Carl Johnson

Carl Johnson Carl explores wild places of the United States, circumpolar Arctic, and Botswana.

This will be the last photo I post for a bit from my recent trip out to Chinitna Bay with Brown Bear Bay Suites. I am he...
09/04/2026

This will be the last photo I post for a bit from my recent trip out to Chinitna Bay with Brown Bear Bay Suites. I am heading up to Fairbanks today to meet up with clients for our autumn trip to the Brooks Range. The next few days of photos will be from that trip.

There are several things I love about this photo of a wolf. First, the color. We have so many plants that contribute to our autumn colors in Alaska, and here the tidal sedges are creating that pop. Second, I took this photo from the balcony outside my room. It really does not get any better than that when it comes to wild accommodations! And third, I love how the wolf's fur color really is a great match for its surroundings.

More to come later on photos from the trip. You can read my Site Visit report I posted to the blog for Alaska Photo Treks. - https://alaskaphototreks.com/site-visit-brown-bear-bay-lodge/

I had a vision for this morning from when I first got up and saw the low, moody clouds hanging around the mountains. I w...
08/31/2026

I had a vision for this morning from when I first got up and saw the low, moody clouds hanging around the mountains. I wanted to get a bear in the foreground with those dramatic cloud-enshrouded mountains in the background. We found this sow and cub resting on the end of a spit and waited. Once in a while, a sound would get their attention and they would lift their heads a little, but not much. This time, they both raised their heads enough to provide some separation between each other and their background. Another marvelous day in Chinitna Bay with Brown Bear Bay Suites!

08/31/2026

And now for a more humorous video ... Among the many things we viewed at the Brown Bear Bay Suites was this sow brown bear scratching her back on a scent-marking tree. I was about thirty feet away from her, watching from my balcony.

08/26/2026

Cockpit view of takeoff from a gravel spit on a turbo DeHavilland Beaver. Great view of the area we spent a week photographing bears and wolves. The dark building towards the end after takeoff is the lodge where we stayed.

For those who want to make a point of correcting me and saying this is a turbine Beaver, not a turbo Beaver, we are both correct. The term "turbine beaver" is most commonly used by pilots to describe a Beaver retrofitted or built with a turbine engine rather than the original piston radial. The name "turbo beaver" is the official factory model name given by de Havilland Canada to the DHC-2 Mk III (designated the de Havilland Canada DHC-2T Turbo Beaver).

08/25/2026

Meet Bearnice and her two cubs. Every time mom catches a salmon, the darker cub comes over and complains. Mom is reluctant to hand over a fish easily, so the dark cub works to steal the fish. Sometimes in the confusion, the blonde cub gets the salmon or salmon scraps. This time, the dark cub was the winner, even though he had to get a smack from mom to get it.

08/24/2026

Part of the standard practice at Brown Bear Bay Suites is for all guests and guides to sit down on buckets when bear viewing. The low profile shows the bears that you are not a threat. And rather than chasing bears, it just allows the bears to come to us. Another practice is to provide a minimum of a 20-foot buffer to the shore to allow bears to freely move along the shore when fishing. They have found that this provides enough space for them to be comfortable and continue along the shore without diverting. In the case of this curious spring brown bear cub, it gave the bear the comfort to move in front of us and come over to check out this odd thing on the ground (which was my Insta360 x5 camera).

08/23/2026

And that’s how a DeHavilland Beaver lands on a gravel spit in the wilderness. Time to fly back to Homer. What a great week out in Chinitna Bay with Brown Bear Bay Suites!

I am currently on weather hold for our return flight to Homer. That is the way it goes sometimes when out in the wilds o...
08/22/2026

I am currently on weather hold for our return flight to Homer. That is the way it goes sometimes when out in the wilds of Alaska. When camping, you always take a few extra days of food with you in case your air taxi cannot come and pick you up. Fortunately here at Brown Bear Bay Suites, they are taking good care of us. While weather can sometimes cause flight problems, it often creates conditions for beautiful landscape photos, like the lingering and shifting patches of fog we were seeing yesterday.

08/21/2026

One of the locations where we have been going to watch bears is at the end of a spit, near one of the river channels where the salmon have been running. On our way out to the spit this morning, we stopped because we had an unexpected visitor. A wolf was standing towards the end of the spit. After we stopped for a while, it started to trot in our direction. I shot this quick video with my iPhone so I can put it down and take a few photos. It passed only 20 feet away from us.

08/21/2026

We had a tense moment during bear viewing yesterday on a rainy afternoon. A sow with a spring cub had been near us for a while. The sow was fishing while the cub was on shore, wandering around by his own, loudly complaining (wet, hungry, take a guess). Another sow came into the area and the cub’s mom quickly stopped fishing and ran to her cub’s side, smacking her mouth repeatedly (a sign of stress). The two adult bears did a slow pass of each other (pictured here), and then all was well. Our guides knew the other bear wasn’t a threat to the cub, but mom cannot take that risk. In a low salmon year like this, adult bears will kill cubs for food. - Chinitna Bay, Alaska

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