Katmai National Park and Preserve

Katmai is the most famous of Alaska's remote parks for two simple reasons: bears and volcanoes. Although Katmai sees only a fraction of the number of visitors to Denali National Park, its name echoes with mythical force to Alaskans. Katmai is true wilderness Alaska, a place many locals long to visit and very few have. Remote and expensive (even by Alaska travel standards) to reach, with limited visitor facilities (except for a few very nice wilderness lodges), once there you have Alaska to yourself. The price is certainly steep, but guaranteed to buy the trip of a lifetime. Katmai’s 4 million acres offer up plenty of opportunities for wildlife viewing and an extraordinary perspective on the awesome power of volcanoes—still active throughout the park. The 1912 eruption sequence was one of the most powerful ever recorded and covered more than 46,000 square miles with ash. Today, this wild, remote area at the northern end of the Alaska Peninsula is home to almost 30 species of mammals, including moose, foxes, lynx, and wolves, all sharing the landscape with bears fishing for salmon from the banks of streams and rivers and along the coast.