Fortress of the Bear

We honor and salute all of our veterans. We thank you for your service and dedication to our country. During our open season you can get a discount on admission if you let us know you are military past, or present. Thank you again for your sacrifice.

We are starting a Black Friday month long sale. We have added a lot of things to our online store that have never been available before🍁🎄
come check them out and shop for the holidays. 🎄🐻🎄🎁 11/10/24-12/10/24
You will receive a 10% discount store wide no code needed. Locals get free deliveries. Thanks for looking.
https://www.fortressofthebear.org/store

Fortress of the Bear Fortress Of The Bear and educational bear rescue center. bear, sitka, alaska bears, bear cub, orphaned brown bear, brown bear cub, fortress

Now that things have settled down after OctoBEAR Fest, we wanted to make sure we say a social media goodbye to our wonderful seasonal bear keeper, Jeremy! Jeremy completed our internship program last year, and returned this summer to accept a seasonal bear keeper position! Thank you so much for all your help this season Jeremy; we loved having you back and were thrilled you stayed through October to be our Christopher Robin! 🐻❤️

A few more pavers went into the walkway today! ❤️

www.fortressofthebear.org/store

Happy Halloween! We'll be delivering cute pumpkin bear prizes to all of our local OctoBEAR Fest coloring contest entries today, and our winners for each age category will all get a little extra! 🐻🎃❤️

And our winners are...

0-4: Jeter
5-10: Cire
11-13: Ferrah
14-18: Austin
18+: The Doyle Family

The photobooth at OctoBEAR Fest is always such a big hit - there are some great gifs in this album!! Thank you so much to our friends at and for providing and sponsoring the booth again this year! 🐻🎃❤️

OctoBEAR Fest 24 Made with Simple Booth.

We had such a wonderful time at OctoBEAR Fest with you all this weekend! After all that fun and all those pumpkins, the bears are certainly ready for their winter sleep!

Are you ready for one more day of fun at OctoBEAR Fest? We'll be open 10-2, and hiding pumpkins for bears at 12. Don't forget to enter our coloring contest - everyone gets a prize delivered locally to them next week!

PFD Sale! Pre-Christmas 🎄Sale! Come out this weekend and shop our 20% off sale before we close for the season. We have everything on sale except Carhartt Brands and Vests!! Enjoy the savings and enjoy our celebration of 🎃👻OctoBEAR 🧸Festival with games, crafts and a🍁fall🍂 photo booth, with your family. We still have a good assortment of items in our store to shop.

Although Sitka Swirls can't join us at OctoBEAR Fest this year, they still want to join in on the fun! Every kiddo will get a coupon for a free kid cup. If they wear their Halloween costume when using their coupon at the Sitka Swirls truck, they'll be entered into their costume contest!! 🍦

Another paver in the walkway! As this one was dedicated to Nuka and Nikiski, we decided to place it near their pavers along one of the borders! All of our bears have a paver! 🐻❤️

We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone that participated in our free educational field trip program this month! Our bear care team shared their knowledge with over 300 students this month, ranging in age from pre-school to 5th grade. Lesson content was tailored to school curriculums and modified to be age appropriate, ensuring a fun field trip for all! Lots learned about bear adaptations for survival, drawing diagrams and making notes on our new field trip worksheets. A few students tried out our new Enrichment Study class, where we discuss the importance and goals of enrichment, observe bears engaging with enrichment and record our findings to discuss as a group. We think they all deserved to join our Junior Naturalist team, and loved surprising them all with special pins at the end of their classes!

The latest batch of personalized pavers! Thank you for sharing your words and memorials with us.

www.fortressofthebear.org/store

Happy birthday to our creative, talented, amazing, smart, crafty, best Bear Curator and fabulous person Claire Turner. We hope you have an amazing day 🎉🎁🎈🎂🎊💕

Toby debates whether she really wants to get out of bed for breakfast....!

It’s almost time for our favorite event of the year… OctoBEAR Fest!! As always, this FREE event will take place on the last Saturday and Sunday of October, and will be the last time we are open for bear viewing opportunities in 2024. We’ll have games with candy prizes, some new bear-themed crafts and discounts in our gift shop! 🍭 Costumes encouraged! 👻

At 12pm each day, you’ll have an opportunity to go into our bear habitats and hide your Halloween pumpkin for the bears! 🎃 Please only bring pumpkins that have already been gutted, and have not been treated with bleach or any other cleaning product. We will provide treats for you to put inside your pumpkins! This activity is not limited to children only, BUT children MUST be accompaccompanied by an adult at all times. Please wear appropriate shoes for wet, muddy conditions.

Print a copy of this year’s coloring contest, pick one up in store or color one at the event - everyone who enters gets a prize! We can’t wait to see you there!

10/3 UPDATE: due to a ship cancellation, we will be CLOSING at 2pm today (Thursday Oct 3rd).

REMINDER, we be closed this Saturday October 5th due to planned utility outage at the Gary Paxton Industrial Park.

Weekends in October will be your last chance to visit with our bears before we close for their hibernation period. Watch this space for any as-needed updates to our October schedule, dependent on weather conditions or cruise ship cancellations.