Sow and four cubs draw attention, tension to crowded Chilkoot corridor
- Chilkat Valley News
- Sep 11
- 8 min read
By Rashah McChesney
Chilkat Valley News
The unusual sight of a brown bear sow with four cubs in tow is drawing bear watchers, photographers and enthusiasts to the crowded Chilkoot corridor this year.
For many, it’s a chance for a glimpse at an extraordinary phenomenon with a stunning backdrop. But the sightseers are also causing traffic jams, ignoring bear safety protocol, and state workers say they have gotten several reports of reckless behavior by bear viewers at the state recreation area 10 miles north of town.
Bear 925
The sow, who was tracked for years as part of a long-running study, is known to the state as 925, said Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Anthony Crupi.
She is a creature of habit. Each year, she dens in the Ferebee Range. Then she comes to the lower Chilkoot River in late July or early August.
“Last year, she came to the lower river on the same exact day she did the year before,” he said.
She’ll feed there, almost exclusively on the lower river and lake until October.
“Occasionally, she makes a foray into the lake for sockeye. But she’s very much a homebody,” he said.
Bear 925 is 11 years old, which is in the prime reproductive age for the species, but Crupi said she got off to a slow start.
Typically brown bears start reproducing at age 5, but 925 didn’t successfully have cubs until 2022 when she was 8. Crupi said she had two cubs and both of them survived until they were separated in 2024; he’s not sure what happened to them because they weren’t tracked.
Then, last year, she must have eaten well — at least that’s the assumption because she reappeared with four cubs.
“That bear’s access to salmon is really what drives productivity and reproductive success,” Crupi said. “There’s a strong correlation between the pink salmon run and the number of cubs produced the following year.”
During Fish and Game’s study of local bears, Crupi said they were able to reconstruct the portion of meat in their diet based on blood, hair and tissue samples. 925 has a high percentage of salmon in her diet.
It’s also not clear which bear, or bears, may have sired them. Crupi said Fish and Game has a genetics database of many local bears so, if they were to get DNA from the cubs it’s possible he could identify paternity.
It could be one bear, or multiple bears, and the cubs could have half-siblings in the area. Fish and Game has documented relationships where one male controls breeding in an area. “In a study we did in Berner’s Bay we had one male that sired 16 offspring from six different females and he was the most dominant dad in the whole population,” he said.
The Draw
Sow 925 has been given the widespread nickname Lulu during her time on the river. Local bear watcher Kathleen Menke said that nickname was given to her after she regularly chased a state worker named Lou up the Fish and Game weir that spans the river.
If it is the same bear, she first appeared on the river in 2015 as one of two cubs of another famed Lutak sow nicknamed “Speedy.”
On any given day this summer, a mix of bear watchers, photographers and traffic along the Chilkoot River crowds in on her as she tries to find fish to eat and keep track of all four of her cubs.
One Sunday in August, while the state park ranger was away for training, a bus labeled Alaska Nature Tours parked in the middle of the road and let dozens of people out along the shoreline near the pack. Noticing the growing crowd, other cars slowed to a standstill or pulled off — in one case running over Fish and Game cones — in a marked no-parking zones along the road side.
The sow, who was huffing loudly, headed toward the shoreline and someone in an Alaska Mountain Guides shirt hurried the group down the road and away from her. A handful of people stayed behind, including one man with a camera who crouched behind a tree just a few feet away from the bears.
Upon hearing the details of the situation, regional park superintendent Brad Garasky said the tour operator was violating both its permit conditions and the general rules of the road in the park.
“You can’t just park in the middle of the park road,” he said. “All state traffic laws apply.”
In addition to state traffic laws, commercial tour operators have to agree to a whole list of stipulations, including several specific to the Chilkoot Lake region which, in bold print, makes it clear that there is no stopping allowed on the roadway.
But one violation on the part of a tour operator is not exceptional. According to state records, at least 10 written citations or permit violations have been issued against commercial tour operators in the Chilkoot area in 2025. That doesn’t count the volume of verbal warnings they’ve received.
“Commercial tours are a big contributor but they’re not the sole contributor and that type of behavior and issue has been ongoing for decades,” Garasky said. “It’s not just an issue with commercial operators either.
Independent tourists will go in there, local photographers, any of the park users, whether they’re fishermen or anybody will have a tendency to contribute to this issue.”
In the case of commercial operators, those kinds of violations can lead to a suspension or revocation of permits, or the state can refuse to grant them a permit to operate the following year.
But, Garasky said, that happens on a case-by-case basis and is a decision made by the state parks director.
“I am not aware of any situation that a permit is up for any of these actions based on the egregiousness and/or number of violations,” he said.
A useful crowd
It is not necessarily a problem for a sow to have crowds of people nearby. In some cases, she’ll use them as – essentially – babysitters.
“They’re so afraid of losing their offspring to another bear, whether it’s an adult male or even a female, that they will use people as a shield,” biologist Crupi said. “So at the more popular designated bear-viewing areas – like Pack Creek or Brooks Falls in Katmai – bears will come stash their cubs near the viewing area close to people to go out and fish.”
Male bears tend to avoid the lower river and crowds of people. Crupi said in 25 years of monitoring the area, they’ve never seen one there in the daylight.
The key to keeping that relationship between sows, cubs, and crowds healthy is predictability, Crupi said.
That was the idea of the viewing platforms at Chilkoot, to help keep people in one place – much like they are at places like Pack Creek or Brooks Falls with areas that are designed and managed exclusively for bear viewing.
“It’s not a perfectly engineered solution out there, but keeping people predictable to bears is really important,” Crupi said.
That sow behavior tracks with what California photographers Evan and Paula Zucker saw during their late August visit to the river. This is the second year the two have come to Haines to photograph the Chilkoot River bears.
Zucker and his wife travel the world for the opportunity to photograph wildlife and he said they follow a philosophy of picking a place and waiting for the action to come to them.
“We think that’s the least stressful thing to do,” he said. “My being there stationary, quietly taking pictures is not causing any stress on Lulu or the other bears.”
Before they arrived this year, a friend and fellow traveler told them about the 925/Lulu.
“That was the main thing we were hoping to see so we were thrilled by that,” he said.
While waiting for the chance to shoot photos and videos of the antics of the cubs, the Zuckers end up sitting along the riverbank for hours.
They had a front-row seat to the behavior of the crowds in the area. In fact, Zucker said, a frantic crowd is a good indicator of a nearby bear.
But it’s clear to them that the corridor is unique, particularly given the confluence of people using it for bear-viewing, boating, camping and fishing.
“We’re always watching what the fishermen are going to do when the bears show up,” he said.
Most of the time, they yield to the bears. But this year, the Zuckers saw an incident when a woman who was fishing didn’t know what to do when 925/Lulu approached with her cubs.
“She’s holding the salmon in her hands and waving it and saying ‘go away bear, go away bear.’ But of course Lulu thinks ‘come here bear, come here bear and have this fish,’ he said.
This culminated in a situation where this woman was face-to-face with a bear – fighting over a salmon.
“Obviously we’re concerned about that because if the woman were to get hurt, Lulu gets blamed,” he said. “We were a bit concerned about that incident, but it’s also comical. You have a woman literally waving a fish.”
The consequences could be fatal for all involved. State park ranger Jacques Turcotte has warned people along the riverside all summer that if the sow, under pressure, attacks someone, she would likely have to be euthanized. And, while Crupi said the cubs occasionally eat grass or pick at fish, they are fully dependent on their mother’s milk for survival at this age, so they’d likely have to be killed too.
Zucker said the crowds this year didn’t seem larger or more poorly behaved, but he and Crupi said they saw multiple situations where people ended up between 925/Lulu and her cubs.
“People have this fear of bears when they watch this nature documentary and then they get to the river and all common sense is lost,” Crupi said. “They get so excited to get this photo of the mom and four cubs and they get closer than — probably in the back of their minds — they should. Fortunately she has chosen to be tolerant of people who push those limits.”
The Zuckers have visited Admiralty Island and Kodiak Island to see and photograph bears as well. One big difference is that those areas are managed specifically for bear viewing, so it’s easier to divert and control a crowd.
From his perspective, Zucker said it would be good to have more signage specifically about bears in the corridor. He searched online for rules about bears and bear photography before he visited and didn’t find clear resources.
“Lots of people ignore signs, obviously, but the main signs I saw are about fishermen yielding to bears. I know rules exist for that, but there’s definitely no rules [outside of the weir zone] where people can photograph bears.”
• This article was originally published by the Chilkat Valley News.
