Backpack, a Quiet Giant of Brooks River, Wins Fat Bear Week

After a week of bracket voting by fans around the world, a brown bear known as Backpack has been crowned the champion of Fat Bear Week, the online celebration of the bears that spend the summer gorging on salmon at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska.

Backpack, officially Bear 89, won Tuesday’s final against Bear 910, receiving 103,334 votes to her 98,253, according to the tally published by explore.org, the nonprofit that runs the contest’s live cameras. That gave him just over half of the votes in the final round. Across the full contest, voters cast more than 2.5 million ballots.

This year’s field included 16 bears in a single-elimination bracket, with daily matchups from September 22 through Tuesday. Organizers included five bear families, a nod to the record number of mothers and cubs seen along the Brooks River this summer. One of them, Bear 132 and her three spring cubs, made it to the semifinals before losing to 910.

Backpack has deep roots in the contest. He is the son of Holly, a former champion, who first brought him to the river as a cub in 2006. His name comes from his habit of riding on his mother’s back when they swam. His contestant profile praised his quiet strength, and he is known for rarely picking fights with rivals. He reached the final by beating Bucky, the bear who had knocked out last year’s winner, Chunk, in the first round.

The vote was a measure of affection as much as girth. Backpack’s margin in the final was about 5,000 votes out of more than 200,000, and the runner-up carried her own pedigree as the daughter of 409 Beadnose, another past champion. Bucky came within about 4,000 votes of Backpack in the semifinal round.

The contest, now in its 12th year since starting in 2014, asks the public to vote for the bear that has best bulked up ahead of hibernation. Salmon begin returning to the Brooks River in late June, and a bear can eat as many as 30 fish a day at the height of the run. Adult males often weigh 600 to 900 pounds in midsummer and can top 1,000 pounds by autumn. Over the winter, they can lose a third of their body weight while they sleep.

About 2,200 brown bears live in Katmai National Park and Preserve, and the bears that gather at the Brooks River each summer can be watched on explore.org’s livestream cameras, which have turned individual animals into familiar characters with followings of their own.

Chunk, last year’s champion, was estimated at about 1,200 pounds when he won. This year the crown goes to a bear whose fans praise him less for brute size than for his calm.