The Other Side of the Kern : ‘March Miracle’ Means Plenty of Water, but Plenty of Water Means Danger

Until March, the water was so low in Isabella Lake, says Roberta Piazza of the Pine Cone Inn, that locals were calling it Was abella.

Until March, says Dave Freeland of the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the lake, “We had to prohibit water skiing. It was creating too much dust.”

Until March, residents of this community who depend on fishermen and rafters for their livelihoods had to laugh to keep from crying, because they didn’t have enough water for tears. Fish had to phone in for reservations.

“On the 10th of March,” says Tom Moore, who runs the Sierra South whitewater rafting operation on the Kern River, “we were looking at 4% of our normal snowpack--the worst ever. There was going to be no lake, no river. Everybody was scared.”

Then, high up in the long, deep valley of the southern Sierra where the Kern is born, snow started to fall, and it kept on falling for three weeks, until the snowpack was up to 80% of normal. When the snow started to melt, there was a trickle down the mountain, like a single voice of hope, and tributaries joined in along the way to form a fast-flowing chorus and then a torrent of crashing percussion. That was the Kern basin’s piece of “the March miracle.”

Moore calls it “the best water we’ve had in five years.”

Twenty teen-age students from the Crossroads private school in Santa Monica spent last week on the Kern learning rafting and kayaking in ideal conditions. Today, the town celebrates the fourth annual Whitewater Wednesday Rafting Jamboree.

The first three jamborees weren’t anything like this one figures to be. The four local rafting outfits are offering one-hour “Lickety Split” rides for the usual $15, with a free lunch and ice cream thrown in by local merchants at the end.

In recent years, when flows averaged from 400 to 700 cubic feet per second, and dropped as low as 200, creative rafters moved boulders to build decent runs. Until March, Moore thought they might have to put wheels on the rafts this year. Now, with flows as high as 2,500 in the Upper Kern for the first time since 1986, the rafters and kayakers can re-explore the old runs that made the Kern popular as Southern California’s nearest whitewater experience.

About half that amount is released from Isabella into the Lower Kern, so the lake has grown from 2 1/2 to 10 square miles since February, boosting the fishing and everyone’s spirits.

The Kern is designated a national “Wild and Scenic River.” Before Isabella, it is separated into North and South forks, but the latter usually trickles out before reaching the southern arm of the V-shaped lake. The North Fork features two main runs.

The Forks is a 17-mile Class V (most difficult) run of nearly continuous rapids and waterfalls, ending at the Johnsondale Bridge, 21 miles north of Kernville. It requires a three-mile pack-in, drops 60 feet per mile and is for experts only.

That is followed by the Upper Kern, a series of several defined runs. The last takeout is at Riverside Park in town. The sections vary from Class III to IV, with one Class V portion--Thunder Run.

Below Isabella, the Lower Kern runs about 22 miles, with two-day camp-out trips especially popular later in the summer, after the Upper Kern drops too low.

Novices generally try the shorter, $15 Class-III run starting slightly above or below a Southern California Edison powerhouse three miles upstream from town.

“This is the one everybody cuts their teeth on,” Moore says. “It’s perfect for first-timers, great for kids--a spur-of-the-moment trip.”

Moore calls it “the hook,” because many of those satisfied customers return for longer challenges.

It’s the ones who take the plunge unprepared for the river’s dangers who get into trouble.

In 1985, Merle Haggard sang, “Kern River,” about a lover lost in the flows. Drive up California 178 from Haggard’s hometown of Bakersfield and you’ll see a sign at the entrance to Kern Canyon warning visitors that 157 people have drowned in the river since 1968. The numbers are changeable, like a scoreboard. Other signs are posted along the river.

This year, a red flag is up for Sgt. John Diederich, coordinator of Search and Rescue for the Kern County Sheriff’s Department. The more water, the more risk. Diederich’s statistics show an average of 11.6 deaths a year in the five wet years preceding the drought, then an average of 7.2 in the four dry years since. Has the Killer Kern returned?

“We are concerned,” Diederich says. “This year, we’ve got more water in channels where there’s been no water running for a few years. If a rafter takes the wrong channel and gets caught up in some brush. . . . “

But rafters aren’t the main concern. The commercial operators have excellent safety records.

“Most of (the victims) drowned in areas where they weren’t even rafting,” Diederich says.

The one drowning reported this year was in May--a 20-year-old Santa Barbara man who had been baptized in the river that morning. In the afternoon, hot from playing soccer, he went into the river to cool off, got caught in an eddy and drowned in six feet of water. Diederich theorizes that the victim suffered cramps and was not a good swimmer.

Last year, according to Diederich, deputies were recovering the body of another young man as his family watched.

“You should post it,” the victim’s anguished mother told the deputies.

Another son told her, “Mom, it is posted--right behind you.”

Diederich says: “I don’t know what it takes to make people aware of the danger. We were recovering the bodies in a double drowning last year, and other swimmers were swimming around our rescue boat--and they knew the bodies were still in there.”

Diederich says the most important factors are drinking, a failure to wear life jackets and careless fishermen who slip on rocks or lose their balance in the powerful current and are swept away.

Private rafters must sign up for a permit, available at the U.S. Forest Service office in Kernville. It’s similar to filing a flight plan. It’s free but allows the agency to monitor the river activity and tells them where to look for somebody who is missing.

Freeland says: “When you look at the surface, the water doesn’t look like it’s going very fast, but a foot under it’s really ripping. That river is very deceiving. A lot of times, people will get swept away and caught up underneath rocks. Sometimes, they haven’t found bodies until the following year when the water level recedes.

“The commercial rafting companies are all pretty professional. They’re very well-equipped. We won’t let them on the river without experienced guides. They have to be qualified in CPR and first aid.”

In 1986, when 17 drowned, Diederich says, his people logged 280 rescues. Moore says his guides often rescue private rafters, and thinks the warning signs may be counterproductive. Risk-taking is a challenge to some people.

“The people that seem to get into trouble are simply unprepared,” he says. “They have little rafts that are made for pools or lakes--’supermarket specials’--that puncture easily, or they are fooling around, drinking and playing on rocks. I equate it to driving the wrong way down the freeway. Sooner or later, they’re going to get into trouble.”

With common sense, the river provides a lot of fun--for the Crossroads students, an unforgettable week of intermittent cold drenchings mixed with bailing rafts full of water up to their knees. The fun should last until mid-July on the Upper Kern, perhaps later on the Lower Kern with increased water releases from the dam.

Michelle Merta, who works for Moore at Sierra South, says that in recent dry years, “People were finding it hard to get enthusiastic, getting stuck on the rocks and all. This year, the water’s going over the rocks. . . . (It’s) so exciting.”