Frye promoted to Katmai Park post

Hungry Horse News

Now he has his own bear park to call home.

After 15 years at Glacier National Park, Chief Ranger Steve Frye has been named the Superintendent of Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska.

"It's one of the best resources in the National Park system," Frye said Tuesday.

He will take the helm of Katmai June 12, he said. His wife, Beth, who also works in Glacier, will stay in Montana to get the family's youngest daughter, Megan, off to college at Carroll College, Frye said.

She will then look for a post in Alaska as well.

Frye said the Katmai post will be, "a magnificent adventure," but he'll also miss Glacier, which he said has a dedicated and talented staff - one of the best in the National Park Service.

"Glacier is something the whole state can take pride in," he said.

Frye started his Park Service career in 1970 as a seasonal ranger in Glacier. He has also worked at Big Bend, North Cascades and Yellowstone, before returning here in 1992 as chief ranger.

Frye is also qualified as an area and incident commander for wildfire fighting, so the area will lose a highly qualified leader in that field as well.

Frye said he hopes to be able to utilize his firefighting training in Alaska as well, though he said his park administrative duties will come first.

Katmai is famous for volcanoes, brown bears, fish, and rugged wilderness and is also the site of the Brooks River National Historic Landmark with North America's highest concentration of prehistoric human dwellings - about 900.

Katmai National Monument was created to preserve the famed Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, a spectacular 40-square mile, 100 to 700 foot deep, pyroclastic ash flow deposited by Novarupta Volcano, according to the Park's Web site.

There are at least 14 volcanoes in Katmai considered "active," none of which are currently erupting.

The park is also home to brown bears - lots of them. The Park Service estimates it has 2,000 brown bears - a larger version of Glacier's grizzly bear.

The park is also known for its world-class fishing. It is about 4.7 million acres, but unlike Glacier, it only sees about 56,000 to 60,000 recreational visits a year.

The park is located about 290 air miles southwest of Anchorage on the Alaskan Peninsula, across from Kodiak Island. Katmai is primarily accessible by plane. But it can also be reached by boat. There are no roads to the park.