Alaska's Fat Bear Week Has A New Champion, And His Name Is Backpack
Every autumn at Alaska's Katmai National Park and Preserve, the bears of Brooks River spend weeks gorging on migrating and spawning salmon, putting on hundreds of pounds ahead of hibernation, and the internet spends a week voting on which of them has packed on the most impressive weight gain in a single-elimination online bracket called Fat Bear Week, which has become one of the most joyful annual traditions on the internet since its founding in 2014. This year's winner is Bear 89, better known as Backpack, who pulled in more than 103,000 votes in the final to defeat Bear 910 by just over 5,000 votes in one of the closest finishes in the competition's history. His name comes from a habit he had as a cub, since whenever he and his mother crossed Brooks River he would climb onto her back rather than swim, an endearing habit that earned him his nickname from the rangers who watch over the park.
His mother, Bear 435, known as Holly, won Fat Bear Week in 2019, making Backpack something of championship royalty, and the road to the title was not without drama — he barely survived a semifinal against Bear 164, Bucky, winning by just a few thousand ballots before pulling away in the final. Earlier in his life, Backpack suffered a leg injury that left park officials genuinely uncertain whether he would survive, but he recovered with his mother's care and grew into what rangers describe as a gentle giant who uses his size and quiet confidence to hold his place along the river without the brawling common among adult males. "Any bear in consideration for Fat Bear Week is already a winner," Katmai ranger Sarah Bruce noted, though for Backpack and the 103,000 people who voted for him, this one is a little sweeter than that.
