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50 free Lake Clark National Park trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Lake Clark National Park trivia quiz covers the four-million-acre park and preserve a hundred miles southwest of Anchorage that has everything Alaska offers in one place: two volcanoes above Cook Inlet, glaciers, tundra, a 42-mile lake, coastal salt marshes crowded with brown bears and the world's most productive sockeye salmon watershed. Questions cover the geography and geology, Mount Redoubt's eruptions and the airliner that flew into its ash, the bears of Chinitna Bay, the salmon-eating wolf pack and the roadless logistics of a park you can only fly or boat into. The human story runs from Paleo-Arctic hunters and the Dena'ina village of Kijik through Captain Cook, the bush pilots who founded Port Alsworth, Jimmy Carter's 1978 monument and the 1980 ANILCA park, the Pebble Mine fight and, above all, Dick Proenneke, the Iowa mechanic who built a cabin by hand at Twin Lakes in 1968 and filmed his 31 years alone in the wilderness. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is marked on every question, so it works for a floatplane game or a serious park-nerd challenge. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and each question carries its citation. If you enjoy it, try our Katmai and US National Parks quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Lake Clark National Park and Preserve lies about how far southwest of Anchorage?
100 miles
There are no roads in; visitors come by small aircraft, usually floatplanes, or by boat along the Cook Inlet coast.
Q 02Which two volcanoes stand within the park near Cook Inlet?
Redoubt and Iliamna
Mount Spurr sits just outside to the east; both park volcanoes are stratovolcanoes rising through a granite range.
Q 03Mount Redoubt has erupted how many times since it was first observed, most recently in 1989 and 2009?
4
The confirmed eruptions came in 1902, 1966, 1989 and 2009, with doubtful ones in 1881 and 1933; the 1989 ash reached 45,000 feet.
Q 04What happened to KLM Flight 867 when it flew through Redoubt's ash cloud in December 1989?
All four engines failed before restarting
The 747 fell 13,000 feet before the pilots relit the engines and landed safely; four other planes were damaged, a wake-up call about volcanic ash hazards.
Q 05How high is Mount Redoubt?
10,197 feet
Its 1.8-kilometre summit crater feeds the Drift Glacier through a gap in the rim; the 2009 eruption sent lahars down the Drift River toward an oil terminal.
Q 06What threatened the Drift River oil terminal during Redoubt's 2009 eruption?
Lahars from melting ice
Pyroclastic flows melted glacier ice and sent mudflows down the Drift River east of the park.
Q 07Which granite range links the Alaska Range to the Aleutian Range in Lake Clark National Park?
Chigmit Mountains
Glaciers carved cirques and U-shaped valleys into it, ending abruptly at the steep coast in deep bays.
Q 08What are the dimensions of Lake Clark itself?
42 miles by 860 feet deep
It is dammed by a terminal moraine and drains toward Bristol Bay.
Q 09Lake Clark ranks where among Alaska's lakes by size?
Sixth largest
The Tlikakila River feeds it from Summit Lake, and its outflow eventually reaches Bristol Bay.
Q 10The Kvichak River, the park's chief river, holds what world record?
Most productive sockeye salmon watershed
Its fish account for 33 percent of the US sockeye catch and 16 percent of world production.
Q 11A wolf pack at Lake Clark is documented as the only pack in the world that is what?
Salmon-dependent
Brown bears crowd the Kijik River and Silver Salmon Creek for the same reason.
Q 12Which bay on the park's coast is considered one of the top bear-viewing spots in Alaska?
Chinitna Bay
Silver Salmon Creek is the other coastal hotspot, and quieter Tuxedni Bay has shown up to 20 brown bears digging clams at once.
Q 13Coastal salt marshes cover under 1 percent of the park; why do bears flock to them?
Early-summer food before the fish run
Q 21What is the main settlement inside the park, home to the visitor center and several lodges?
Port Alsworth
Founded in 1950 by missionary bush pilot Babe Alsworth and his wife Mary, it sits on private land on Lake Clark and had 186 people in 2020.
Q 22Who founded the park's main settlement in 1950?
Babe Alsworth, a missionary bush pilot
He had run the first air taxi to Lake Clark in 1942; his wife Mary was the town's first postmaster.
Q 23In what year did the first floatplane land on Lake Clark?
1930
Regular air taxi service followed in 1942, and air remains the only practical way in for most visitors.
Hundreds of bears graze the coastal marshes each summer before the salmon arrive.
Q 14Why are brown bears seen more often than their smaller cousins in the park, even though both live there?
The little ones are shy and easily displaced
Black bears use every part of the park except the high country; browns concentrate on the coast.
Q 15Who built a cabin by hand at Twin Lakes in 1968 and lived there alone for about 31 years?
Richard Proenneke
A former Navy carpenter and diesel mechanic from Iowa, he left in 1999 and bequeathed the cabin to the Park Service.
Q 16What is the title of the 2003 documentary compiled from Proenneke's own films of his life at Twin Lakes?
Alone in the Wilderness
Produced after his death, it became a public-television staple.
Q 17What was the title of the 1973 book a friend compiled from Proenneke's journals?
One Man's Wilderness
Sam Keith, who knew him from the Kodiak naval station, edited the journals; its subtitle was An Alaskan Odyssey.
Q 18What happened to Proenneke's cabin after his death in 2003?
The Park Service owns it as a historic site
He willed it to the park; it was listed four years later and is one of the park's most popular attractions.
Q 19From which state did Proenneke originally hail?
Iowa
Born in Primrose in 1916, he joined the Navy the day after Pearl Harbor and moved to Alaska in 1950 after a stint on an Oregon sheep ranch.
Q 20At about what age did Proenneke retire to Twin Lakes to build his cabin?
51
He arrived on May 21, 1968, having saved for retirement as a sought-after heavy-equipment technician.
Q 24What 1,050-foot mountain route do pilots use between Anchorage and western Alaska?
Lake Clark Pass
The mountains are a serious barrier to the small planes that do most of the region's travelling.
Q 25Which Native Athabaskan people have long lived in and around the park?
Dena'ina
Most residents of the five nearby villages, including Nondalton, Iliamna and Pedro Bay, are Dena'ina.
Q 26What is Kijik, the park's main archaeological site?
A Native village abandoned in the early 1900s
It had 91 people in the 1880 census; its residents moved to Old Nondalton to be nearer trading posts and canneries, and a 1966 dig exposed twelve log house foundations.
Q 27Which British captain surveyed the inlet on the park's eastern shore in 1778, leaving his name on it?
James Cook
Russian traders followed in the decades after; American traders arrived by the 1890s to find a Native population ravaged by imported disease.
Q 28Which president proclaimed Lake Clark a national monument on December 1, 1978?
Jimmy Carter
He used the Antiquities Act to protect Alaskan lands while the ANILCA bill stalled; Congress made it a park and preserve in 1980.
Q 29How big are the park and preserve together?
About 4 million acres
About 2.6 million acres are park and 1.4 million preserve; roughly two-thirds is designated wilderness.
Q 30What may visitors do in the preserve that is not allowed in the park?
Sport hunting
Inside the park only local residents may hunt for subsistence; both kinds are allowed on the preserve lands to the west.