- [Ken] Northern California is a region of striking natural beauty with diverse landscapes that make it a perfect destination for nature, lovers, adventurers, and explorers.

Only a few hours north of San Francisco, you'll find the North Coast, a region well-known for producing great wine and for the towering redwoods that have stood guard over the land for thousands of years, make your way to the coast and you'll discover idyllic small towns and a shoreline that will leave you lost for words.

In the northeast corner of California, you'll find the Shasta Cascade region, where the creeks run clear and cold.

Rivers thunder their way through the mountains, and where postcard views are found in every direction.

While I came to Northern California to explore its epic rivers and coastlines by kayak, I'm just as excited to discover the natural beauty and diverse experiences that make the region one of the top adventure travel destinations in the world.

(upbeat music) My name's Ken Whiting, and for over 30 years, my life has been guided by the paddle in my hand.

This is my search for the world's most spectacular paddling destinations.

This is "Facing Waves."

Facing Waves is made possible by the following Vivid-Pix memory station and software allows users to scan personal history items like photos and documents, record voice narrative, and share what has been conserved.

More online at Vivid-pix.com.

Collette offers small group exploration tours, destinations and local experiences.

Explorations by Collette.

Guided travel since 1918.

♪ upbeat music In4adventure.com Inspiring, educating and encouraging outdoor adventure Host- And by these additional sponsors ♪ upbeat music (peaceful music) Well, I am at Montgomery Woods making my way to the Mendocino Coast, I'm about three hours north of San Francisco, and there's no way I couldn't stop and check out some of these redwoods that Northern California is so well known for.

I've hooked up with Jeff and Cate, a couple of local paddlers who are gonna be showing me around for the next couple days.

This should be cool.

(peaceful music) - [Cate] We're here in Montgomery Woods State Park, and this is an old growth Redwood Forest.

A lot of the trees in here are probably 2000 years old.

Quite a few of the big ones here are over 300 feet tall.

They're some of the tallest trees in the whole entire world.

(upbeat music) The Redwood Forest, it's all interconnected.

The trees and the plants and the animals here are all interconnected.

It's kind of magical to think of the roots of these gigantic trees all going underground.

And they're intertwined with the plants, the other roots, the other plants here and with the mushrooms, and they're all communicating together.

They're all working together to sustain life.

(peaceful music) - [Ken] So are these redwoods all the way down to the coast?

- The redwoods don't grow right to the ocean.

We're kind of at the top, what they call the ecological staircase.

Redwoods don't tend to like salty air, so they won't grow right to the coast.

But here we're inland Mendocino County and a bit away from the salt, and they're quite happy here.

- [Ken] So the coast is gonna have a different feel.

- [Cate] Definitely gonna be a different feel on the coast.

- [Ken] If this is any indication of what we have in store for us in Mendocino County, this is gonna be good.

(upbeat music) Well made it to the Mendocino Coast, getting my feet, hands, and paddle wet for the first time.

So we've launched here on the Noyo River, and I don't even think I've taken more than a couple of paddle strokes because I wasn't expecting this to be as cool as it is.

When you go on an adventure it really is, it's all about the surprises, the things that happen that you don't expect.

And the harbor that we started in was the unexpected surprise.

The river current was sweeping us towards the bay where we were headed, but there's harbor seals, the sea lions there just laying around.

They're curious.

They're pretty lazy and loud.

It's a beautiful active harbor.

- All right, guys, gather around here.

Check this out.

So we're going to go out through the jaws here in a minute.

Right now we are sitting pretty much right in the channel there, sitting right here.

Here's the bridge, we're gonna go under the bridge, and then we're gonna kind of scour, we're either gonna go over to eight whitewater feature over here, or we're gonna go over to the toilet bowl.

So either one.

- Okay.

- We'll get a better idea when we get out here on what has the most energy and we can go play on.

And so we'll go out there and as we go there though, from here to there, there's a bunch of shorebirds, maybe some mammals swimming around, maybe some kelp.

And so we'll get to check those out and enjoy that as we go as transition over to those spots, start to feel the pulse of the sea and let's go get some rides.

- All right.

- Sound good?

- Sounds good.

- Yeah.

- [Cate] Let's do it!

- [Jeff] The Noyo Bay, it's this horseshoe of a bay that has access to look out at sea from numerous different vantage points.

So you get to look out and see giant waves when they're happening, or whales, or sometimes it's fun to watch the fishing vessels come and go.

The waves that break along the the shore is just exploding with those negative ions.

It just gives you energy to look out there.

- [Ken] Well, we're in Noyo Bay now, and a lot of people come out to the coast to sea kayak, to tour around and maybe paddle around some of the the rocks.

But our mission is a little different.

I mean, we're in whitewater boats, and these things are specifically designed for rough conditions, and so that's why we're in them.

We're wanna play around the rocks.

Jeff and Cate are specialists in playing in the rough stuff, and so we're gonna find some play features.

- The Mendocino coast is very rocky, and I think that's what makes it so special.

It's a rugged, rocky coastline.

Coastal headlands, cliffs 20, 30 feet above the ocean, and it's very dynamic.

My favorite thing is playing what we call whitewater the sea.

Whitewater the sea is the interaction with the waves and the rocks, finding ways to play with that, or I like to say dance with it.

And it's kind of a hybrid.

It's sea kayaking 'cause you're out in the sea.

It's also a whitewater kayaking, but there's a surfing element to it as well.

- Is this the elevator you're talking about, or is that there?

- No, watch that.

This is the toilet hole.

- [Ken] We got to the first feature, and Jeff and Cate both paddle in front of this reef, this rock, big rock, and they point their boat right at it.

And then a wave comes and they start paddling at this rock wall.

And I'm thinking, what the heck are you doing?

Then the wave picks them up, covers the rock, just as they're about to hit it and they surf right off of it into the water behind it.

Okay, this is the game we're playing.

This is a new game.

I like this game.

Oh no.

(waves crashing) Woo.

Ah, that's good.

(waves crashing) (upbeat music) Sounds like a plan.

- [Jeff] One day I was sitting up on the coastal walk where you can walk along the Noyo Bay and there's a little interpretive signs, and one of the names that comes to mind is Chicken Point.

A lot of the fishermen would come out to the Bluffs and they'd look over and they'd look at what the sea conditions were the day.

And if they were too rough, they chickened out.

They didn't want to go out there.

We were out there playing in Whitewater the Sea, and we're in our kayaks and we're catching these waves.

And as you're riding the wave down the shoulder, you've gotta avoid these rocks.

Sometimes you get literally ride that wave you're on up and over those rocks and playing chicken with what's going on, and it's just magic.

- Wow.

Oh, that looks so fun.

What makes it wave at Chicken Point challenging is that you need to catch the biggest swells, but those are the waves that are the most intimidating, and they're the waves that explode the hardest against the wall.

So you have to really want to catch that wave.

The first handful of waves that came through when it was my turn, I didn't really want it.

(upbeat music) Almost.

Oh, I shoulda caught that one.

Ugh.

The trick with the wave was that you had to position yourself right in front of this rock that would go dry before the wave reached you, and then you'd once again paddle at the rock until the wave picked you up, covered the rock just as it steepened up and shot you forward.

It took a while for me to commit, but after watching Jeff surf a few times and hoot and holler, I wasn't gonna let the next wave go by.

Well, that's a good one.

You just gotta commit to this rock.

(upbeat music) Yeah baby, oh!

No.

Whoa.

(Jeff imitating a chicken) (Ken laughs) (upbeat rock music) Woo.

Well, that was a fun day.

This is one big playground.

Even though I want to keep playing, the body's not gonna let me keep going.

It's time to call it quits for the day.

There's lots more to see in Mendocino County.

So we're gonna get off the water and recharge and do a little bit more exploring.

(peaceful music) Well, I've made the move about four hours northeast of Mendocino.

We're in the Shasta Cascade Mountain range, an area that's well known for beautiful waterfalls, and so we are on a waterfall hunt.

(peaceful music) Well, there's definitely magic in these waters.

(water roaring) This waterfall tour is a really popular thing to do in this area, and people come from all over to do it, and that's because you get to do so much in one day.

You get to drive this beautiful loop road through the mountains.

The drive on its own is spectacular, but you can take lots of breaks along the way to stop, go for a short hike and explore waterfalls.

And I think there's two real ways that you can do the waterfall tour.

You can do the research, look at the photos, and choose the waterfalls that you want to see, or you can do it the way I like to do it, which is don't look at any photos, and so every hike that you do ends with a big surprise.

And I'll tell you what, there have been a lot of good surprises on this trip.

The whitewater paddler in me can't not look at this and see a line, but it's not a line for me to take.

(peaceful music continues) Well, I can't think of a better way to end this waterfall tour than the middle falls of the McLeod River.

The cool thing is though, we've still got a beautiful drive home.

(upbeat music) I am just to the west of Redding, about an hour, an hour and a half.

I'm on the banks of the Trinity River.

This is one of the most popular white water rafting rivers in northern California.

I've hooked up with George from Trinity River rafting, and we're gonna explore this river by kayak.

(upbeat music continues) Whoa, right to it.

How's the water?

- Well, we have a saying out here, we don't measure in temperatures, we measure in weeks and it's about two weeks cold.

- Yeah, that is.

That is fresh.

- The plan today, what we're doing is we've started off on the North Fork of the Trinity River, which has not a lot of water, but a mile down, it's gonna dump into the Trinity River, which has a lot more water, and the river is gonna take on a very different feel.

That's one of the joys of coming here in the springtime early.

There's so much water happening in Northern California in particular, 'cause of all the snow that's melting off right now, and that's why the water is so cold, very refreshing.

So how long is the North Fork section?

- It's a long ways up there.

It's a, but we're only doing, we're only doing like the bottom mile or so.

- A mile or so?

- Yeah, the upper section, it's a full on day or an overnighter, depending on how hard you want to paddle.

- But we're doing a mile and then it comes into the main Trinity.

- Main Trinity.

- Cool.

(upbeat music) Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

This rock's got my name on it.

(water splashing) If it didn't have my name on it before, well now it does, (bouncy music) Well, we made it.

The confluence with the Trinity, the main Trinity, a whole lot more water.

There's around 4,700 CFS here.

We had probably five, 600 CFS on that creek there.

I mean, really, we're talking about almost 10 times as much water.

All of a sudden it's gonna change the flavor of this run.

Much bigger waves, faster current.

You could just say more fun.

(upbeat music) Well, this rapid here is called Good Morning America for good reason.

If you're not awake yet, when you get that first splash of cold water in your face, you're definitely awake after that.

(laughs) (bouncy music) (waves crashing) Whoa, whoa.

What makes the Trinity River such a great place to kayak and to whitewater raft is there's not a lot of real danger here, a lot of big things to avoid.

Instead you have these wonderful wave trains, provide this awesome roller coaster ride up and down, and then these face shots of cold water to cool you down on the hot days.

And then things calm down and you have nice, fast moving water until you get to the next rapid.

So it all picks up speed from here?

- Yeah.

- Okay.

- [George] Now this is where all the stuff starts to really happen.

- So this is?

- This is a slot or Z drop.

- [Ken] Z drop.

Okay, sweet.

So this is one of the bigger rapids of the day.

This should be good.

(waves crashing) Nice whirlpool, little chaos.

Nice.

Doesn't matter what river I'm running, I am always on the lookout for surf waves.

I'll try to surf anything, but the thing about the Trinity River at high flows right now is that if you pass a wave, you're not getting back to it.

The current's too strong.

There isn't big eddies feeding back up that you can take.

And so you gotta catch it on the fly, and once you catch that wave, knowing that you can't get back to it, it's hard to leave it.

Is that Surfable?

- We'll soon find out.

(upbeat rock music) - Oowee, it's surfable.

Nice!

Surfing will pretty much always be my, one of my favorite things to do.

- [George] So there's rapid coming around the corner here.

It's kind of a straight rapid.

- [Ken] Okay.

- And it's just all wave train, nothing but fun.

- Anything Surfable?

- It's pretty fast.

I've never been able to catch one on it.

- Yeah.

Okay.

- [George] Next one's upper tidy bowl.

(upbeat music) (water splashing) - [Ken] That was right in the ear.

(all laughing) - That little splash up there is Hell's Gate then it pulls out and Hell's Hole is around the corner.

- Okay.

- Hell's Gate, into Hell's Hole.

I think that's right.

Sounds good though.

If that's not what is actually called, I think that's what it should be called.

(upbeat rock music) All right, so this one is called Sailor Bar, and there's a longer story to this one.

Some sailors discovered gold here, a gold bar.

Well, not an actual bar of gold, but that's where it got its name, but I think the gold that's here now is more in the beauty of the white water.

It's a pretty good rapid.

Got some nice waves, diagonals that are gonna kick hard.

This should be good.

(upbeat music) Whoa.

Whoa, Well, that was a beautiful day, but it's kind of a sad time right now because this is the end of my trip down the Trinity River.

I can definitely see why it's such a popular kayaking and rafting run.

It's also the end of my trip to Northern California.

I came here with some pretty high expectations.

I've wanted to come here for a very long time, and it has not disappointed.

This is one of the most beautiful places I've been, and there is so much more to do here.

So I will be back.

There's no doubt about that.

But for now, I am done.

Sad times, beautiful day, sad times.

(upbeat music) Facing Waves is made possible by the following Vivid-Pix memory station and software allows users to scan personal history items like photos and documents, record voice narrative, and share what has been conserved.

More online at Vivid-pix.com.

Collette offers small group exploration tours, destinations and local experiences.

Explorations by Collette.

Guided travel since 1918.

♪ upbeat music In4adventure.com Inspiring, educating and encouraging outdoor adventure Host- And by these additional sponsors ♪ upbeat music (upbeat music)