Scenic Bear Viewing — Local services in Homer

My one Star Experience with Scenic Bear View AK This will be a long but I will do my best to give facts and I will try my best to be unbiased (Obviously I will not be able to be completely unbiased because I am very frustrated and thats impossible for one person so please check out his response that I am sure will be posted by Scenic Bear View)

My wife and I were very excited for our trip and got everything booked months in advanced.

After we got everything booked I did a repelling trip on July 13th with some friends and I ended up falling 50 ft. Putting me in the hospital for about a week in the ICU for most of that time. Had to have search and rescue come get me I was able to take an ambulance to the hospital with fortunately only a broken back and tailbone (I had to get a spinal fusion with screws and rods put in my back the next day) but unfortunately I was no longer fit to travel because of the surgery and recovery

While I was in the hospital my wife messaged everybody that we booked something with and they gave us a refund, and we get to Scenic Bear View, and that seems to go smoothly, but I'm unable to verify because didn't have my phone for a while. When I was finally able to verify I learned we didn't receive the money.

I trusted that he sent it but it was not in the coinbase account (We used coinbase because he said if we use crypto he would give us a $200 discount. So I thought why not?) I started digging trying to figure out why we didn't get the money he sent over to us. To our horror we saw that it was an incorrect wallet. He said he sent it to the wallet that we sent it from and so I was so confused how that could that be the incorrect wallet? I mean I sent the currency from that wallet. Why don't I have access to it?

What I believe happened is. I transferred the money to him the same day I transferred the money into coinbase

Money takes a A few days to hit the account but coinbase gives the ability to send money the day you transfer it into coinbase

So in a sense, coinbase gave me a “loan” because they knew I was transferring this amount of money into my coinbase account

So the money came out of a coinbase account not my coinbase wallet so I could do things same day.

Robinhood, Sofi, Webull and others like that all do the same thing. Unfortunately I did not know this until this experience.

This is where all the headache happens. I tried to explain that. I may have not been as clear because it's a confusing situation and he responds “I'm not going to double refund you”. I just want him to get The money back that he tried to transfer me and then transfer it to the correct wallet not a second refund. All I'm asking for now is the transaction hash ID or proof that he sent the money

This is a quote from one of his email to me After I decided to give him a call and see if we could work things out a little bit over the phone instead of going back and forth through email. When he picked up the phone he said this is a bad time and he hung up on me After I said this is Alec Matthews. “This whole thing is your fault because yeah you sent it from the address that you don’t even wasn’t even yours so I mean oh my God. ...”

We asked for a refund July 15 I took over figuring this out July 26th it's now Aug 30th it's been over a month.

He has been very demeaning in other emails telling me that I shouldn't enjoy my hobbies because I'm to old and implied they are too dangerous and stupid and then brags about how he's fending off 1200 lb bears and 800 lb boars (honestly is kudos because I wish I was brave enough to try that same thing.)

In his cancellation, policy he says that he will refund 90% he claims he gave us 100% refund. I appreciate that, that was very nice. If he really did send it. So I'm finally resorting to Google reviews because emailing seems to be getting me nowhere.

Now am I saying you should not use him? No, I'm just explaining my experience. He has quite a few five star reviews. But my experience with him has been very...

Our family flew out of Homer on the Kenai Peninsula with Scenic Bear Viewing in July 2020 to Chinitna Bay in Lake Clark National Park. This trip was BY FAR the highlight of our entire 2 1/2-week adventure in Alaska. And that's saying a lot because we also took a day trip to Katmai National Park to photograph the bears fishing for salmon at Brooks Falls.

First, Scenic Bear Viewing's owner and pilot, Martin Boland, seems to have a relationship built on respect and trust with these magnificent brown bears/grizzlies in the wild. This trip is not about platform viewing with national park rangers tightly controlling your every move. With Martin and his daughter, Samantha, we were actually on the beach and wading through the sedges often within 5-10 feet of the bears, including a beautiful sow with her spring cubs. As we watched and photographed, the mother slowly made her way toward us to take a sniff, barely five feet from us. Then one of her curious cubs came over to within a foot of us and stood up in the grass to check us out. It's as if Martin is a "bear whisperer." He has been doing this for years, if not decades, so the bears don't perceive him or his guests to be threats.

We also captured photos of a male grizzly, who was in the sedges when we first landed in Martin's Cessna 206 on the beach. Altogether, in the 3-4 hours of actual bear time, we witnessed at least 20 bears...about 10 in very close proximity. It's about quality, not quantity. You don't even need a mega zoom lens to get great photos here, as you do at Brooks Falls.

In order to photograph the bears clamming, Martin closely watches the tide schedule and also to insure we were landing and taking off during low tide, as the Cessna is not a float plane. At 68, I've never flown in a small plane and vowed I never would. This trip changed that for me. For one thing, I did my research into several companies, including accident records over the years. Martin had none, plus the flight to Chinitna Bay from Homer is only 45 minutes each way. We were comfortable with Martin because he's flown thousands of hours, including within Alaska (which is very important), and he was in the Air Force at one time and worked on planes. Who better to trust? He also provides waders and a life jacket and goes over safety protocol.

We also learned a lot from Martin and his daughter about bear behavior and bears in general. In contrast, the only thing we learned was fear from national park personnel at Katmai/Brooks (our other bear trip). But on Martin's Scenic Bear viewing trip to Chinitna Bay, we didn't stand tall with our arms raised to give bears the impression we were formidable adversaries. Instead, we huddled together and knelt alongside Martin, which put us at eye level with the feeding and roaming bears. They were aware of our presence and never once growled or exhibited any threatening behavior toward us. It was a relaxing, almost surreal, excursion. We came away with the most amazing photos!

For us, spending the afternoon with Martin, his daughter Sam, and the brown bears at Chinitna Bay/Lake Clark NP was the experience of a lifetime. If you want to get up close and personal and have alone time with the bears, this is the trip. Scenic Bear Viewing's home base is the Homer airport. We drove to Homer from Anchorage; but you can also fly into Homer from Anchorage. We stayed for a couple of days in a cabin overlooking Kachemak Bay in Homer. As other reviewers have mentioned, on the way back from Chinitna Bay, Martin flew us through the mountains over several glaciers. The scenery was spectacular and an added bonus. We will return with more family next time, as this is THE bear trip not to be missed in...

I am writing this review as I feel there needs to be some balance in teh reviews posted. Perhaps ours was just a bad day, but it felt like we had a different guide to those raving about Martin. My main message is to be sure what your arrangements are for the trip, as ours changed multiple times and we ended up self driving to a different airport, an hour north of Homer, which extended an already long day considerably.

Before I go into detail, I do want to say that seeing the bears in their natural environment was amazing, as was the flight to the national park, seeing glaciers, and huge expanses of wilderness

We learned very quickly that Homer is a very weather dependent part of Alaska, both regards winds, fog and sea conditions. There are cancellations of activities due to this and in fact our initial trip was delayed due to sea conditions.

Our rescheduled trip, was originally going to take off at Seldovia Village, a village only accessible by boat, but this was changed due to sea conditions and we were told to go to Homer to be picked up to be taken to another airport , an hour north of Homer. when we arrived in homer ( we were staying on the peninsula) we were told we would have to self drive . The other couple coming with us had not brought their car keys ( why would you!) but luckily I had so was able to drive us all to the airport.

when we arrived, no one was waiting for us and then a lady arrived ( turned out to be the owner's wife) who clearly was not involved in operation and was not overly happy to be there. We were informed pilot was 30 mins away , however they were able to fit us in our waterproof leggings.

30 mins later we were informed that the plane was not fueled so we would need to wait longer.

We finally took off , close to mid day , with hardly any acknowledgement of the delay.

We took our flight, which was certainly scenic, longer than if we had started in homer and took around 90 mins. Martin was a skilled pilot , particularly as weather was not great and we landed safely on teh beach.

As we looked for bears , it seemed that Martin was focused on his day, taking photos and going at his pace and not concerned with our ideas and choices. he barked orders around safety and then basically complained about his daughter, the fact that a new ruling had come out which made it not possible for him to take tours out of Homer anymore. This was clearly a big deal for Martin, and we felt bad for him, but clearly nothing we could do and not something we needed to hear.

We felt our time with bears was cut short as we had to have a long flight back and ultimately got back to Homer around 8pm .

Despite the great time with the bears, it really was, we felt Martin had put a big dampener on the day and we really did not want to hear about his problems.

Post the trip we wrote to him, as a group, suggesting it might be a nice gesture to refund some of the costs due to the shoterend time seeing the bears and fact we had to self drive to the new airport. The fact that he took so many photo's, we also suggested maybe he send some to us, especially those he took of us.

Suffice to say we had no response. we followed up with his daughter, who said she had finished for the season and that we needed to talk to Martin.

So in summary, seeing the bears was a great experience. There are lots of choices in terms of companies operating from Homer ( 6 planes were there the day we visited.) Our advice is to do your homework on who to go with, make sure they can fly from Homer, if that is your desire, check reviews, make sure you are clear on logistics and have a fantastic experience. It's not a cheap excursion but definitely worth it with the...