Always worth getting up early, though never easy.
Yes, we were at a safe distance from all the bears. I had a 60-600mm lens so I can get photos of them from really far away.
The hot springs are way too hot to bathe in, you'd melt in seconds. It's also illegal to go off the catwalks because there are a lot of hidden geothermal pockets just below the surface that you could fall into and lose a leg, plus footprints ruin the scenery. Unfortunately there are a lot of people that ignore the rules. We saw several tourists walking on restricted areas and yelling at them didn't do any good.