Alaska Park Bear Cam Watchers Save Hiker in Distress

Online viewers hoping to catch a glimpse of brown bears on a live-streaming camera set up at Katmai National Park and Preserve helped save a hiker who stumbled in front of the camera lens.

Wind drowned out most of the words of the unidentified hiker, who appeared to be wet and upset. He can faintly be heard to say "help me."

That's when viewers of the Dumpling Mountain web camera sprang into action.

They flagged Explore.org staff, who manage the cameras, who in turn alerted the National Park Service, which dispatched a search and rescue team at the Alaskan park. 

Rangers located the hiker a few hours later and brought him back to safety. He wasn’t injured. 

It happened Tuesday afternoon at one of the most remote parks in the nation that can only be reached by plane or boat.

"Bear Cam saves a hiker's life!" tweeted Explore.org. "Dedicated bear cam fans alerted us to a man in distress on Dumpling Mountain."

“That was a first for the bear cams for sure,” Explore.org naturalist Mike Fitz told the Washington Post. 

The hiker was caught in windy and rainy weather with poor visibility, park spokesperson Cynthia Hernandez told the newspaper.

There is no cell phone service on Dumpling Mountain — nor shelter where the hiker was lost.  

Commenters posting on X, formerly Twitter, celebrated when the upset hiker was saved.

“It was something to see happening,” wrote one poster. “Huge shoutout to the community member who saw him and immediately reported in multiple rooms to get the word out.”

Another added: “What a story. I love the bear cams, and more so now.”

The cameras are used to capture video of the park’s brown bear population.

Views explode around Fat Bear Week. The annual tradition is a March Madness-style bracket challenge in which the estimated weights of the hefty bears are pitted against each other ahead of winter hibernation, and — unbeknown to them — compete to see which is the chunkiest.

The Dumpling Mountain camera generally gets fewer viewers than other sites, the Post reported.

For instance, Saturday evening shortly before 6 p.m. Eastern Time, only 19 people were watching the camera when The Messenger checked.