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Map of Katmai National Park and surrounding area. Katmai National Park and Preserve is a United States national park and preserve in southwest Alaska, notable for the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes and for its brown bears. The park and preserve encompass 4,093,077 acres (6,395.43 sq mi; 16,564.09 km 2), which is between the sizes of Connecticut ...
- The Earliest Inhabitants Established Camps On The Katmai Pacific Coast Almost 6,000 Years Ago. As a retired history teacher and lifelong history buff, I love origin stories.
- The First Europeans To Arrive In The Katmai Area Were Russians. Another of the fascinating Katmai National Park Facts concerns the first Europeans to visit Katmai.
- On June 6, 1912, The Largest Volcanic Eruption Of Its Kind Occurred, Creating Katmai Caldera and the Valley Of 10,000 Smokes. One of the most fascinating Katmai National Park Facts has to do with the creation of two of the park’s most iconic landmarks – Katmai Caldera & the Valley of 10,000 Smokes.
- Katmai National Park Became A Center Of Scientific Exploration. The catastrophic eruption, which produced the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century, also sparked scientific curiosity about Katmai, which is another fascinating Katmai National Park Fact.
Mount Katmai (Russian: Катмай) is a large active stratovolcano (composite volcano) on the Alaska Peninsula in southern Alaska, located within Katmai National Park and Preserve. It is about 6.3 miles (10 km) in diameter with a central lake-filled caldera about two by three miles (3.2 by 4.8 km) in size, formed during the Novarupta eruption of 1912.
- Overview
- Going back in time in the backcountry
- Navigating by photos
On a 200-mile trek in the Katmai Preserve, archaeologists document life before the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century.
In 1912, an eruption of the volcano Novarupta formed the caldera and crater lake at the summit of Mount Katmai. A 2018 expedition set out to uncover traces of Katmai National Park’s history before the massive explosion.
Standing on a beach in late May 2018, surrounded by her team members and gear, Laura Stelson thought, “What have I gotten myself into?”
An archaeologist who started working for Katmai National Park & Preserve two years earlier, Stelson was about to lead a four-week expedition, retracing historic routes by a National Geographic explorer in the 1910s. The modern-day expedition’s goal was to find and manage evidence of the trips a hundred years ago as well as the populations that had lived in the area before it was forever changed by a massive volcanic explosion. Stelson’s expedition would cover at least 200 hiking miles, using eight different base camps along the way.
The nearly 5 million acres of the combined park and preserve—more than three times the size of Grand Canyon National Park—sit about 290 miles southwest of Anchorage. There are no roads into Katmai, most of which is designated wilderness where no hunting is allowed. The only way in is by boat or float plane.
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Although Stelson had been preparing for months and had some previous backpacking experience, her trip through both the Katmai River Valley and the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes was far and away the most ambitious backcountry adventure she had ever set out on, let alone led.
“Certainly nothing on the scale of having a bush plane drop me off in the middle of nowhere in Alaska and having to hike my way out over three weeks. I was very overwhelmed by that prospect,” says Stelson.
Zoom in to see Brooks Camp, the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, Novarupta, and Katmai Pass.
The team included a rotating cast of nine people, some who arrived along with new supplies by float planes.
But most of the travel was by foot. While nobody sensible would label any backcountry travel in Alaska a walk in the park, Katmai’s terrain adds extra challenges—and rewards.
“Katmai is a very unique place with all these different types of landscapes presented in one single park,” says Stelson. “You have coastal beaches. You have tundra. You have spruce forest, mountains, volcanoes, and you have this weird desert. So there’s just a lot of environmental diversity and diversity of experiences.”
Maps played just one role in plotting the route the group took during the trip. Traversing a landscape that has seen major shifts due to climate change and other environmental factors requires other guidance. So Stelson and her team relied on photos from Griggs’ expeditions to figure out where Griggs’ group had hiked and set up camps.
“We tried to put ourselves as closely as we could to their position,” she says.
Adds Orlinsky: “We were wandering around in circles, you know, trying to match the peaks of the mountains [in the photos] with the peaks of the mountains [in front of our eyes]. It was more challenging than we thought [it would be].”
The team also tried to reshoot many of the photos, known as repeat photography, to document a century of erosion, vegetation regrowth since the eruption, and glacial melt.
But thanks to those very same environmental changes, repeat photography didn’t make for easy navigation.
“It added a lot of detouring and it put the landscape into perspective. We would hike four kilometers to the spot we thought was going to be the photo retake point, and then realize that we were still way off,” says Stelson.
The national park was named after volcano Mount Katmai. Katmai is a stratovolcano reaching a height of 6,716 feet (2,047 m). It features a large caldera summit with a glacier inside the caldera. Several other glaciers have formed on the sides of the mountain. The floor of the caldera is at an elevation of 820 feet (250 m) below the rim.
In time, Griggs thought they would rival the geysers of Yellowstone National Park. So convinced of the Valley’s uniqueness and it’s scientific significance, Griggs and the National Geographic Society lobbied to protect the area. Largely because of their efforts, Katmai National Monument was created by presidential proclamation in 1918.
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Learn About the Park Katmai was declared a national monument in 1918 to preserve the living laboratory of the cataclysmic Novarupta-Katmai eruption, particularly the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Since then, Katmai has become significa
