Today is the day. The Fat Bear will be crowned. For the past week, Fat Bear Week has been underway at Katmai National Park in Alaska.
The great thing about Fat Bear Week is that you don’t have to actually be there to check out the bears. In fact, you probably don’t really want to be. The bears in question are Alaskan Brown Bears, which are a sub-set of Grizzlies. The bears hang out around the Brooks River in the park, enjoying the salmon run.
By enjoying, that would mean trying to eat every salmon they possibly can. They arrive in the area around July, usually down to pretty much skin and bones. Well… they are bears, so there are also teeth and claws. Bear experts figure most of the bears probably weigh around four hundred pounds or so when they arrive. When they leave, about the time to crawl into a hole for the winter and sleep off a two month long meal, they are up close to a thousand pounds. As close as people can figure. No one is going out a weighing these bears.
For the bears, putting on the pounds is a matter of survival. They can drop about a third of their body weight during their winter hibernation, so packing on the pounds now is important.
I’ve been checking in a bit, and these bears are some serious chonks. Now it’s down to the final two. 151 Walker has been looking pretty good and packing on the pounds. 480 Otis apparently has some dental issues, but isn’t letting that stop him. And Otis is already a three time Fat Bear champ, including being the first to be named Fat Bear back in 2014.
Not only can you vote for your favourite Fat Bear https://explore.org/fat-bear-week#about , you can also watch them hang around the river, eating fish. Although there is a time difference. As I was writing this, there was only one bear hanging out at the falls. He didn’t seem to be catching too many fish. And it was snowing, which I don’t like to see. But it is Alaska.
So check out the Fat Bears and vote for your favourite. Voting is open until 6:00 PM Alaska time, which I believe should be about 10:00 PM our time.
Watching bears can be fun… from a distance.
