guys?” of course that’s okay. That’s what we came for!! Although I want to see a wild moose really bad. :-/



We headed north along the river. Nice views. This tour happened in mid August If I remember correctly. They said that is perfect time for seeing bears because the salmon are coming in at this time.

At our first stop for sure the bears were there. Brown bears, a mother and three cubs. I was … on awe really. Finally a really bear …in the wild!


I got really good footage of the bear going along the river looking for salmon. Than the mother bear went swimming. Very cool. The cubs were two are first, than the third appeared. We stayed there for a few minutes. It was raining, but it wasn’t freezing. I got some nice shots of an eagle, and the scenery! Very nice!!


Than we moved on further along the river to the lake. One thing I love about Alaska is the color of the water. The glacial silt of course makes it that way. But it never gets old to me. The lake had a nice view for sure. I did a 180 pan of still to seem together later.

We were about to leave. We all got on the bus, than this lady like damn near screamed “ ooooh there’s a bear. Look!!” There was this massive bear on the road, just coming from the forest!! They crossed the road to get to the river, and lake.


They were scary close! Very awesome shots of the bears just chilling in the water, and swimming. This mother had two cubs, and she also had a fishing rod in its mouth ☹

We were right above them!! So close. We stayed to take a look for a few minutes. We went back to the first set of bears to see what they were doing, to see if they were still there.

They were! This time on the dam type thingy catching fish! Saw them really jacking fish up. Lol

We eventually had to leave there, but headed back to the lake to check the 2nd set of bears out, and to take this joke of a hike. Lol I took some footage of it, but never used it. the bears were still chilling in the river, but we checked them out from down the road. Hey I was okay with it gave me a different shot.


We were pretty much done with the bears. But we headed to this old bakery, well it used to be a bakery, until all the woman’s kids went to college and that. The property was on some awesome land. Very nice. Harbor seals, eagles, nice scenic views! Than the ladies showed us were this eagles nest was, and it actually had some baby eagles in it! Usually you seem the nests, but nothing is going on. You had to look through the hole of trees just to get the right view of it. Had to be at the right angle, and position to see it. I thought it was cool. I managed to get a shot of it with my camera, but they had this scope to see the nest up close. Amazing these scopes! So clear, I could see everything!!

After that we ate, num-num. Always a good ending to a tour. Lol.

Great tour, my first Bear sightings, and such a good one! I never got lucky on the ship and never saw one on shore or anything. Well I’m glad these were my first bears!

I also in my magnet collecting made my Haines magnet be a brown bear to represent my first time seeing brown bears! Yes, Dork, I know. Lol.