Bear with me: Alaska’s new internet stars

By: Paige Apps, Contributing Writer

Every September, my family has an unusual tradition: We argue over bears. A few years ago, my uncle introduced us to the annual tradition of Fat Bear Week, a bracket–style competition where people around the world vote for their favorite brown bear at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska.

What started as something my uncle showed us has become something my family looks forward to every year — a close second to the Kentucky Derby. We check the brackets, debate which bears deserve to move on and, inevitably, get attached to a bear that does not make it as far as we hoped.

Except for me. This year, the competition ended with Bear 89, better known as “Backpack,” taking the title. What can I say, I know how to pick my bears. Backpack defeated Bear 910 in the final round, earning 103,334 votes to Bear 910’s 98,253. More than 2.3 million votes were cast throughout this year’s competition.

For longtime Fat Bear Week followers, Backpack was an easy bear to root for. The 20–year–old bear has been familiar to viewers for years through the Brooks River live cameras. His nickname comes from his time as a cub, when he would ride on his mother’s back while she swam through the river. His mother, Holly, was the 2019 Fat Bear Week champion.

Backpack also has a story that makes his victory more meaningful. As a young bear, he suffered a serious leg injury that raised questions about whether he would survive. His leg eventually healed, and he grew into one of the many recognizable bears along Brooks River.

But Fat Bear Week is not really about finding the bear with the biggest belly. The bears spend the sumer feeding on salmon, building up the fat reserves they need to survive the winter. The National Park Service says large bears can gain hundreds of pounds before retreating to their winter dens. Fat Bear Week began in 2014 as a way to showcase that transformation and teach people about Katmai’s brown bears and their ecosystem.

That educational side is part of what makes the competition so easy to get invested in. Viewers are not just looking at photos of random bears. Through the live cameras and individual bear biographies, they learn their names, recognize their habits and start to develop favorites.

Fat Bear Week has become one of those small traditions that brings everyone together, even if the subject is a group of bears thousands of miles away. For a competition that began as a simple way to celebrate bears preparing for winter, Fat Bear Week has certainly grown into something much bigger. And for one week each year, being the biggest bear around is something worth celebrating. Heavy is the bear that wears the crown. Like, really heavy.