At Katmai’s Brooks Camp, tourists and bears mingle mostly carefree

Bears barely seem to notice the 40 people watching them from the Brooks Falls platform. (Photo by KDLG)
Stepping off a float plane onto the beach at Brooks Camp can be disorienting.
“Where are the falls? Where are all these bears? Do we just walk there now?” one wonders.
The answers to these questions – and plenty of others – are answered at a brief orientation film shown to nearly every visitor before they make the short hike up to Brooks Falls, one of Alaska’s mos