So Kocinski tries to keep the people from tempting the bears into trouble. If we can smell it, the bears can certainly smell it. In other places in Alaska, bear viewing, always potentially dangerous, is tightly controlled. Stay close to your vehicle with the door open. Even there grizzlies are most likely to be seen through a long lens.
Grizzly bears are the masters of Alaska's wilderness.
But generally they prefer to stay well away from people. And in most of the state, getting even this close is unusual but now some of Alaska's most famous grizzlies are as close as the World Wide Web. The celebrated bears of McNeil River are now on the Internet. But the fuzzy first attempt at live bear viewing from an extremely safe distance still comes nowhere close to what's available at Hyder. Or might one of the powerful stars of this show one day get fed up with the paparazzi.