Bear Creek Outfitters – About Us
Bear Creek Outfitters is Southeast Alaska’s longest running fly fishing and wildlife viewing guide service – in business for over 25 years. We are locally owned and operated. We are proud to have pioneered floatplane accessed adventure tourism in the region. It has been an honor to welcome guests (new and old) to our home of Juneau for over two and a half decades. Despite the growth of high-volume tourism in Alaska, we’ve stayed commitmed to delivering authentic Alaskan adventures to our guests in a small group format.
Meet Our Guides
Bear Creek Outfitters hosts a roster of highly skilled, career guides, with deep experience in our region, and Alaska in general. We differentiate ourselves from other operations with our guide team , and we leverage their skills to provide incredible experiences for our guests.
Sam Roche
Fly – Fishing Manager and Guide
Sam was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. After high school, he took his first opportunity to move to the mountains. After graduating from Montana State University in Bozeman in 2010, Sam moved to Juneau where he now lives with his wife, Marissa. Sam guides all year long, spending the summer guiding fly fishing throughout Alaska and the winter backcountry ski guiding in Alaska and Japan. If you get an opportunity to join Sam on a fishing trip, it’s obvious he loves his job. He likes nothing more than sharing the magic of Southeast Alaska with his guests.
Chis Eckel
Wildlife Viewing Manager and Guide
Chris has had several jobs guiding guests in the Alaskan wilderness but after his first season using his science degree helping people to view Alaskan Brown Bears in the wild he never looked back … except for more bears. Two decades of guiding have taken him all around the world and he currently spends winters as the Head Guide for BDT catskiing in Hokkaido. The only thing he likes more than getting out of small aircraft in the Alaskan wilderness is long walks on the beaches of SouthEast.
Kevin Maier
Fly – Fishing Guide
Born and raised on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, Kevin Maier has called Juneau home since 2004, and he’s been with Bear Creek Outfitters since 2008. When he’s not guiding he keeps busy chasing his two boys around the mountains, forests, and streams of the Tongass National Forest on skis, bikes, and in waders. In the off season, Kevin teaches environmental humanities at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau. After writing a dissertation on hunting and fishing stories, and Hemingway in particular, he’s been trying his hand at writing for fly-fishing magazines. Look for his recent work in The Drake and Camas. Kevin also enjoys taking his rods and rifles for long walks on the beaches of Southeast Alaska.
Teresa Whipple
Wildlife Viewing Guide
Teresa lives in Juneau and splits her summer season among different sections of the Alaskan coast guiding trips to view bears in the wilderness. For more than a decade she has taken folks and more than a few film crews out to see bears from the Beufort Sea down misty fjords of British Columbia, it isn’t that she can’t remember life before bears, she just prefers not to. When Teresa isn’t outside looking at bears, she’s inside looking at bears – she runs a bear safety training company based in Juneau. During the winter when bears aren’t viewable, Teresa whiles away the months in front of her fireplace with her cat, waiting for spring when bear viewing season starts again.
Mark Hieronymus
Fly – Fishing Guide
Mark grew up in Western Washington and has been fishing for salmon and steelhead for over 45 years. Lured to Alaska by the siren-song of big commercial fishing money in the late ‘80’s, he managed to come up with a seasonal work schedule that allowed him to sportfish all over the Pacific Northwest and Alaska for 6 months a year.
After getting his Alaska sportfish guide license in 2004, Mark held dual citizenship in the sport and commercial fishing worlds for many years, and after his retirement from the commercial fishing industry in 2011 he has been a full-time flyfishing guide for Bear Creek Outfitters in Juneau, AK. Mark enjoys close relationships with many industry partners, and is on the Professional Team of both ECHO Flyfishing and AirFlo Flylines, as well as being the Southeast Alaska Field Ambassador for SpeyCo Reels, a Signature Fly Designer for Umpqua Feather Merchants and a Simms Elite Ambassador.
In the winter Mark works for Trout Unlimited, Alaska Program as the Sportfish Outreach Coordinator for Southeast Alaska, working on conservation and land use issues in “America’s Salmon Forest”, the Tongass National Forest.