In the annual battle of the big bears, only one can be the winner. This year, 89 Backpack, was crowned the winner of Katmai National Park and Preserve’s Fat Bear Week.
The match came down to two single bears in a battle of the sexes. Backpack is an adult male who overcame an injury in 2007 and has what park staff describe as a “quiet toughness,” according to his bio on Explore.org, the media organization that helps host the event. And on the other side, representing the lady bears, was 910, an adult female whose mother, 409 Beadnose, was a previous Fat Bear Week champion.
It was a nail-biter: Backpack won by just over 5,000 votes, coming in with 103,344 over 910’s tally of 98,253 votes.
His name comes from childhood, when Backpack was often seen clinging to the back of his mother, Holly, while she swam across the river. (Holly was also a former Fat Bear Week champion.)
Earlier in the competition, Naomi Boak, a former communication specialist for the Katmai Conservancy who was a producer for the event for several years, said she was excited to see that 89 Backpack had earned a spot in the bracket at long last.
Backpack can be “elusive,” Boak said, making it hard to photograph him at the beginning and end of the season, which is necessary to enter a bear into the competition.
Boak was actually inspired to move to Alaska and work with the park when she watched Backpack from her New York City apartment in 2019 on the park’s livestream. She described him as her “gateway bear.”
Backpack, according to his bio, has fewer scars than might be expected on a male bear his age, because he is less aggressive than some of his peers.
“Unlike many large adult male bears, Backpack hasn’t shown much aggression toward his competitors,” his competition bio said. “He’ll stand up for himself when necessary, but he prefers to use a quiet strength to gain access to preferred fishing spots.”
Boak called him “a gentleman bear.”
This year, the event, which celebrates the feeding season at the Alaska park, had the competition’s biggest lineup in its 12-year history. There were nepo babies (cubs whose parents were previous winners) and upstart newcomers, but, mostly, there were just some really fat bears. For the first time, the contest included bear families for consideration. (The event did away with Fat Bear Junior, which was for cubs, to make space for the families.)
Bear fans watch a livestream of the brown bears feeding at Brooks Falls, a salmon run in the park, and then carefully consider before and after photos showing how much weight each bear gained over the summer. Participants vote on which bear they believe is the chunkiest chunk of them all in a sports-style bracket. The week also raises money for the Katmai Conservancy.
In the semifinals, 910 easily defeated her opponent by a little over 70,000 votes. Backpack narrowly advanced by just 4,100 votes.
Despite losing in the polls, 910 “looks really great for at this time of the year,” Mike Fitz, a former park ranger and resident naturalist at Explore.org, told The New York Times earlier during the competition. He added, “She is a balloon of a bear.”
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