Johnsondale Bridge to Kernville Bridge Run (20 miles of whitewater madness) 

My friend Steven rigging up at the first bridge (20 miles upstream of the takeout bridge) 

In late May after school ended, my friend Steven and I headed to the Kern River for a final weekend of good runoff.  

Since neither of us had done the whole river in one day- we decided this was the perfect weekend since the flow was decent and the weather was perfect.

After a couple different attempts at hitchhiking, a retired forest ranger let us stuff our gear in his Jeep and drove us 20 miles upriver to Johnsondale Bridge which is where the road departs from the Upper Kern forever.  (You have to hike in if you want to hit the Forks of the Kern).

We put in at about 9:30 with a few water bottles (and some NUUN Hydration), sandwiches, and energy bars stuffed in packs.  The water temperature was pretty brisk, but we felt fine in our 3/4 surf wetsuits.

The first run was Limestone which is a fun class III+ section with some fun drops and deep water.  

After that was Fairview Diversion Dam which is supposedly unrunnable although it seems doable.  We portaged it anyways since the rapids after are choked with rebar and all kinds of debris.  Unfortunately that Dam also takes out 500 cfs from the run.  When the river is only flowing 1500, it makes a big difference.   After that was a nice class IV + falls which we jumped into halfway.  We didn't want to run the sketchy upper part since we packed light and didn't take any throw bags or safety equipment.

Scoping out the sketchy rapid below the diversion dam.

The next few miles was Fairview, a mild class III section through shallow river lined with campers, drunken inner tubers, and swimmers. 

Chamise Gorge came next which is a really fun class IV run that has some steep drops through Sierra Nevada granite.  

After Chamise was Upper and Lower Salmon Falls, which kayakers regard as an extremely hazardous class VI rapid.  We riverboarded right near both fall and got to scope it out.  From our observations, both falls are runnable, although the first has serious consequences due to an undercut rock.  We decided not to run it, but it is definitely in our future for next year.

That was followed by Ant Canyon (III+), where we got to see two drunk inner-tubers attempt to run pretty difficult rapids with no PFD's or safety gear.

Thankfully they got off the water before the "Thunder" section of the Kern which is about 4 class V rapids which can get pretty dangerous.  We ran all of them with no problem except for the last rapid where I took a bad line and both of us ended up in the rock clogged river left.

The class V Thunder Run was followed by about 5 miles of class III-IV whitewater into Kernville which we take newbies on frequently.  At this point, the water had warmed up at least 15 degrees and we had a nice float to the Kernville Bridge where we completed our 20-mile Bridge to Bridge run at around 5:00PM.

The next day, we had our opening day on the Lower Kern which is a fun 10-mile class IV run with mild water temperatures and good scenery.

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