This Little-known California River Has Some of the Country's Best Rafting—Here's What You Need to Know

Travel + Leisure

13-06-2025

Our collective nerves spiked the instant we arrived at the Kern River. A steely quiet came over Erin, my partner, as she eyed its waters, which flow with visible fury through the southern foothills of California's Sierra Nevada. Her daughter, Etta, who was a day shy of turning 13, had a similar reaction. I knew this to be their shared method of armoring up for the unknown—and a wholly appropriate response to the occasion. Bobbing at the river's edge was a blue rubber raft in which we were to spend the next two days navigating 20 miles of turbulent whitewater.
From left: Goats feeding on cottonwood leaves at Cuyama Buckhorn; hiking with goats at Cuyama Buckhorn, an activity led by head bartender Sam Seidenberg.
Yasara Gunawardena
Still, their silence amplified my own jitters. We were on a new trip from Momentum River Expeditions, an Oregon-based outfitter specializing in luxury-tinged rafting adventures throughout the American West. It was also something I'd been itching to do for the better part of my life. When I was growing up my father ran rivers often, relating his exploits in a highly infectious, off-color poetry and always assuring me that I would join him once I was old enough. But when I turned 13—generally the age when you can trust a kid to handle a paddle in serious rapids—my dad moved away and started a new family. Our relationship descended into estrangement and our would-be rafting trips, like so much else, failed to become a reality.
Suffice to say that, three decades later, it was a touch loaded to be on my first multiday rafting trip with my chosen family of Erin and Etta—and especially for it to be on the Kern, which Erin introduced me to. Fed by the snowmelt of Mount Whitney, the tallest peak in the continental United States, the 165-mile river winds through the Sequoia National Forest, a majestic landscape that has long held sway over seasoned fly-fishermen and hardened river rats. Though only three hours by car from Los Angeles, where we live, it's a region of California that's remarkable not just for its rugged splendor but also for the absence of crowds and Instagram-friendly curation that have come to define more popular parks like Joshua Tree. This is what Erin loved about the area, which became one of the first things I loved about Erin after she took me for a long weekend early on in our relationship. Over the years, she, Etta, and I have driven up often—including, at my prodding, for a half-day rafting trip back when Etta was eight.
From left: A guest tent at the new Momentum River Expeditions base camp; an appetizer of baked cheese with chimichurri, served at the Momentum base camp.
Yasara Gunawardena
This adventure would be a very different beast: more challenging rapids, to say nothing of the sense of immersion that any rafting junkie will tell you comes only by making the river your home for a few days. As one of Momentum's 'Wilderness Gourmet' trips, it would also introduce us to the singular flair the company brings to such excursions. We'd end our first day at its newly constructed base camp, where we'd indulge in a multicourse feast prepared by Matthew Domingo, a chef who helped Momentum pioneer these journeys 15 years ago.
After a tutorial on paddling commands and basic safety, our guide, Shana Sims, led us to the raft we'd be using. My family was in the lead raft in a flotilla of three carrying a total of 15 guests, and as we were whisked into the Kern's current, something extraordinary happened: our anxieties evaporated. Sims played a key role in this. A sinewy spark plug of a woman and veteran of a number of Momentum's runs—the Salmon in Idaho, the Rogue in Oregon, the Tatshenshini in Alaska—she had a manner, at once chill and focused, that instilled confidence. But equally critical was something that often gets eclipsed by the air of adrenalized machismo that defines rafting culture—namely, how relaxing it is.
From left: Momentum River Expeditions guests approach their rafts on the Kern River; playing in the Kern at the end of a day's rafting.
Yasara Gunawardena
Yes, there is the whitewater, which we'd come to learn could at times be steadfast in its determination to rip our bodies from the raft. But most of the trip was dominated by a drift that was languid, meditative, sharpening the pixels of the present tense in a way that is increasingly rare in our pixelated age. As we were moved, quite literally, by the landscape, everything around us took on an almost Technicolor quality. The whirlpools that appeared as fast as they vanished. The shifting light on the granite boulders that peppered the hills. The silhouettes of hawks circling overhead. The grins, giggles, and gasps of the people I cared about most in the world.
When we reached a particularly calm section of river, Sims made an announcement: 'If anyone wants to take a swim, now's the time.'
From left: Paddles await rafters on the banks of the Kern River; the author paddling on the Kern.
Yasara Gunawardena
Erin jumped in. I followed her. The water was an icy whoosh—and a veritable elixir on that nearly 100-degree day. Her daughter may have been the one turning 13 that weekend, but, just then, it was Erin who became the teenager among us. 'Oh my god!' she hollered. 'This is freakin' AMAZING!'
On past trips, we had beelined from L.A. to one of the tumbledown motels in Kernville, the area's quaint main town. Our days there tended to revolve around wandering the Sequoia National Forest's many mountain paths, the Cannell Meadow Trail being a favorite; lounging in the hot springs along the river; and taking in the sunset from Kern River Brewing Co., a restaurant with sweeping views of the valley.
From left: Cuyama Buckhorn, a converted motel; a guest room at Cuyama Buckhorn.
Yasara Gunawardena
But in keeping with the ad-hoc theme of our weekend, we opted this time to drive up via the Cuyama Valley, which unfurls at the border of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties and is two hours from both L.A. and Kernville.
Our last rapids, Pinball, proved to be the most accurately named.
Our destination was Cuyama Buckhorn, a roadside motel that in recent years has been made over into a stylish resort with vintage flourishes, such as bocce courts and firepits ideal for roasting s'mores. While all that sounded like a lovely complement to the comparable grit of a rafting trip, we gravitated to the Buckhorn largely for goat hiking, a new experience the property can arrange for guests. This is more or less what you're thinking: a hike accompanied by goats—specifically the trio of sturdy pack goats that live in the care of the hotel's trail guide and head bartender, a rangy, affable guy named Sam Seidenberg. Erin and I had an ulterior motive. While we wanted to do something special for Etta's birthday, we also wanted to test a hypothesis: Would the addition of goats bridge the gap between Etta's total lack of interest in hiking and our love for it?
The lobby of Cuyama Buckhorn, a converted motel on the author's route from L.A. to Kernville.
Yasara Gunawardena
The answer was yes. After a day spent lounging at the Buckhorn's pool, we met Seidenberg and his goats and set off into the foothills of the Sierra Madre. As California quail darted through scrub oaks, Seidenberg foraged for various ingredients—purple sage, yerba santa, manzanita berries—to create celebratory mocktails. One of the goats, with the regal name of White Ledge, carried the ice and bartending gear—serving, in essence, as an elegantly horned bar cart that was more than happy to be fawned over by a blissed-out Etta.
After the hike, we ended the evening at the Buckhorn's bar-restaurant, a woodsy den of taxidermy where the kitchen dazzled us with a meal featuring produce from local farms and a tomahawk steak of epic proportions. Knowing we'd be on a river 10 hours later gave the moment a distinctly Californian feel, a little like one of those aimless weekend road trips that evolves into a transporting adventure.
Swimming in the Kern River.
Yasara Gunawardena
'This is…crazy,' whispered Etta when, after drifting 10 miles down the Kern, we arrived at Momentum's base camp. An enclave of safari-style tents set atop wooden platforms—inside two of which, as if by magic, our luggage awaited—the experience was like being shipwrecked in a place you never want to be rescued from. Adirondack chairs were fanned out along a small beach on the riverbank; there was a cornhole situation, and board games and decks of cards were piled up by a communal table. At a makeshift bar shaded by a sycamore tree, one of the guides was mixing cocktails that contained pisco and ginger. Crazy indeed.
Meanwhile, Chef Domingo was busy preparing dinner at the impressive camp kitchen, which faced a table laden with wines from nearby Paso Robles. What followed was a family-style meal loosely inspired by Peruvian-Asian cuisine: heirloom tomatoes flecked in tomato powder and tossed with crispy shallots; a tangy ceviche of shrimp and whitefish; marinated hanger steak with an aji amarillo paste; and roast chicken in verde sauce. To eat like this anywhere would have been a treat; to eat like this in the wild, after a day on the water, felt downright illicit. When a dessert of tres leches cake arrived, swimming in frozen cherries, Etta's contained a candle to mark the start of her teens.
The Kern River, with the Sierra Nevada rising behind it.
Yasara Gunawardena
After being lulled to sleep by the river, we woke to an equally decadent breakfast that, Domingo explained, was an homage to the region's Basque community, which dates back to the shepherds who came to work on area ranches from the late 1800s onward. Along with eggs piperade, a dish made with a ragoût of tomatoes and peppers, there was a gratin of caramelized leeks and shredded potatoes. So delicious and leisurely was it all that I'd almost forgotten we had another full day of rafting ahead of us.
Back on the river, we were all more comfortable, having developed a Pavlovian response to Sims's various commands: 'LEFT SIDE BACK!' 'LEAN IN!' 'BACK ON THE JOB!' On calm sections of the river, Sims gave both Erin and Etta a chance at the helm; she also let Etta 'ride the bull' through some midsize rapids—which is to say Etta took them on while straddling the nose of the raft, feet dangling over the edge and holding tight to a rope in the manner of, well, someone riding a bull.
The author and his family dining at Momentum's communal table.
Yasara Gunawardena
The day ended in an exhilarating rush: three pounding Class IV rapids in quick succession. Despite their intimidating monikers—one was called Eat Rocks and Bleed—the experience was far more exhilarating than harrowing. Then came our last one, Pinball, which proved to be the most accurately named. I can't say what happened exactly, but as we paddled into it the raft buckled and, for a second that felt like an eternity, Erin was directly above me, somehow both airborne and still seated in the nose of the raft, which was now folded like a taco. We both looked back for Etta, who was still technically in the raft, yet also shoulder deep in Kern, since the back half of the raft was fully submerged inside a churning hydraulic of water, with Sims somehow holding onto both her oars and Etta's life jacket.
Then—boom—the raft was spat out of the rapids, all of us still in it, laughing maniacally as we high-fived with our paddles.
An antiques store in Kernville.
Yasara Gunawardena
Pulling into shore, Sims asked us to name our favorite part of the trip. I knew immediately what my answer was: sharing this experience with Erin and Etta. I'd spent most of my life thinking of such trips as something my father did and that I'd missed out on. Now I understood: he was the one who had missed out. I also knew, from the slight quaver in my cheeks, that were I to attempt to say any of this out loud, it would not be only river water dampening my face.
'Pinball,' I muttered. 'That was nuts!'
A version of this story first appeared in the July 2025 issue of Travel + Leisure under the headline "Making a Splash."