with Above And Beyond Alaska.







should be in Alaska forum!
this company did a wonderful job for my wife and this week on our Waterfall Creek bear viewing trip from Juneau. starting even before our arrival in Alaska, they were very responsive to my questions and concerns through email, text, and by phone. we were informed with plenty of notice that we may experience a need to reschedule our trip due to weather (which we had prepared for by having a free day both before and after our scheduled trip) and this did occur. fortunately for us our rescheduled day broke with high clouds and warm temps. slightly unfortunately, this brings about low fog, which is a problem for float planes. but our guide, Myles, who also picked us up from our hotel, was right upfront about this issue. so our original delay of thirty minutes eventually became about 3 hours while the fog lifted. they kindly drove us back to the hotel with a plan to repick up for our later departure.then it was finally time to load into the plane. we were provided with rubber boots due to our having to step from the plane into water at the shore on arrival, a place to leave anything we didn't want to have at the viewing site, a nice souvenir water bottle, and hearty snacks/lunch to enjoy in the wild. and rain gear was made available should we want or need-which we didn't. the seaplane is quite an experience especially if you've never had it before. but it provides some really spectacular views of the Alaska wilderness around Juneau, including of Mendenhall Glacier, and the island and waterways on our travel path. We were even able to see a few humpback whales from the air. after about 30 minutes we descended to a beautiful calm bay and disembarked for a 15 minute or so walk (after some snacks) into the viewing site along a river near the base of the falls. the company had a group onsite before we arrived so all total there were about 11 folks with our arrival. before we even set up at the site-where folding seat cushions with backs were provide as we sat on the ground-i was able to see two juvenile (2 yrs old?) brown bears moving after fish in the river. paying us no mind as it was food they were interested in. Myles gave us all the details on how to handle our time at the site and answered all our questions easily and comfortably. a great asset to the company. over the next 4 hours or so we watched the two juveniles, a mom with last years cub, a large solo male(?), and another mother with twin cubs from this year. we were never without a bear to watch the entire time we enjoyed at the site.

in my opinion, from start to finish, Above and Beyond Alaska was a first-class operation. we booked far in advance and our highest expectations were truly met. weather can't be controlled but these guys handled working around is beautifully so our trip was still a total success. don't hesitate to book with them if bear viewing is on your Juneau area adventure.

We added Trip Report and Alaska tags. To clarify how the forums work, there is no Alaska Forum, or any other state for the matter. There is one general United States board. Topics can be tagged for one or more states. But all threads are lumped together on the one US Forum whether they are tagged ot not.

WOW! Great photos. You really lucked out with the bear sighting.

Thanks Mel! Fabulous!

Thanks for sharing, glad you had this wonderful opportunity!

Fantastic pictures! Bears are my favorite. Well, bears, bison, and beluga whales! I really enjoyed looking at your pictures. I'm looking to relocate somewhere rural soon and secretly hoping it's where I get to see plenty of bears, moose, and deer wandering around.

thanks for the nice comments. sounds like your moving to Minnesota or Maine to get those three in one place.

attaching a few more photos-

Thanks for sharing your wonderful shots, melproffit! May I ask how far away you were from the bears? Or, what is the zoom on your camera?! Was your hotel included?

thanks for the nice comments. i'm not great with distances but i would say at the closest, which was rare, about 150 yards. mainly i'd say about 300+ yards. my camera has a 60x optical zoom but at full zoom it is very difficult-for me-to get a well focused photo as any hand movement creates a blurred image. 24x is the standard zoom and i find it works best between that and about 48x. our trip did not include any hotel. this was a day trip out of Juneau with a 30 minute floatplane ride included.

Thanks for the info.

Great photos! What time of year did you go?

How wonderful to see your bear sighting photos! We had a similar experience in Katmai NP, flew there from Homer, AK. Amazing to these bears in the wild.

Wonderful pictures. This must have been amazing for you. What month were you on this trip?

August of '22 during the salmon run

Thanks.