Great bear rainforest bear viewing

Farewell Harbour Lodge offers a variety of different types of bear viewing excursions in search of both Grizzly bears and Black bears. Our bear viewing season runs from early June to mid October. 

We depart Farewell Harbour Lodge daily at 8am and all of our bear viewing trips are full day excursions returning to the lodge by 4.30pm.

Our bear safaris can take us deep into one of several different river systems in search of wild bears. We can travel 90 minutes to a  river system by a covered water taxi before disembarking onto one or two smaller zodiacs. By zodiac, we will motor quietly or propel silently under oar to position ourselves for optimal viewing of bears foraging on the river or in the estuaries. In some systems, we will disembark the zodiacs and proceed on foot to explore the lush rainforest in search of bears. In other river systems, we will travel by motorized vehicle and then on foot to look for bears. As distinct from some of the other operations in the area, Farewell Harbour Lodge does not use viewing platforms or utilize artificially created bear habitat to enhance our viewing opportunities. We prefer to seek out bears in their natural environment and view from the same eye level as the wildlife around us. We can’t guarantee sightings but our trained staff benefit from many years of experience with bears in the wild.


One of the benefits of a Farewell Harbour Lodge bear viewing excursion is the small size of our groups. We limit our groups to 8 guests per boat with 2 experienced bear guides/naturalists. 


We provide specialized rain gear, rubber boots and lunch. Along the way, we'll keep our eyes out for other wildlife, particularly marine mammals including the potential for sightings of Bigg's Orca, Dall's porpoises, Pacific White Sided dolphins, Steller sea lions and Humpback whales. Also en route to the Grizzly bear viewing areas, it is quite common for us to see Black bears who like to forage in the intertidal on the shores of all of the mainland inlets.