RAPID TRANSIT

Floating slowly and, alas, peacefully downstream, the paddlers catch their first glimpse of Johnsondale Bridge in nearly three days.

It’s a welcome sight, this towering metal structure, because on this day it represents more than merely a means of getting from one side of the river to the other. It marks the successful end to one of the wildest, most exhilarating journeys any of them have experienced.

Indeed, much has changed in three days.

Apprehension, even fear, evident on the faces of at least some as the bus began its two-hour climb to the starting point high in the Sequoia National Forest, has been replaced by a sense of accomplishment and triumph.

Muscles ache, but there is no real pain, only satisfaction at having conquered one of the most challenging stretches of whitewater in the United States: the Forks of the Kern, 17 miles of hydraulic fury, flanked by some of the most pristine wilderness in California.

One by one, the gray rubber rafts pass beneath the bridge and take a left turn toward civilization, such as it is up here. And as the last raft rounds the bend, a guide asks a paddler to share the highlight of his Forks experience.

He looks downriver, pondering the question, then sneaks a last glance upstream, and images of the turbulent world from which he has just emerged race through his head.

None is as vivid as the monster rapid called Vortex. Intrepid paddlers, on a scouting mission, are awe-struck by the sight, an actual waterfall tumbling with incredible force into a churning hole, threatening to swallow the rafts and spill their helpless paddlers into a mile-long section of river called the Gauntlet.

Michael Kokinos, a giant among paddle captains but one lousy confidence builder, is bellowing strategy and informing his group that negotiating Vortex is actually the easy part.

“You all saw ‘Hawaii Five-0’? Remember the big wave at the start of the show? We have the ‘Hawaii Five-0’ wave just over the next horizon. We drop into the ‘Hawaii Five-0’ wave, and it’s just like a zipper.

“You hit the wave, and your boat just goes ZZZIIIIPPPP!, way to the left. There’s no way to avoid it. It’s one hell of a wild ride. You get through that and there are giant pour-overs. We’ve got to maneuver our way through and around it. Then we’ve got to get back to the right, back to the left, back to the right, and we go over a 10-foot drop into a giant pool.”

Now getting through all that was a highlight.

But so was making it through the dozens of other Class-IV and V rapids--anything higher than Class V is considered unrunnable--that basically make the Forks of the Kern one long rapid.

A highlight?

How about the precarious hike, under a blazing sun, up the steep canyon walls flanking Peppermint Creek, and cooling off beneath a waterfall that cascades upon your head from 250 feet?

Or climbing the granite cliffs of Dry Meadow Creek to a vantage point with one of the most spectacular views of the region?

A highlight?

There is no single highlight, the paddler finally decides, because three days on the Forks of the Kern is basically a highlight unto itself.

“The thing about this river is it’s one rapid after another,” said one paddler, Josh Wellikson. “It’s total chaos.”

*

It’s late afternoon on the first day and the paddlers are setting up camp after blasting through a five-mile section of mostly Class-IV rapids, with a couple of Class Vs thrown in.

It has been invigorating, especially after the two-mile hike to the put-in, but hardly enough to leave them shaking in their rubber booties, as some of them were earlier when Kokinos was telling them that staying in the boat would not be easy but that doing so was the only guarantee they would be going home alive.

The Outdoor Adventures staff has a gourmet chicken dinner in the works, a campfire crackling and a batch of martinis ready for pouring.

Happy Hour on the Forks is a delightful experience. Designated as a Wild and Scenic River, the Kern is federally protected and highly regulated.

Outdoor Adventures, one of the west’s oldest and largest rafting companies with headquarters in Point Reyes Station and an office in Wofford Heights, is one of only four commercial outfits licensed to run trips on the Forks, and only one trip every five days is allowed by any of the four.

“That’s why this place is so pristine,” says Bob Volpert, 53, who started Outdoor Adventures in 1971 and runs family-oriented multi-day trips on a Class II-IV section of the lower Kern (through September) and one-day trips on the slightly livelier Upper Kern (through August), as well as the extreme trips on the Forks (through late July) at a cost of $624 per person.

“If this license ever went out to bid [by the U.S. Forest Service], every river company in America would bid on it.”

There are no signs of human intrusion at the camp beneath Needlerock Falls, but all it takes is a little imagination to make the Needles come alive. These towering granite spires--named the Witch, Warlock, Sorcerer and Druid--reach more than 8,000 feet above the forest and are among its most visible landmarks.

Kokinos, 36, is somewhat of a legend on the Forks, having run the river 100 times. At 6 feet 6, 235 pounds, with a personality and presence as dynamic as the river itself, he commands respect seemingly without trying.

He is no longer a full-time guide, having recently obtained his master’s degree and accepted an executive position at a high-tech firm in San Jose.

But like every river guide, Kokinos always comes back, to either this river or the Rogue in Oregon, the Salmon in Idaho or the scenic Tuolomne near Yosemite, on which he proposed to his wife, Polly, a vascular surgeon.

“This has completely reshaped the course of my whole life,” Kokinos says of his becoming a guide 18 years ago. “It gave me the opportunity to travel all over the world. It paid my way through college, took me to the Soviet Union, took me to Central America, the South Pacific. We did trips on the border of China and Mongolia. We did trips all over the world.”

His world on the Forks is currently being shared by his wife and by guides Heidi White, Ursula Melvin, Amy Gates, Chip Carroll, Dan Moomaw, Kevin Onorato and James Johnson.

And by paddlers Jay Rogina, 40, of Irvine, his father, Joe, and his son, Justin, 15; Scott Neeson, a motion picture executive from Beverly Hills, and his girlfriend, Alessandra Silvestri, a morning show host in Brazil; Larry Wellikson, president of an Irvine medical group and his sons Josh, 22, and Brian, 16; Chris Ryan, 39, of Carlsbad and Sue and Marc Cawdrey of Tiburon.

And by Al McLean, a semi-retired contractor from Temecula.

It takes a sense of adventure and at least some bravery to tackle a river such as the Forks. Most have come for the adventure and, perhaps, to see how brave they really are.

But McLean has come simply because he wants to get the most out of the “few good years” he has left. He listed his age as 54 on the waiver he signed at the Outdoor Adventures office, but having reached a point of no return, he confessed he is really 70 and that he lied because he wanted to be treated like everyone else.

“I’m an outdoor person,” he says, sitting on a log by the fire. “I was raised camping like this with my mother and dad. I rode motorcycles up here last year, and one of the ladies I ride with said, ‘Why don’t we go rafting after a ride?’ So we made arrangements and five of us came up and took a day trip on the Upper Kern, and when somebody mentioned the Forks, I penciled it in my mind to come up here.”

Night falls quickly in the bottom of a steep mountain canyon. Sleep comes easily. And with morning comes the sweet smell of cedar and pine, for all but Brian Wellikson and Justin Rogina, who got into their fathers’ cigars the night before and can’t get the taste out of their mouths.

“Dude, it like totally wasn’t worth it,” Wellikson says to Rogina. “I got totally sick last night.”

*

The paddlers, after a breakfast of bagels and lox, have put on their wetsuits and helmets and braced themselves for the baptism they are about to receive.

“Today’s rapids are large, and they start right here,” Kokinos says. “We go right into Goodmorning and Rude Awakening, and then hit Downhill Slalom.

“We get around the corner, go downstream and pull over on the right side at Peppermint Creek. There’s a waterfall there that’s 250 feet high and it cascades off the right wall. Time permitting, we’ll take a hike up to the top of the waterfall and water slides, which are really fun, get on our butts and slide down and careen around.”

Kokinos’ plan proceeds on schedule. Goodmorning, a large, swirling hole, engulfs each of the six rafts--three paddle boats and three larger oar boats on which the gear is stored--and sends them into a slalom course around boulders and through a series of standing waves. So chaotic is the run that only the paddle captains know what is going on. The paddlers are merely following orders: LEFT FORWARD!, RIGHT BACK!, LEFT BACK!, FORWARD PADDLE, BACK PADDLE!

Before they know it, they are tucked in an eddy at Peppermint Creek, trudging through the brush and over boulders, eventually reaching the waterfall, an impressive shower of sparkling snowmelt, making its way to the river from its source high in the southern Sierra. Some paddlers lounge in the pool beneath the waterfall, others choose to hike to the natural slides above it.

It isn’t long, though, before they are downriver, face to face with the green demon called Vortex, listening to Kokinos warn them of the dangers that lie ahead.

“After we get through Vortex, we’ll eddy out and pull in behind this rock, because after this it continues for the next mile, nonstop . . . right into the Gauntlet. If we end up on that rock we’re going to have to high-side: Everybody will have to jump to the side of the boat that is against the rock and stay there. The boat’s going to be really shaking around, really shaking around. Hang on, and we’ll eventually swing off, one way or another.

“If we swing off to the left, if you’re on the floor of the boat, you’ve got to get up immediately and paddle, and this is why: If you look downstream you can see what we call Chaos Hole. If you get into Chaos Hole, what happens is the boat will start spinning, and you’ll have to high-side, from one side to the other side and the other side, and people wash out and go swimming.

“It’s really nasty because there’s nothing that’s going to stop you if you fall out . . . you keep going. If for some reason you fall out from Chaos Hole on the left side, get on your stomach and swim as hard as you can to the left shore. . . . If you fall out on the right side of the rock, swim to the right as hard as you can.”

The paddlers haven’t remembered any of this as they are walking back to their rafts in total silence, perhaps wondering among themselves what they are doing here.

But once the commands begin, FORWARD PADDLE!, FORWARD!, FORWARD!, LEFT BACK!, FORWARD!, their fears are forgotten because it takes total concentration to do exactly as they are told by their guides, and before they know it, they are launching their rafts over and through Vortex and are up and paddling again, then back paddling into a shoreline eddy to regroup before continuing on into the Gauntlet.

*

The sun is especially radiant on the final day of a trip that has provided one exciting moment after another.

The paddlers have run rapids that appeared unrunnable, gaining confidence along the way, working in teams and becoming as fluid as the river itself, thanks to the inspired leadership of their guides.

And now they are on top of the world, or at least they feel as if they are. All of them, even old man McLean, have walked, with the help of ropes, practically straight up a series of boulders that look as though they belong on Mars, and they find themselves on the upper reaches of Dry Meadow Creek, which has to be one of the most beautiful areas anywhere in the Sierra.

The view of the vast granite canyon through which the creek runs is surreal in comparison to that of the forested canyon through which the river runs.

Waterfalls cascade 50 to 100 feet into a series of pools. A few of the braver souls, guides as well as paddlers, leap 30 feet into one of the pools and climb back up to do it again.

Eventually, though, reality strikes in the form of a cold slap in the face.

A series of hellacious rapids has turned fun-loving hikers back into serious paddlers. Joe Rogina is knocked out of his raft at a rapid called Confusion. Fear-stricken for the first time, he holds onto the pontoon for dear life, waiting for someone to pull him in.

The others look back for assistance from Onorato, the guide, but he also has fallen out and is holding on to the stern of the raft, shouting commands while trying to climb aboard.

Onorato makes it, and Rogina is also pulled in, and the boat continues, eventually pulling into an eddy to scout the trip’s final rapid, Carson Falls, a fitting crescendo, a tumultuous run through a turbulent rock garden followed by a 12-foot vertical drop into a swirling pool.

Again, the adrenaline is pumping at a Class-V level, and Kokinos, his voice nearly shot, is giving his pre-run spiel from atop a rock in front of the falls.

“We’re going to get into position, aim for this rock we’re standing on, and we’re going to paddle as hard as we can, and just before the drop I’m going to yell, ‘Hold on!’ We’re going to hit that hole down there, get worked like hell, and you’re going to have to get right back up and paddle like hell so we can get out. . . . “

So it is done, by group after group, with varying degrees of efficiency. But the paddlers stay in their rafts, maneuver around a slight bend in the river and see before and above them the fork in the road that is the Johnsondale Bridge.

*

Only four commercial rafting companies are licensed by the U.S. Forest Service to run trips on the Upper, Lower and Forks sections of the Kern River. They are:

Outdoor Adventures: (800) 323-4234

Chuck Richards Whitewater: (800) 624-5950

Kern River Tours: (800) 844-7238

Whitewater Voyages: (800) 488-7238