Seeing bears on our own in Juneau or Skagway?

[flipflops84]

Hi everyone. We are going on an Alaskan cruise in a few weeks and would love to see a bear or two while in port in Skagway or Juneau. We don't want to go on a floatplane (or any kind of plane!) or a formal tour, and I'm not one for hiking in the woods :o, so I was wondering. If we rented a car at one of these ports is there some place (a park? a road with lots of bear sightings? etc) we could go to see bears from the safety of our car and on our own time (ie not w/ a tour operator)? Thanks in advance for the responses :)

[Budget Queen]

Any bear sightings are going to be PURE Chance. And I'm assuming you are willing to spend the entire day doing this?? Either port, "can" offer you this. In Juneau, Mendenhall "area", can have bears.

 

Out of Skagway- you "may" have a bear sighting, IF you, again have a car and all day. Can't offer any specific location, but driving to Emerald Lake and back, is a possibility.

[Rickey 88]

You asked about seeing bears from your ship - and several replied that your chances are very remote.

 

I'm afraid the same holds true in sightings from a car. Bears are solitary creatures and as a rule, do not hang out at the side of a road waiting for someone to take their picture.

 

If you are coming to Alaska just to be able to see bears and other wildlife, you stand a good chance of being disappointed. To those who always seem to ask "where can I see bears?" - the best answer is at a zoo.

 

Sorry to be so blunt - but unless you spend several weeks in Alaska and go deep into one of the National Park areas, you're probably going to be disappointed.....

[PennyAgain]

Your chances of seeing bears on your own are slim to none.

[akb5k]

You'll probably be disappointed if that's the whole point of your driveor trip to a glacier- they're wild animals, after all. Isn't there a bear sanctuary somewhere you could visit? On the other hand maybe I'm a bear magnet- we ran across them everywhere. Mostly hiking (Juneau, Seward, Denali) but also several along the road from Skagway to Carcross. We were actually trying to just stay out of their way.

[2Scots]

We were in Skagway this past Tuesday (Golden Princess), since we had been there twice before we rented a car from Sourdough. Using SD gave us the option to drive down gravel roads-in particular we wanted to drive out on the Dyea Road just outside Skagway on our return from the Yukon.

 

Well-we made it out to the cemetery and settlement ruins and decided to go a little further to the tidal marsh area- sure enough as we got near the stream we saw a young male griz (about 3-4 years old) feeding in the stream. He stood up a lot and spent a lot of time where a fisherman had just cleaned several salmon.

Spent about half an hour there and a 'parkie' came up and said a mother and two cubs were spotted earlier that morning.

Got a lot of videos on a Flip- will have to figure out how to post them here..

 

Then- the next moring sailing into Glacier Bay our attention turned to a whale carcass with a mother and cubs feeding on it!

 

So they are there- took us 3 trips to see them!

 

Actually, we had flown out to the Khutzeymateen from Prince Rupert several years ago for a 3 hour floatplane/boat excursion and saw several bears from a distance on the shoreline.

[Keith1010]

As others have said it will be unlikely you will see bears. We've been there several times and not sightings for us.

 

Keiht

[4_THE_HALIBUT]

Actually, that we me and my husband fishing the flats in Dyea. We were on the Princess Diamond and had rented a car to allow us to go fishing. We had been fishing for about an hour and I had caught 3 pink salmon before the bear decided to join in on our fun. Had to leave our net as we slowly, noisely backed away. We hung around another 3 hours, and so did the bear. Had to wait until he went upstream before I could retrieve our net. You can see it on the far left side of the picture where the pebbled shore expands out into the stream. Had to step out of the van and filet a fish each time the bear went upstream. Even though we chopped up and threw the carcass in the deeper part of the stream, that bear was very interested in the rock we used as a cutting board. At one point, he actually stood up on his hind legs and looked directly into our van window, not even 3 feet away.

 

We were told there were bears spotted all week in that area, but with the week cover, he managed to sneak up on us. Didn't see him until he jumped into the water right in front of us and grab a fish.

 

To us, this was a true Alaska experience. And people wonder why we keep going back.

[PennyAgain]

Most tourists don't fish and don't clean fish!

 

I've seen bears plenty but I love to be where they actually are.

[RLBlack]

The salmon are coming up the streams now, so it is possible in the early morning- or evening that you will see a bear here and there. But if they are at the stream eating- best place to be will be inside a car.

 

There are reports of a number of sightings at the Mendenhall Glacier- the Forest Service folks keep a good look out and try to keep us all safe out there.