Kat’s River View
Live Cam

Kat's River View looks out over the lower Brooks River in Katmai National Park, close to the point where the river empties into Naknek Lake. It is a calm, wide stretch of shallow water favoured by female brown bears and their cubs, and the camera sits patiently on it while the Alaskan day moves slowly across the surface.

Why the Lower River? Most bear watching attention goes to the waterfall upstream, but the lower river is where mothers bring their cubs to fish in gentler water and away from the biggest males. That makes it one of the best places anywhere to watch young bears learning how to catch salmon, fail, try again, and gradually get the hang of it.

Kat's River View highlights: As you enjoy the live view, be sure to look out for:

• Cubs Learning To Fish: Young bears splashing after salmon in the shallows while their mother works the same water nearby with far more success.
• Salmon On The Move: During the run you can sometimes see fish breaking the surface as they push upstream toward the falls and spawning grounds.
• Long Alaskan Light: Summer evenings stretch on for hours here, throwing soft low light across the river mouth and the far shore of Naknek Lake.

Beyond the River: Katmai covers a vast stretch of the Alaska Peninsula, a landscape of volcanoes, tundra, braided rivers and lakes with almost no roads. Brooks Camp is reached mainly by float plane, so most people will never stand on this riverbank. The camera is the next best thing to being there.

Thanks to explore.org and its camera operators for keeping this view open to everyone, free and around the clock. The camera is named for CamOp Kat, who led the team for years, and it remains one of the gentlest windows onto wild Alaska anywhere online.

Put Kat's River View on in the background and wait, because sooner or later a bear wanders into frame and the whole river suddenly feels a great deal closer.