(no audio) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music fades) (gentle music) - Today we embark on a journey to America's largest state and the true last frontier of wilderness.

This expedition will take us from the Cook Inlet through the heart of Denali National Park, and to an island full of bears.

I am so excited because I am finally in Alaska.

I've visited almost every state in America except this one, and it's one I've been dreaming about going to for a long time.

I actually just arrived in Anchorage, and while there's a lot to do here, I'm actually gonna be heading to a place that you can only reach by seaplane.

I knew Alaska was gonna be spectacular, but that was just mind blowing how beautiful it was.

But we have arrived at Redoubt Bay Lodge, and this is gonna be my base of operations for the night.

We're gonna go bear viewing in a little bit, but this is a really remote lodge.

Located in a national park, it's the only place you can actually stay.

It used to be a really popular place to come to go fishing, and now it's one of the best places in the Anchorage area to go see bears.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) After dropping my bags off in my cabin, I headed down to the dock to hop aboard a boat in search of any bears that may be on the shoreline.

(gentle music continues) This is exactly what the bears have come to eat, all of these sockeye salmon that are actually right behind me.

We're at the end of the season here for the salmon run, but there's still a lot here ready to swim up the river.

The lodge is located on the big river lakes, right in the middle of a huge critical wilderness area, home to all kinds of wildlife.

In our effort to see something big, brown, and furry, my guide and I went ashore and through the woods to find another small lake.

It's important to stay together and make noise when walking in this habitat, where you never know if a bear might be lurking behind a bush ♪ Great big moose ♪ There are lots of great, big moose ♪ ♪ She likes to drink a lot of juice ♪ ♪ She likes to drink a lot of juice ♪ ♪ Singing ay-oh ♪ Singing ay-oh ♪ Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow ♪ Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow (speaking faintly) ♪ Ow, ow, ow, ow - I often talk to you guys about foraging on a lot of my hikes, and Alaska definitely has a lot of options.

We've got cranberries, raspberries, and blueberries all in one place.

I just got back to the lodge after that wonderful canoe ride, which was just super relaxing.

Sadly, I didn't see any bears, but I've still got one more excursion this afternoon where we might see one.

You know, I was always saying it's the end of the season here.

The bears come down to the lake here to eat salmon, but when they've been eating so much salmon all summer, they actually get pretty full and they head back up into the mountains around now to look for berries.

My guide was telling me today that the bears actually prefer the berries over the salmon.

So now that the blueberries are full and the raspberries, they're probably out in the woods foraging a little bit.

I'm hopeful that we'll see you on this afternoon, but we're gonna go out on some of the bogs here on the lake and have a little bit of a different scenery than we've seen so far.

(gentle music continues) Muskeg is a type of bog that is made up of peat, humus, and other organic materials and forms in wet areas, and the muskeg here is actually floating on top of the lake, and in some areas it's even strong enough to hold the weight of a person or animal.

It's a great habitat for a variety of organisms, one being the Alaskan sundew, which is a carnivorous plant that actually eats bugs.

- [Guide] All right, guys, these are called sundew, they're actually tiny carnivorous plants.

And so it looks like little water droplets on 'em, but it's actually a sticky substance and the eight million bugs that we have flying around out here, they get stuck in there and it just-- - Oh my gosh, it eats them?

Walking on it is like walking on a watered, and despite the fact that it's just decaying plants, it's incredibly strong.

Even large animals like bear and moose can walk on it.

But beware the thin sections, where a fall into the muskeg could trap you underneath.

There are two ways you can come to the lodge here.

One is actually on a day tour where you fly in and out of Anchorage on the seaplane, and the other one is the way that I did by staying the night here.

You can spend as many days here as you want, and I didn't see any bears today, but this is a fantastic place to come.

I really enjoyed it, just being out here really in the wild inside this national preserve.

Just such a beautiful place to be.

And while I didn't see any bears over the last 24 hours, I'm just getting started here in Alaska, and there is a lot more to come.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music fades) (relaxing music) From the Cook Inlet, I headed inland to see one of Alaska's most revered national parks onboard the Alaska Railroad, one of the most beautiful train rides in America.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) Right now, the train is actually stopped just here in the middle of the wilderness.

This is actually called a flag stop, and this is the only train in Alaska where people that actually live way out here in the middle of nowhere can actually flag down the train and they can either bring in mail, packages, things they need shipped, or they can actually also board the train, hop on for a few miles if they need to, and they actually are able to pay by mile for riding the train.

(gentle music continues) All right, we've just arrived here in Denali National Park.

We are at the train depot.

I'm just gonna wait for my shuttle, head to my hotel, and then we've got two full days in the park, and I am so excited for that.

(gentle music continues) There are more than six million acres in Denali, making it one of the largest parks in America.

Full of pristine parkland, magnificent wildlife, and the towering Denali, which are all highlights of this world famous national park.

Good morning, everybody.

First full day in Denali.

I'm gonna be heading out on a little trail this morning, called the Triple Lakes Trail.

It's actually right by the hotel, and as is the sign, which is great.

So I'm gonna do up to the first lake, which is about three miles round trip.

And then we have something really exciting planned.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) So this trail actually goes about nine miles and it connects where we are now with some of the hotels over here to the park.

So you can actually hike it one way if you want, end up over closer to the Visitor Center, and then from there you could hop on a bus into the park.

That's pretty long and obviously not gonna do that whole thing today.

As I said, I'm just gonna head out to this first lake and head back.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) They say Alaska has three seasons, June, July, August, and winter.

And up here in Denali, because it is a little bit farther north than where we've been so far, the colors are rapidly changing already.

You know, most of the berries have passed, which is good news for me being out here by myself, and the colors are just so vibrant.

It's absolutely beautiful.

(gentle music continues) You guys may notice I'm looking around a lot here as we're walking, and that's because I want to make sure I see any bears or other animals if they are out here.

I'm also just talking loudly to myself as I hike here, and I've got a whistle with a bell in it to make noise as well.

Behind me right here is a beaver lodge, so if you've never seen one of these, this is kind of what they look like.

This one's actually really massive, so there's probably a couple families of beavers living in there.

Beavers oftentimes also share their lodges with other animals like ducks and muskrat, and I'm gonna be really quiet and get close, because I can actually hear a little bit of a beaver tail when I was standing over here earlier.

As you can see, just totally alone out here, which is why it's really important to make sure you're being safe while you're out here alone.

I do have my inReach today, I've got a whistle, I've got a safety alarm picking up some bear spray when I get back to the hotel as it wasn't open yet for rentals, and there's just a lot of peace and quiet out here, so it's just beautiful.

Our next hike here in Denali is only reachable by a helicopter or a multi-day hike, so we are just about to hop in one of these and fly to a more remote park outside the park where we're gonna do some more hiking.

Denali National Park and neighboring state park straddle more than 160 miles of the Alaska range, which is some of the best hiking in the world, as long as you don't mind not following a trail.

Now, reaching this area on foot would normally take a few days, so the luxury of a helicopter means that you can hike just about anywhere.

Millions of miles of wilderness behind us.

(speaking faintly) We followed sheep trails for several hours, exploring some of the millions of acres of wilderness with magnificent views of the Alaska range, which are home to almost 4,000 named mountains.

As our hike came to a close, we stumbled upon the carcass of a wolverine, quite a rare species, even up here in Alaska.

This one, our guide explained, was most likely pulled off the mountain by a golden eagle, which is one of the top predators out here in the mountains.

(gentle music continues) This morning, I'm heading out on one of the Denali Park bus tours.

This is probably the most popular way for people to see the park.

Most visitors that come here to Denali do some sort of bus tour, whether they do a narrated or unnarrated version.

I'm gonna be heading out with Back Country at Denali to do their bus tour this morning, which is gonna go to mile 30.

Now, it is after September 3rd, first I should say, and they've significantly reduced the amount of miles the bus will go into the park.

There was also a landslide that closed the road at mile 43.

Now, the road used to go all the way to mile 92, but because of this landslide, it's closed, and probably will be for a few years.

Right now, it's set to reopen in 2026.

Even with this road closure, though, the bus tours are one of the best ways to see wildlife for most visitors.

This is because the Denali Park Road is actually not open to regular vehicle traffic past mile 15.

So in order to get into the park, visitors must take a bus tour or a hiker shuttle, which accesses some of the park's trails and campgrounds.

The first animals I spotted were some moose, the largest animal in the deer family.

And an adult male like this one can weigh upwards of 1,400 pounds.

This time of year is also mating season, so males are in rut.

They can be extremely aggressive and dangerous in this season and often battle with other males with their oversized antlers.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) The park's main large animals are moose, bear, caribou, wolves, and dall sheep.

And if you're heading out by bus, you'll want to bring binoculars and a long lens to try and capture them.

The trail I've chosen this morning is the Horseshoe Lake Trail.

Now, this is only around two miles, so pretty short, and it's actually located just half a mile from the Railroad Depot and Visitor Center.

So the vast majority of trails here in Denali are located in what's called the Front Range, and that's basically the first 15 miles of the park that's accessible by a private vehicle and all of the shuttles as well.

So, most of the 35 actual trails here in the park are in this area, with a lot of them being right here situated around the Visitor Center.

This is one of the more popular hikes because it's so accessible.

And one of the other ones that's in the same area is the Mount Healy Overlook, which is about a seven and a half mile hike.

So if you're looking for more of a challenge and you wanna get up on one of the mountain peaks here, that's also a great option.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) Now, that is a view I certainly can't complain about.

Now, this little walk down the lake only took me about 20 minutes.

It's got some stairs and a little bit of an incline that you're gonna have to go back up, but all in all, pretty easy.

And I would say this is pretty accessible for everyone that's gonna be coming up here to Denali.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

There's a lynx over there.

Oh my God, how cool.

Oh my God, as I was talking to the camera, a lynx walked by me.

It was massive and I wish I could show it to you on camera, but it's gone.

Oh my gosh, that was one of the coolest animal experiences I've ever had.

That lynx was massive.

And you know, he has the little furry ears that are pretty instinctive of a lynx.

I've only ever seen really them in books about wildlife, and he was surprisingly large, the size of a mountain lion.

So that was really cool.

And he seemed to slink off into the forest.

So I'm now just looking at this beaver dam, which is pretty cool.

And you saw in one of the other hikes that we did, we saw a beaver lodge.

This is actually a dam.

They've dammed this entire lake here and created a habitat for themselves.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) Right now I'm in Juneau, Alaska.

I'm gonna be showing you around here for a few days.

Now, Juneau is the capital of Alaska, and the only way to get here is by sea or air, because there are actually no roads coming into Juneau.

This is also a cruise sport, and much of the activities here are catered to those coming in or going on a cruise ship, but we're gonna be doing some whale watching, going to see a glacier, hiking up to the tallest point here in town, and tasting some of the delicious seafood.

One of the really popular things to do here in Juneau is go up to the Mount Roberts mountain.

There's a tramway that will take you up there, but instead of taking it up, we're gonna hike up, we're gonna take it down.

But I'm really excited to show you a little bit of the forest and mountains here.

And then we'll have a pretty epic view on the way down.

In the Tongass National Forest right now.

And as you may have noticed, it is very wet in here.

Definitely a temperate rainforest, and quite muddy.

So if you are gonna do this hike, you definitely need some waterproof boots.

There are also a lot of black bears that live in this area, and maybe if we're lucky, we'll see one.

But the views are pretty incredible through here.

It's just so green.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) We are at the top now of the Mount Roberts Tramway.

Now, this mountain actually continues.

There is another trail where you can connect to Mount Gastineau and then onto the actual summit of Mount Roberts.

But one of the things that a lot of people do is they actually take the tramway up, they walk down.

We're gonna do the opposite today.

As you can see, it's just starting to rain here, does it a lot here in Juneau, so you wanna make sure you bring your rain jacket when you're coming to Alaska, but you get to see a view of the entire downtown region from up here.

And if you're coming on a cruise line, you'll get to see some of the cruise lines down below as well.

(gentle music) The temperate climate in Juneau is much like Seattle, Washington.

With rain common, it's always best to pack layers and bring a rain jacket.

The tramway lands in the port, part of Juno's downtown, which is extremely walkable and filled with shops, restaurants, and bars that I enjoyed perusing in between adventures.

One of the reasons you can't drive into Juneau is because Juneau is actually surrounded by ice fields on all sides and/or water.

One of the most famous ones is this glacier behind me called the Mendenhall Glacier.

Now, we're actually within the Tongass National Forest here.

A lot of the forest is actually made up of ice fields and glaciers.

Now, there's three ways that you can get to this glacier.

One is my bus from town, which is what I took this morning, the Glacier Blue Bus.

It's about $45 round trip, leaves either on the hour or on the half hour from town, takes you, drops you off here at the glacier where you can have as much time as you want to walk around before heading back.

You can also book a tour.

There are companies that will bring you by kayak out here.

You can also book a helicopter or a dog sledding on top of the glacier.

So a bunch of different ways to experience this glacier.

We're gonna be hiking out to Nugget Falls, which is one of the best trails here down at the Mendenhall Glacier.

As the temperature warms here, the glacier actually retreats.

In about the last hundred years, the glacier has retreated more than two miles, and actually where we're standing here was actually under that glacier in about 1950.

When it moves away, it actually leaves behind smooth bedrock, because the weight of the glacier and the moving ice actually crushes and polishes the stone below.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) So this is Nugget Falls, and if you walk down here, which only took about 20 minutes, you can get up close to that waterfall.

You feel the spray right in your face, and it is an absolutely incredible feeling to feel the force of this water.

(gentle music continues) The Alaskan waters are home to many species of migrating whale, but humpbacks are certainly the most common.

And today I was in for one of the most incredible whale experiences of my life.

I didn't just see one whale, but an entire group of whales that gathered together in a cooperative hunting strategy called bubble net feeding.

This is a learned behavior and researchers believe only 12 individual whales in southeast Alaska lead these groups.

So witnessing it was a truly incredible experience.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) Juneau is the only place I've actually seen a bear so far.

Actually, the other night, just right outside at my hotel room, there was a bear in a tree, and today I am actually going to see more bears, fingers crossed, at (indistinct) Island.

It's part of the Tongass National Forest.

It's an island.

We're gonna be taking a sea plane there and I am so excited.

- Chichagof Island is located just off the coast of Juneau in the Alaskan panhandle.

While it may look unpopulated, there are actually over a thousand people that live throughout the three small towns on the island.

These are mostly Tlingit people and they've spent centuries fishing for salmon.

This was the leading industry for many years, but it has now turned to tourism.

The population of salmon is exactly what brought me to this island to see the bears that also love this pink, fatty fish.

- We've just got into Chicicov Island.

There are three main islands in this (indistinct) that have the largest concentration of brown bears on the entire planet.

(gentle music) As I walk to the waterfall, I pass carcass after carcass.

A quick reminder of just how many bears have been here and just how many could come today.

Nearing the end of the season, most bears have moved on from salmon and are deep in the woods, looking to add sugar to their diets after weeks of fatty fish.

My hope was that a few still had a taste for salmon.

So we've just had our first bear sighting, probably an adolescent.

He's not too big, but he's up here just eating some of the fish and he's so beautiful.

Now, this island is actually 75 miles long and 50 miles wide, so bears can easily hide in the dense forest land.

Counter to popular belief, grizzlies and brown bears are actually one and the same, but depending on their geographic location, they often have different names.

Now, bears found in the coastal areas like this are referred to as brown bears.

They're bigger from eating protein-dense salmon, whereas the bears found in the interior areas, the lower 48 states and parts of Canada, are usually referred to as grizzlies.

They eat more vegetables and more berries, and are usually smaller in size.

(gentle music continues) It's amazing to watch just how easily this bear could catch a fish.

A moment underwater with almost zero effort, and his giant paw would reach out of the water with a fish and its grasp.

One bear was incredible, but the real highlight of my day was when mama bear and her two cubs came out of the woods and slowly made their way into the river for a quick swim.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) I could have stayed and watched the bears for hours, but soon enough my plane came back to pick me up.

And with my departure, I closed yet another chapter on an unforgettable adventure, one in which I hope inspires you to get out and explore somewhere near or somewhere far.

And as always, I'll see you in the next adventure.

Never stop exploring.

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