50 free Katmai National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Katmai National Park trivia quiz covers the four-million-acre park and preserve on the Alaska Peninsula that most people know from the bear cams: brown bears snatching sockeye salmon at Brooks Falls, and the annual Fat Bear Week vote. Questions cover the bears and salmon, Otis and the other webcam stars, the coast at Hallo Bay, the wolves, moose and lynx that share the park, and the practicalities of a park with no road connection to the outside world. The other half of Katmai's story is fire: the June 1912 eruption of Novarupta, the largest of the 20th century, which collapsed Mount Katmai's summit and buried a valley in ash so hot it steamed for decades. Questions follow Robert Griggs and the National Geographic expeditions that named the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, Woodrow Wilson's 1918 monument, the Hoover expansion that took in Brooks Falls, ANILCA in 1980, the Exxon Valdez oil, and the death of Timothy Treadwell. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is marked on every question, so it works for a bear-cam watch party or a serious park-nerd challenge. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy it, try our US National Parks and Volcanoes quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Katmai's headquarters town lies about 290 miles southwest of which Alaskan city?
Anchorage
The park sits on the Alaska Peninsula across the water from Kodiak Island; there is no road link to the rest of the state.
Q 02Katmai holds the world's largest protected population of which animal, estimated at about 2,200?
Brown bears
They gather at the falls when the salmon run; because rangers never let them get human food, the bears are famously indifferent to people.
Q 03Which fish draws the bears to Katmai's rivers each summer?
Sockeye salmon
They enter the Naknek drainage from Bristol Bay in June and July and spawn from August to October, feeding bears, eagles and people alike.
Q 04At which waterfall, a mile and a half from Naknek Lake, do bears famously catch leaping salmon?
Brooks Falls
The falls are only about six feet high; up to 25 bears have been seen there at once in July, the peak month.
Q 05How high is the waterfall the salmon must leap on the Brooks River?
About 6 feet
The Bureau of Fisheries even blasted out part of the falls in 1921 to help the fish; the best viewing months are July and September.
Q 06What is the annual online contest in which the public votes for Katmai's fattest bruin?
Fat Bear Week
Run with Explore.org each autumn, it draws over a million votes and was called the state's most-watched popularity contest by the Associated Press.
Q 07The park's fat-bruin contest began in 2014 as what?
A one-day Facebook vote
Former ranger Mike Fitz started it as Fat Bear Tuesday; it celebrates hyperphagia, the feeding frenzy before hibernation.
Q 08Which patient, conflict-avoiding bear, number 480, won the park's fat-bruin vote four times?
Otis
First identified at the falls in 2001, he was called a zen master for scooping fish from the shore; he had a floppy ear and only two canines left, and did not return in 2024.
Q 09A Katmai bear can eat as much as how much salmon in a single day during hyperphagia?
120 pounds
That can mean 30 fish a day and weight gains of four pounds daily; big males can top 1,200 pounds by November.
Q 10Roughly what fraction of its body weight can a bear lose during hibernation?
Up to a third
They neither eat nor drink until spring, which is why the autumn fat matters so much, especially for pregnant females.
Q 11The 1912 eruption in what is now Katmai was the largest of the 20th century; which vent produced it?
Novarupta
For decades Mount Katmai got the credit; only in 1954 was the small new vent shown to be the real source.
Q 12The 1912 eruption released how many times the magma of Mount St. Helens in 1980?
30
Rated VEI 6, the 60-hour eruption threw out 3.1 to 3.6 cubic miles of ash; only Pinatubo and Santa María came close last century.
Q 13What happened to Mount Katmai during the 1912 eruption, even though the magma came out six miles away?
Its summit collapsed into a caldera
Magma drained from beneath it, leaving a caldera 2,000 feet deep; a glacier has since formed inside, one of the few born in historic times.
Q 21How big are the park and preserve combined?
About 4.1 million acres
That is somewhere between Connecticut and New Jersey in size, and most of it is designated wilderness.
Q 22How many volcanoes does the park contain, seven of them active since 1900?
18
Six are currently classed as active, and two of them steam visibly from the headquarters town.
Q 23What is the tallest point in the park, at 7,605 feet?
Mount Denison
Mount Katmai itself is only 6,716 feet after its summit collapsed in 1912.
Which volcanic complex in the park erupted from 1953 to 1974, adding a new southwestern peak?
Q 14The ash-filled valley left by the 1912 eruption became known as the Valley of what?
Ten Thousand Smokes
Fumaroles steamed from the cooling deposits for decades; streams have since cut canyons 100 feet deep but only 5 to 10 feet wide.
Q 15How thick was the pyroclastic flow that filled the valley near the 1912 vent?
Up to 300 feet
The deposit covers about 40 square miles and is 100 to 700 feet deep across the valley.
Q 16The noise of the June 6, 1912 eruption was heard as far off as which city, 750 miles distant?
Juneau
Ash fell six to twelve inches deep on Kodiak, reached Puget Sound, and hazed skies worldwide, cooling the northern hemisphere that year.
Q 17Which botanist led the National Geographic expeditions that named the steaming ash valley?
Robert Griggs
He had come to study how plants recolonised the ash; a 7,602-foot volcano in the park is now named for him.
Q 18Which president signed the proclamation creating Katmai National Monument in September 1918?
Woodrow Wilson
Horace Albright had advised that a park bill would never pass, so the Antiquities Act was used; the monument was already half the size of Yellowstone.
Q 19Herbert Hoover's 1931 expansion more than doubled the monument and, crucially, added what?
The falls at Brooks Camp
It made Katmai the largest single Park Service unit while steering clear of coastal lands thought to hold oil.
Q 20Under which 1980 law did Katmai gain its present park-and-preserve status?
Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act
Unusually for an ANILCA park, subsistence hunting was allowed only in the preserve, not the park; Jimmy Carter had added 1.37 million acres by proclamation in 1978.
Trident
About 0.7 cubic kilometres of material erupted from what had been a large fumarole pit; Fourpeaked had phreatic blasts in 2006.
Q 25Where is the park's headquarters, about five miles down the Naknek River from the entrance?
King Salmon
The local highway links Naknek Lake to the town and to Naknek but not to the state road system.
Q 26How do visitors reach the park's interior from the entrance?
By boat on Naknek Lake
Nearly everyone flies to the headquarters town and then on to the camp; a road runs from the camp to Three Forks overlook above the valley.
Q 27What is the name of the developed area where the vast majority of Katmai visitors go?
Brooks Camp
Few venture beyond its bear-viewing platforms; the site is also an archaeological district 4,500 years old and a National Historic Landmark since 1993.
Q 28Which body of water separates the park from Kodiak Island?
Shelikof Strait
The park's deeply indented coast runs some 497 miles from Kamishak Bay south to Cape Kubugakli.
Q 29Which state bear sanctuary, closed to hunting, adjoins the park at Kamishak Bay?
McNeil River
The state set it aside in 1967 to protect the bears' fishing grounds; there have been proposals to fold it into Katmai.
Q 30Which bear enthusiast and his girlfriend were killed and partly eaten by a bear at Kaflia Bay, Katmai, in 2003?
Timothy Treadwell
He had spent many summers among the bears; the 2005 documentary Grizzly Man used his own footage.