Katmai is one of the most unique U.S. National Parks, given that it holds the impressive claim of having one of the highest concentrations of brown bears on the planet. However, you do have to work a bit to get to this special corner of the country—the national park is located in a remote area of Alaska and can only be reached via plane or boat. If you want to see its famed bears for yourself, here’s everything you need to know about how to get to Katmai National Park.
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Where is Katmai National Park?
Katmai National Park is located on the Alaskan Peninsula along the southern coastline of Alaska, about 300 miles southwest from Anchorage as the crow flies.
Because of its remote location, there are no roads that lead to Katmai. The only way you can get there is by taking a boat or flying.
Why is Katmai National Park worth visiting?
Katmai is renowned as being one of the best places in the world to see brown bears. In fact, over 2,200 brown bears call Katmai home!
The bears thrive here, in part, due to its sheer abundance of food resources, like salmon. Every year, hundreds of thousands of spawning salmon fight their way upstream in the Brooks River, which flows directly through the heart of the park.
Bear viewing in Katmai National Park is so good, due to the fact that it’s one of the only places on the planet where you can see these usually territorial creatures hunt side-by-side. There’s so much food here, they’re generally unbothered by other bears’ presence!
In fact, when my husband, Justin, and I visited Katmai, we spoke to a ranger who said it was fairly common to see around 60 bears at one time fishing for salmon at Brooks Falls, the most iconic place in the park to see these massive creatures.
Nowadays, Katmai is mostly known for bears, but it’s worth mentioning it was actually founded for something else entirely—the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century! The park was the site of a MASSIVE eruption in 1912, when the Novarupta Volcano spewed ash and rock into the sky as much as 20 miles(!!!) high.
This eruption left behind the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, a unique landscape of colorful volcanic ash and rock.
Most visitors only come to Katmai as part of a day trip and don’t have time to see this (even more remote) section of the park. However, if you happen to stay here for a few days, I think exploring the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes is one of the best things to do in Katmai National Park!
How to Get to Katmai National Park
Visitors can either get to Katmai National Park with a tour operator or, with a little bit of effort, can arrange their own transportation.
Getting to Katmai through a tour operator
There’s a number of operators that will arrange all of your transportation to Katmai National Park, and, depending on the tour, also offer a guide in the park itself for the best bear viewing experience.
This is definitely more expensive than planning your own transportation here. However, using a tour operator provides a bit more assurance that you’ll actually make it to Katmai in the first place.
Flights or boat services are frequently delayed or even canceled here, due to the unpredictable and volatile weather. This can cause quite the logistical headache, given the limited amount of transportation options and the fact that you don’t have cell service or Internet in or anywhere near Katmai.
I actually know this from personal experience—our water taxi from Katmai was unexpectedly canceled while we were already in the park. So, unfortunately, a solid chunk of our time here was spent figuring out how to not be stranded in one of the most remote national parks in the United States.
However, if you choose to go to Katmai with a tour operator, they’ll handle all of the logistics for you, whether your tour needs to be rescheduled or if you experience delays on your way to Katmai.
Tours to Katmai National Park from Homer
The most popular place for Katmai tours to depart from is Homer, Alaska, which sits on the southern tip of the stunningly beautiful Kenai Peninsula.
This small town is a popular port for Alaska cruises and is known for its adorable downtown along the Homer Spit (the second longest spit on the planet!). So, if you happen to already have Homer on your Alaska itinerary, consider adding on a trip to the national park.
Katmai is anywhere from a 45 to 75 minute direct flight from Homer, but, if you luck out with nice weather, you’ll have stunning views of Cook Inlet and the Aleutian Mountains below. Consider checking out this Katmai Bear Viewing from a Seaplane tour or this Katmai Falls Bear Viewing Experience tour.
Tours to Katmai National Park from Anchorage
If you’re not headed to Homer as part of your Alaska trip, there’s a handful of tour operators that offer day trips to Katmai from Anchorage, like Katmai Air and Fly Katmai.
On these offerings, you’ll fly from Anchorage for about an hour and 15 minutes to the teeny town of King Salmon and then take a 20-minute float plane to the national park.
Tours to Katmai National Park from other places in Alaska
Besides Homer and Anchorage, there are a handful of other places around Alaska where you may be able to find a tour to Katmai.
For example, there’s a few operators in Kodiak Island that offer tours to the national park, like Kodiak Island Expeditions or Natural Habitat Adventures. However, these tend to be EXTREMELY expensive multi-day photography adventures, with several days in both Katmai and Kodiak. These definitely are not aimed at your casual bear enthusiast!
Planning your own transportation to Katmai
While most visitors wind up visiting Katmai through a tour, it really isn’t too challenging to get there by yourself. Plus, planning your own transportation here can be quite a bit cheaper than booking a tour.
The only way to plan your own transportation to Katmai is to first fly to the town of King Salmon, which is largely considered to be the gateway to Katmai, and then either take a water taxi or fly to the park itself.
Getting to King Salmon
Anchorage is the only city with direct flights to King Salmon. So if you’re flying from any other airport, you’ll need to connect through Anchorage first.
There’s a handful of commercial airlines that fly from Anchorage to King Salmon, including Alaska Airlines, Horizon Air, and Via Air. During bear season in Katmai, from July through September, you should expect to pay between $400 and $550 per person roundtrip for one of these flights.
This is exactly what Justin and I did—during our massive road trip around Alaska, we stopped in Anchorage to hop on an Alaska Air flight to King Salmon, which cost around $400 per person roundtrip.
Getting to Katmai from King Salmon
From King Salmon, you have two options of getting to Katmai—either a water taxi through Katmai Water Taxi or a flight through Katmai Air.
The Katmai Water Taxi offers a shuttle from the King Salmon airport to its boat launch on Naknek Lake in the national park. From here, you’ll take a 45 minute boat ride across the turquoise waters of the lake to Brooks Camp, the main area that people visit in Katmai. A roundtrip water taxi trip to Katmai costs $450.
Alternatively, Katmai Air offers a shuttle from the King Salmon Airport to a nearby float plane. The flight takes about 20 minutes across Naknek Lake to Brooks Camp. Similarly, a roundtrip flight on Katmai Air costs $450.
If I have one piece of advice about getting to the national park, it would be to book your transportation through Katmai Air, instead of through the water taxi.
Before our trip, the Katmai Water Taxi was about $25 cheaper per person and I had thought that, in cases of bad weather, a boat ride would be less likely to be canceled than a flight. So, I wound up booking our transportation from King Salmon to Katmai through the water taxi service.
It turns out that I was VERY wrong. Katmai Air cancels significantly less trips than the water taxi—plus they give you a full refund if they do wind up canceling. This is not the case with the Katmai Water Taxi—if your boat ride is canceled for any reason, including weather, your ticket is totally non-refundable.
For some crazy reason, I thought it was worth saving $50 on our two tickets with the water taxi rather than shelling out a little bit of extra money for a fully refundable flight. This wound up totally biting me in the butt when we were informed by the Katmai Water Taxi that our boat ride back to King Salmon was canceled, due to the weather forecast, after they had already dropped us off in the park, without cell service or internet.
Accordingly, we spent the first of our four days in our park, panicking about how we were going to get back to King Salmon, instead of enjoying watching the bears. The people working at Katmai Water Taxi were extremely unhelpful about helping us figure out an alternative solution back to King Salmon and, honestly, were quite rude to us.
On the other hand, we wound up eventually booking a flight back to King Salmon with Katmai Air, who conveniently has an office in the national park. Everyone we dealt with there was extremely friendly, kind, and great at communication—about a thousand times more pleasant than our dealings with the water taxi.
When can you get to Katmai?
Katmai is technically open year round.
However, most tour operators, Katmai Air, and the Katmai Water Taxi only go to the national park from June through September, during the prime bear viewing season. The best time to see bears at Brooks Falls is usually July and September when the spawning salmon are swimming upstream.
Outside of this timeframe, you would need to fly to King Salmon on a commercial airline and then charter a (very expensive!) float plane to get to the national park.
There you have it—everything you need to know about getting to Katmai National Park. Do you have any questions about how to get to this magical corner of the country? Let us know in the comments below!
