Kern River--’It Invites, It Entices and Then It Kills’ : Hazards: Swift current runs through pools in state’s deadliest river. Heavy runoff this year heightens danger.

Far from its headwaters in the High Sierra, the Kern River packs a vicious punch, thundering over huge granite boulders as it cuts a deep, narrow cleft through the mountains above here.

It is in the quiet pools between the roaring rapids where the Kern earns its reputation as the deadliest river in California. It is there, where the river takes a short breather, that the Kern most deceives.

“It invites. It entices,” said Kern County Sheriff’s Deputy Marty Williamson. “And then it kills.”

The big highway sign along the steep river canyon is hard to miss: “Don’t Swim! 171 lives lost since 1968.” This spring and summer, with the melting of the first heavy Sierra snowpack in six years, Williamson’s search and rescue team has pulled five more bodies from the river--all Los Angeles-area residents.

Many of the dead are like 17-year-old Wilson Chavez, a Central American immigrant who drove the two hours from Los Angeles to sun and swim. Chavez disappeared on Father’s Day while cooling off with friends in a particularly treacherous pool. On a recent Saturday, nearly a dozen family members combed the rugged bank in search of him, their fourth attempt in two weeks.

“I feel maybe Wilson is somewhere alive because he grew up next to a river in Guatemala,” said his mother, Amparo Chavez, as the search began. “But it wasn’t like this river. This river gives no hope.”

The mother did not know that the day before, her son’s good friend, Jose Cruz, had also disappeared a few miles up the river and was presumed drowned.

From Kern County in the south to Plumas County in the north, search and rescue crews are seeing their worst fears realized this summer. Swimmers, tubers, fishermen, kayakers and canoeists--accustomed to six years of drought and giddy over the high waters--are entering swollen rivers with their guards down, like Wilson Chavez apparently did in the wild Lower Kern.

So far, 37 drownings have been reported since May in rivers and streams in 11 counties bordered by the Sierra Nevada. The number is thought to be higher than in typical years, and much of the heavy recreation season still remains.

“This is the highest water we’ve had in 10 years,” said El Dorado County Sheriff’s Sgt. Jim Weaver.

He had just seen some children playing in eddies of the American River. “I mean one step out in that current and they’re gone,” he said. “It would throw them 50 feet in seconds. I’m afraid it’s going to be a long, long summer.”

No river west of the Mississippi matches the Lower Kern for steepness. Narrow and relatively shallow, the Kern descends 75 feet in the course of a mile in some stretches. Professional rafters consider a 60-foot-per-mile drop steep. The toll of 176 dead over the past 25 years does not include a run of the Upper Kern in Tulare County where scores of others have drowned.

Here in the canyon of the Lower Kern, where the river measures only 30 yards bank to bank, the Kern was rushing at this year’s peak runoff when Wilson Chavez disappeared. Three friends accompanying him that day told his parents that Chavez was swimming from shore to a big rock in the middle of a pool that appeared calm on its surface but was swirling just below. “The water just took him,” the friends said.

Rescue teams conducted two massive searches by raft and helicopter in the first week, with no sign of the body. The family took this as good news.

Guillermo Chavez hoped his son’s familiarity with the water--the boy grew up swimming the Amatitlan River in Guatemala before coming to America in 1986--had somehow allowed him to survive.

Then, the 42-year-old janitor came face to face with the Kern for the first time. “It is a horrible river,” he said.

In the days that followed his son’s disappearance, Chavez returned to the river three more times. He could not wait for the water to retreat or for the body to free itself, he said. He had to know one way or the other the fate of his only son.

On this morning, he pushed his short, powerful body along the bank, through the thick tangle of cottonwood and sycamore. He had scoured the same patch of river each previous visit without a clue. Lagging behind were the youth’s mother, his girlfriend and eight relatives who had packed a van early that morning with food, drinks, a jar of holy water and a bouquet of flowers.

“We come in the morning and leave in the evening and go to sleep with nothing,” said the girlfriend, Norma Amezcua, 16, who met Chavez at Virgil Junior High School in Los Angeles and gave birth to their son two years later. “I don’t feel like he’s in here. I feel like he’s alive somewhere.”

The boy’s mother wanted to believe, too. But her questions sounded more like prayers. “Maybe my son hit his head on one of those rocks and has lost his memory?” she said. “Maybe he is out there wandering around?”

The river was filling with Angelenos who come each summer weekend. Kids splashed waist-deep or floated on thin plastic doughnuts in the seemingly placid waters. Parents drank beer, ate shrimp fajitas and sunned on the shore.

One daring young couple who swam to the far side of the river without life jackets sat alone on the empty bank and watched the crowded scene like conquerors.

“The problem is some parents get drunk and forget about their kids,” said Mario Barahona, 32, an immigrant from El Salvador who has witnessed several drownings. “We’re poor and don’t have swimming pools in our neighborhoods. So the kids never learn about the water.”

Authorities say it does not help that California 178 trails the Kern River for much of its run below Lake Isabella, providing easy access to those less interested in the river’s beauty and more interested in a cool place to party.

“Alcohol, cold water and hot sun don’t mix,” said Tulare County Sgt. Dale Doty, who has worked the upper stretch of the Kern River for 15 years. “They lose a little judgment and get into a little trouble. And once you’re in a little trouble on the Kern, you’re in big trouble.”

Guillermo Chavez wondered if his missing son had been drinking. Two hours into the search, his white pants were stained green from the brush. With a stick, he poked at gaps in the boulders. It was too much ground for one man, his wife, and nine others--five of them children--to cover. Amparo Chavez threw the bouquet of flowers into the river and began to cry.

A fisherman downstream tried to shore up their hopes. “If he’s a partyer or drinker, he may be off back here having a good time,” said Jim Smith, gesturing to the surrounding countryside. “I used to do stuff like that when I was a kid.”

Smith offered sodas from his ice chest and they thanked him and moved on. “I didn’t have the heart to tell the father about this river,” Smith said. “I’ve lived here all my life and you’ve got to heed the warning. This river will kill you in a heartbeat.

“Merle Haggard used to live down the canyon along the river. He had a song: ‘I’ll never swim in the Kern River again. That’s where I met her and that’s where I lost my best friend. I may die on the highway but I’ll never swim the Kern River again.’ ”

Before Smith finished singing, he heard the wails from downstream and ran. He found the family hugging and praying on the side of the highway.

“Oh my God!” Guillermo Chavez screamed as his wife wept. “I found my son!”

The corpse was caught in a snarl of cottonwood trees about a mile downriver from where the teenager had disappeared 13 days earlier. As the rescue team pulled the bloated body out of the river, Amparo Chavez handed one of the men the jar of holy water to administer to her son.

“This is what we wanted,” Chavez said, comforting his wife. “To find our son’s body, at least.”

Two hours later, the coroner’s office identified the body by a gold ring the father had given his son for his birthday. Guillermo Chavez signed the death certificate, wiped clean his boots and drove the family back to Los Angeles.

Wilson Chavez was buried the following Friday, the first in his family to be laid to rest in their adopted land. Two weeks later, authorities found the body of his friend, Jose Cruz, four miles downstream from where he disappeared.

Killer River

At least 176 people have drowned in the rugged Kern River in the past 25 years, making it the most treacherous stretch of water in California.