Packrafting the Headwaters of the Kern

Packrafting the Headwaters of the Kern

Matthew and Eric Gilbertson

June 16-22, 2021

85 miles, 15kft gain

We were looking to hike into some remote areas of the Sierras in California and maybe involve a little bit of packrafting. The funnest rivers to packraft are those that are far from roads and require carrying boats in. After some research it appeared the Kern River fit the bill perfectly. The headwaters of the Kern were at least 20 miles in from the nearest trailhead, in the valley west of Mt Whitney.

The headwaters of the Kern were first paddled in 1981 by Thompkins, Robbins, and Lake in hardshell kayaks, but it hasn’t seen too many descents since then. The Kern river officially starts at Lake South America, but first gets deep enough to paddle around Junction Meadows. According to cacreeks.com, the first 20 miles of the river from Junction Meadows is mostly class II with some class IV sections. That sounded great for packrafting.

The only reports I’ve found of people paddling the Kern involved long car shuttles, but we would only have one car. I discovered, though, it was possible to do a big loop starting and ending at Horseshoe Meadows trailhead. We would hike in to Junction Meadows, paddle down to Coyote Creek at the Sequoia National Park boundary, then hike back. This section of the Kern had a trail paralleling it the whole way, so at least if it wasn’t paddleable we could always hike through instead. Unfortunately that section of river valley had burned in a forest fire in 2020, so there was a risk of lots of blowdowns in the river. But we decided to check it out and hope for the best.

I flew down to San Jose Wednesday morning and we drove seven hours to the Horseshoe Meadows trailhead. Along the drive our car thermometer hit 113F near Lone Pine, but luckily up at 10,000ft it was much cooler. We quickly packed up our boats, overnight gear, and six days of food in bear cans and started hiking. It was already nearly sunset, so we made it a mile or two before pitching the tent near the south fork cottonwood creek.

June 17

There were thunderstorms forecast in the afternoon so we got an early start. The goal for the day was to climb Mt Langley and camp at an alpine lake. Recent satellite images showed almost no snow above treeline, and we’d heard it was already the worst drought in the past 30 years. This at least meant we didn’t have to bring any snow gear like crampons or gaiters. We hiked past some of the Cottonwood Lakes, then switchbacked up New Army Pass. There was a little bit of snow at the pass but all avoidable.

We then headed north and caught up to another group of hikers headed to Langley (14,026ft). We dropped our packs at 12,500ft and continued up fast and light, reaching the summit by noon. The clouds were building by then, but luckily thunderstorms were still a few hours out. We had great views steeply down 10,000ft to the owens river valley below, and we could pick out Mt Whitney and a few other 14ers to the north.

Since we hadn’t really acclimated for 14,000ft we headed down pretty quickly. At our packs we descended due west to Soldier Lakes, reaching treeline just as it started to rain. Hopefully the other hikers behind us were off the summit by then. We rode out the rain squall under an overhanging boulder, then soon started hiking again. There wasn’t really a trail to follow, but the trees were very open, and we soon climbed back above treeline.

We followed Rock Creek up to Sky Blue Lake by late afternoon and decided to pitch camp there. It seemed unwise to try to push up and over Crabtree Pass that afternoon with the storms coming in. We pitched the tent on the south end of the lake and I paddled around to the opposite end and back. We each tried casting some spinners in but didn’t get any bites.

At 5pm, approximately as forecast, we heard some low rumble of thunder. We quickly cooked up some ramen noodles then hopped in the tent. Thunder storms rolled through for the next hour, but then cleared out just at sunset. That evening, though, the thunderstorms and rain returned and kept us awake between midnight and 2am. Some of the strikes sounded very close, and we were happy to be deep in a valley well below the high peaks. (I later learned, though, that one lightning strike had started a fire near the Whitney Portal trailhead that was still burning a week later.)

June 18

The next morning we slept in until 7am when the rain finally ended. Interestingly, this storm hadn’t been forecast but was very strong. I suspect it was related to the extreme heat that day. I saw death valley hit 128F! We hiked around the east side of the lake, then weaved through cliffs and scrambled our way up to Crabtree Pass. The skies were clearing out and it didn’t look like much risk of thunderstorms that day.

We followed a faint user trail along the north side of upper Crabtree Lake, then hiked down to the middle lake. At the lower Crabtree Lake we tried our luck again, this time casting in flies. We each caught a bunch of golden trout, which was fun. Unfortunately it was too early in the day to cook them so we ended up throwing them all back. My mini leatherman helped to quickly extract the hooks so the fish spent minimal time out of the water.

Below the lower lake we found a primitive trail, which we followed all the way down eventually to the PCT. We met a bunch of other hikers, mostly finishing the Sierra High Trail and planning to summit Whitney the next morning. It was an easy hike northbound on the PCT , then down the Wallace Creek trail to Junction Meadows by late afternoon. The temperature was considerably warmer down below 9000ft and we each took a quick dip in the river.

We spent the rest of the evening setting up camp, scouting the river, and fishing. The Kern looked just barely deep enough to be paddleable, and we looked forward to a fun descent.

June 19

The morning dawned chilly and we waited for the sun to hit the river. Then we inflated our rafts and put in. We could fit most of the gear in the cargo zips, but were a bit concerned about putting the bear cans in there. We’d previously paddled the Alsek River in the Yukon with bear cans in the rafts, so we knew it worked. But with the Kern so shallow we worried about the hard plastic bumping on the river rocks. So instead we strapped the bear cans and hiking poles on the fronts of our rafts in our backpacks.

The first mile or so went surprisingly well, with no blowdowns and only one shallow section requiring us to get out and carry the rafts. It’s amazing that a packraft can get through as little as 8 inches of water. There’s a bit of technique required, though. You generally want to distribute your weight as evenly as possible, which often means leaning back so your butt doesn’t stick out the bottom.

Soon we hit a stretch of class IV rapids that looked too shallow to navigate. So we got out and packed up the boats. I’d read the next few miles were continuous class IV, so it seemed the most efficient course of action was to hike until the waterfalls ended.

We hiked into an old burn zone, passing a few dozen high sierra trail hikers along the way. The burn zone lasted about two miles, and luckily very few trees had yet fallen over. This will likely change in the coming years. After the two miles the burned areas were only intermittent, with most of the forest intact.

We took a short break to admire the Kern hot springs, but the air temperature was so hot that it wasn’t very appealing to take a dip. That would be an excellent destination in the winter, though. Shortly after the hot springs we crossed a foot bridge and the river seemed to get tame enough to put in. After a lunch and fishing break we put in and started paddling again.

In general the conditions started out tough. There were quite a few blowdowns, and many sections where the river was braided. This resulted in lower flow in each channel, and many cases where we had to get out and carry the boats. We ended up wearing our packs to make it easier to carry the boats. We joked we were doing boat-assisted creek hiking in many places.

The braided channels eventually converged, though, and the paddling got a lot better. A few times we took breaks at deep pools to cast in our fishing lines. The fishing was almost too easy, with a fish nearly every cast! By later in the afternoon we kept two lunkers and one medium size fish to cook for dinner. Interestingly, we passed one other fisherman lower on the river, but he intentionally tried to ignore us and look away as we passed. I’m not sure why he wasn’t more friendly when we tried to say hello.

Just beyond the Rattlesnake Creek confluence we found a good takeout and pitched our tent for the night. We cooked up the fish, which went well with our oriental ramen noodles.

June 20

The morning started out cold again, and I wished I’d brought my dry suit. I also wished I could give some of the cold air to my future self in the afternoon when I’d be hiking out in the heat and would appreciate it more. We packed the rafts up as before, and the river was for the most part deep enough to avoid any butt scraping on rocks.

We generally paddled fun class II water, which would often be deep pools connected by shallow and wide flows over small rounded river rocks. The key was always finding the deepest channel of water connecting the pools. A few times we had to get out and portage around blowdowns, but generally we stayed in the boats unless stopping to fish.

By lunch time we hit a big set of rapids around 6,400ft and got out to scout. I’d read there was one class IV section on this part of the Kern, and it looked like we’d found it. The small waterfalls through the boulders looked manageable and fun, and we took turns filming and running them. Matthew nailed the first rapid, but I hit it at an awkward angle and nearly flipped over. I was able to recover, though, and we took a lunch break at the bottom of this rapid.

The water was deep enough to swim in, and Matthew even did a canon ball off a boulder. Around the corner the class IV rapids continued, and it was too far to scout everything. But they looked manageable like the first one.

We took turns going ahead, stopping at an eddy, and taking pictures. It was pretty fun – almost at the level to flip us over but not quite. After a while we eventually saw the Coyote Creek bridge in the distance, and knew our paddling was coming to an end.

Matthew took the lead then as I waited. He paddled past the bridge, then got out onto the bridge and started filming. I had fun running the last set of rapids before taking out just beyond the bridge. For some reason I thought we might see other people there, like the bridge somehow meant we were back in civilization. But we were still at least 20 miles from the nearest trailhead, and of course there were no other people there.

We did pass a cabin with solar panels that I think acts as a ranger station, though we didn’t see any rangers. We dried out the gear, packed up, and started the long hike back out. It would have been kind of fun to continue paddling down the river, but it was also fun to be doing a loop trip and ending up exactly where we started with no car shuttle.

By now it was getting really hot, and I regretted leaving the river. We hiked steeply up switchbacks in the golden trout creek drainage, eventually climbing up to a meadow at 8600ft. We crossed the meadow on an abandoned and often undefined trail, passing by an interesting cabin that had a sign for a snow survey station. We followed the ill-defined trail behind the cabin and surprisingly encountered a group of six guys with day packs hiking the other way. It was an odd place to be that late in the day with just day packs, but I think they were getting packed in by mules somewhere.

But we hadn’t seen any evidence of a mule train on the trail, and it’s unclear why a mule train would take a different trail. They were also kind of a long ways from the Kern River, which seemed like the main destination back there. We never figured out what their story was.

Soon after we reached Salt Lick Meadow and pitched our tent for the night. We caught a bunch of small golden trout on flies in the stream through the meadow, and soon went to sleep.

June 21

The next morning we continued hiking north, past Johnson Peak and Whitney Meadow to eventually reach the PCT. It would have been easy to continue out to the trailhead that afternoon, but we wanted another day in the wilderness. So we hiked a half mile northbound to Chicken Spring Lake. The lake is just at the edge of treeline at 11,300ft and has excellent beaches. There were a handful of other hikers there, but we found an open area on the beach.

We inflated our boats and paddled around the lake for a few hours. Matthew tried casting a line in but didn’t get any bites. I think the lake is too close to the trailhead and must have gotten fished out, while the Kern River is so far away it probably rarely gets fished, and thus has many more fish. We went for a quick swim, then dried out our gear and continued hiking.

The paper map showed a small pond below Wright Peak at 10,200ft near the trailhead, and we bushwhacked a bit off the trail to camp there. The pond was all dried up, but it at least provided a flat place to camp. In the evening I made a quick scramble up to the summit, which had great views of Horseshoe Meadows and Mt Langley.

The next morning we made the short hike back to the trailhead, then a long drive back to San Jose.

Video of the trip:

 

 

 

 

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