Top places to see grizzly bears in the US

Grizzly Bears have a much-touted and -deserved fierce reputation in the bear kingdom. Yet, even so, they are very shy around people. You will rarely see them until the sun is nearly set at dusk or after dark. The number of Grizzlies is greatly diminished from where it was even a hundred years ago, due to the diminishing of their natural habitats throughout the continental United States (the lower 48).

Few Grizzly Bears Remain in the Continental U.S. Today

Sadly, only around 1,000 of the majestic Grizzly Bears remain in the continental U.S. This means that your chances of seeing them are better than your odds of taking a good Grizzly Bear photograph. You'll need to go to Canada or Alaska, where most of the Grizzly Bears still live today. In this article, we will look at the top three places to see the remaining Grizzlies in the United States, including Denali National Park Alaska, Yellowstone National Park, and Glacier National Park in Montana. Whichever destination you choose, it is highly recommended to be well aware of the local destination area forecast before you leave on your exciting Grizzly Bear spotting trip.

Denali National Park in Alaska

Your best place to spot a Grizzly and get its picture is in Denali National Park in Alaska. This is where most of these mighty animals that remain still roam (along with Canada's northwest). If you go to Sable Pass in Denali, you get to see various kinds of bears in their natural, high alpine territories (as opposed to a creek flush with salmon), including both Grizzlies and Brown Bears.

Sable Pass makes it especially easy to see the bears without having to take on the unnecessary risks of actually leaving your safe vehicle and the driving tour to run into an angry, hungry bear up close potentially and personally. Besides Grizzlies (and Brown Bears) here, you can also see mountain goats, Caribou, and dozens of other kinds of animals haunting the slopes.

Yellowstone National Park

The good news of Yellowstone is that their Grizzly Bears can be found in the entire Yellowstone National Park. The bad news is that they are most frequently spotted around and in the Dunraven Pass and surrounding areas such as the turn off to Mount Washburn. You may also see them in the Hayden Valley across the Yellowstone River as well as in the Fishing Bridge area and the Lamar Valley.

In winter is the worst time to look for these powerful animals as they hibernate all winter long in protective dens. The cubs are born then and emerge from the dens come springtime with their mothers. Winter is the best season to see them down in the valleys before they head up to the mountains for the rest of the summer and fall. 

The best time of the day to see the Grizzlies is at night when they are most active, or at dusk or dawn. Expect the bears to keep such a distance from you that they are out of effective photograph range. You will likely need a powerful pair of binoculars to spot them. The Yellowstone National Park law reinforces this idea by mandating that you do not come within 100 yards of the bears. 

Glacier National Park, Montana

Glacier National Park in Montana has earned its much-deserved reputation as among the top places to see a Grizzly Bear within the lower 48 states. Guides have run into a greater number of Grizzlies roaming the Glacier National Park than they have in Yellowstone National Park. The naturalists in Glacier proudly claim that their park possesses the greatest density of Grizzly Bears anywhere in the U.S.

A study run by the Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project and Katherine Kendall from the organization went out to Montana several years ago to study the DNA of Grizzly Bears. They observed 563 individual Grizzlies in Glacier National Park.

This is easily more than half of all remaining Grizzlies within the continental United States today, which number only around 1,000 animals.

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