“You’re doing great! Keep going!” My friends shouted words of encouragement as I struggled to paddle against the current, the realization slowly hitting that all that separated me from the Pacific Ocean was a life jacket and an enormous hunk of plastic. For the first time in my life, I was kayaking, and though I’d like to consider myself a quick study, the unpredictable tides and craggy seascape off the coast of Southern California’s Channel Islands probably weren’t the ideal conditions to first use a narrow, human-powered boat.
I consider myself only a little outdoorsy and of average athleticism, but I am nothing if not a sucker for the esoteric—so when the Los Angeles Times featured kayaking to the islands’ hidden sea caves as one of five epic outdoor adventures to consider pursuing at the start of this year, I started looking into the prospect despite having zero experience on the water. By the end of February, I’d booked a private “Adventure Sea Caves” tour in mid-July for me and seven other outdoors-inclined friends through Ventura-based Channel Islands Adventure Company, one of two companies licensed with the National Park Service to operate tours and boat rides in and around the Channel Islands. (There’s also another company, Santa Barbara-based Channel Island Expeditions, which operates non-landing kayaking tours.)
Note: For novices, the Times article’s suggested kayaking route to the Painted Cave—one of the largest and arguably most beautiful sea caves in the world—isn’t just challenging to the point of being dangerous, it’s logistically impossible as a day trip. The story makes it seem like the Painted Cave could be just another stop in your itinerary from Scorpion Landing, where my guided kayaking tour also began. In reality, the cave is about 30 miles away (so, about a 10-hour kayaking trip) from Scorpion Landing, according to Leah, my expert guide through Channel Islands Adventure Company.
Why’d I book so far in advance? I wanted my pick of date and time for a private tour during the summer, when the weather is more agreeable. Public ones don’t sell out as quickly, though; in fact, the Channel Islands was named the least-visited national park in California last year. In 2023, approximately 330,000 visitors made the trip to the remote-yet-close chain of five islands, a fraction of the 3.9 million people who traveled through Yosemite last year. Unlike Yosemite or Joshua Tree, the Golden State’s second most-visited national park, the Channel Islands offers next to no amenities for visitors—which means there’s usually plenty of peace, quiet and space to spread out for the select bunch of folks willing to rough it a little (and pony up for the boat ride) in order to see one or more of the islands.
To get to any of the Channel Islands, the public must use an authorized boat or plane, and you’ll most likely end up taking a ferry to Santa Cruz—the largest island with multiple bathrooms, several campsites and potable water—though you can also visit Anacapa, Santa Rosa and San Miguel through separate boat rides, all of which start at $66 round trip for adults. (The fifth, which is named Santa Barbara Island, is closed to the public for conservation-related reasons as of writing.) Most day visitors spend their time hiking, snorkeling or kayaking, but you can also camp overnight. Just take note that open fires aren’t allowed; the grasses and foliage that cover each island are extremely flammable.
Unlike L.A. County’s ultra-touristy Catalina Island, there are no restaurants on the Channel Islands, and bathrooms are limited to latrines at each campground. Day and overnight visitors have to bring their own food and water. There’s drinking water available from the Scorpion Canyon campground on Santa Cruz Island and the Water Canyon campground on Santa Rosa Island. Other than that, you’re on your own.
Despite these limitations, I’m surprised more Angelenos don’t visit the Channel Islands. The national park offers breathtaking natural beauty and plenty of wildlife sightings (both while en route and on the island itself), all within three hours’ travel time from most of Los Angeles. From many parts of L.A., it’s only an hour to hour-and-a-half drive to Ventura Harbor, where Island Packers operates daily ferry trips. Depending on the day and weather conditions, the ferry takes between an hour and an hour-and-a-half—your boat might make the occasional stop so riders can observe dolphins, whales or other marine wildlife.
On the day of my mid-July trip, my boyfriend and I pulled into the parking lot of Island Packers in Ventura around eight o’clock in the morning. Within minutes, we were greeted by light rainfall and the sound of thunder, but the staff members checking people in assured us that despite the mainland’s stormy weather, conditions on the island were likely to differ and our guided tour could go on as planned. (Most of the year, Island Packers advises attendees to call them at 5:30am the day of your tour to ensure weather conditions safely allow for kayaking or passage to the islands themselves.) One by one, my five friends trickled in; the sixth had come down with food poisoning and had to bail at the very last minute.
By nine o’ clock, we were on our way to Scorpion Anchorage on Santa Cruz Island, where our guide would meet us, show us the ropes of kayaking and lead us on our tour. Even in July, the sky was overcast, and I was grateful I’d paid attention to Island Packers’ wardrobe advice and layered up with a long-sleeved shirt and windbreaker. On our boat ride, we saw several dolphins jumping out of the water, with the naturalist on board calling out and identifying species by their common name. I’ve seen dolphins before on other boat trips, but never this many. Before even stepping foot on one of the Channel Islands, the overall experience was already downright magical, at least in my book.
Eventually, we arrived at Scorpion Anchorage around 10:30am and I caught my first views of Santa Cruz Island as I walked down the gangway and onto the pier. On my right, an enormous cliffside, dotted with grass, rose out of the thickets of brownish-green kelp that surrounded the harbor. To my left, colorful kayaks littered a small, rocky beach, offset by sloping, sun-parched hills dotted with green grasses and even more steep, crumbling cliffsides made of volcanic rock.
After disembarking, we received a mandatory primer on safety tips and general advice for our stay on Santa Cruz Island before meeting up with our tour guide, Leah. Then we walked over to the Scorpion Canyon campground, where the seven of us donned Island Packers-provided wetsuits (optional), plus helmets and personal flotation devices a.k.a. life jackets (both mandatory). We also stowed our backpacks and extra clothing in heavy boxes, which would prevent the wily dwarf island foxes and gigantic island ravens from stealing our lunches or, in the case of the latter, shiny objects like car keys.
Before the tour officially began, Leah gave my group a half-hour crash course on how to kayak safely, including how to enter and exit a kayak without flipping it over, proper paddling technique and what to do if your vessel flips over in the middle of a trip. Aside from me and my equally inexperienced partner, everyone else had previously kayaked, albeit mostly in freshwater environments. Then we all had to carry our double kayaks to the beach. Each one is unwieldy and weighs about 70 pounds, so this isn’t exactly an easy thing to do if you’re not used to lifting more than 35 pounds for prolonged periods of time.
It wasn’t until around 11:45am that all of us finally got into our kayaks, with Leah initially directing us to navigate to the calm, densely packed kelp forest around the harbor. The first thing that struck me once I started paddling was how clear the water was. The deep teal-blue reminded me of the photorealistic underwater paintings by Black American artist Calida Rawles, whose artwork graces the cover of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ debut novel, The Water Dancer. The second thing that hit me was that yes, indeed, I was about to kayak the semi-open ocean—with all the possible danger that entails.
What curbed my last-minute anxiety was the immediate need to coordinate paddling with my boyfriend and navigate through the thickets of kelp, which ended up being more annoying than anything else. Bobbing in the water were these strange jelly-like creatures known as salp (cyclosalpa affinis), a little-understood marine invertebrate I was only able to identify after the fact. Leah also mentioned we might be able to see a few garibaldi, though this turned out not to be the case. The protected species, which is California’s official state fish, resembles a giant goldfish.
From there, we paddled over to Elephant Belly, a shallow cave formed by a rocky arch that resembles the trunk of a cartoon pachyderm. Kayak by kayak, we maneuvered through the narrow passage, emerging on the other side, where a curious male sea lion briefly appeared, bobbing his head above the water. This was an absolute delight to behold. When my friend Jon, our lone solo kayaker, appeared on the other side, he looked slightly shaken. A piece of rock had fallen from above while he was passing through, missing his head by a few inches. Thank god for helmets, I suppose.
Well, this isn’t too bad, I thought to myself. At that point in the day, I still (incorrectly) thought the Painted Cave was within possible kayaking distance, and I was having fun. The next cave we visited, however, proved to be a slightly different story. After reaching the cave’s entrance, Leah explained that there were multiple chambers of the cave, with the final one being almost entirely bathed in darkness. As with everything else on the tour, venturing inside the deepest chamber was optional. “Who wants to go first?”
Stupidly, my partner and I raised our hands.
Leading the way with a lantern, Leah nimbly kayaked to the deepest chamber, then signaled for us to come inside. Slowly, we kayaked through the increasingly narrow cave, the currents pushing us perilously close to the sharp rock faces on either side of us. At a certain point, the space got so tight I could no longer properly paddle through, and I spent parts of the journey into the cave using my paddle to push our kayak away from the rocks. Then, an unexpected current sent our boat into a rock face, abruptly locking my paddle up against both sides of the cave. If I hadn’t leaned backwards (as Leah had taught us) and quickly turned my paddle sideways, I would have probably injured myself in some horrific way I don’t care to imagine further.
“Oh! Are you okay?” my boyfriend immediately asked. I’d dropped my paddle into the water, mentally shaken but otherwise physically fine. We still hadn’t made it into the deepest chamber of the cave, so I picked up my paddle, and away we went, the daylight growing dimmer and dimmer.
I’ve only been inside a few aquatic caves in my life, including the Blue Cave (Modra špilja) in Croatia and Hinagdanan Cave in the Philippines, but this one was by far the darkest and narrowest I have ever been in. It was also, after all that “adventure,” so to speak, a little disappointing, since you couldn’t really see anything. Once inside the final chamber, we turned around and went out the way we came. This time around, I felt no qualms about using my paddle to keep our kayak away from the rock faces.
Once we’d all gotten in and out of the cave, Leah led my group back toward Scorpion Anchorage harbor, with plans of exploring more caves on the eastern side of the harbor. In the process, my boyfriend and I were almost sucked into what Leah called the “toilet bowl,” a set of rocks with whirling eddies that are apparently notorious for capsizing nearby kayakers. Struggling against the slightly stronger ocean current, we strayed farther and farther from the rest of the group.
Eventually, Leah kayaked back and offered to tug us so we could keep up with the others, which I gladly agreed to despite feeling slightly embarrassed about being unable to keep up. It had been close to two hours since we’d started the tour, and my arms were starting to ache from the sustained exertion. As we approached the harbor, I weighed whether to finish out the rest of the kayaking tour, which would take another hour, or just head back and have lunch. “How much further to the Painted Cave?” I asked weakly, once we’d made it back to the relative calm of the kelp forest where we first began.
“About 30 miles that way,” said Leah, which is how I discovered that kayaking to the Painted Cave, at least in the way proposed by the Times itinerary that inspired me to book this kayaking tour, was essentially all but impossible. (I found out later that you can, however, book a seasonal Painted Cave kayaking tour through Channel Island Expeditions. The daylong trip, which leaves from Santa Barbara and entails a crushingly early 6:40am check-in, doesn’t actually land on Santa Cruz Island itself.)
At that point, we decided to throw in the towel while the rest of my friends continued on with the tour. I wanted to be able to feel my arms the next day, and I didn’t feel like dealing with the possibility of colliding into more menacingly sharp rock faces. By the time my boyfriend and I got back to shore, it was close to 2pm. Our ferry back to Ventura and the mainland departed at 4:30pm, leaving us with an extra hour to change out of our wet clothes, eat a proper lunch and embark on the short two-mile hike to Cavern Point, which offers stunning cliffside views of the ocean. Exhausted, I lugged the kayak back to the area where they were kept, stopping multiple times along the way.
On our way back to the changing area, we did spy one adorable sight: An island fox sniffing around for food on a picnic table. The house cat-sized canine species almost went extinct before getting off the endangered species list in 2016, and I would see several others while exploring the immediate area around the campgrounds before, during and after lunch.
After changing back into dry clothes, we sat down to a delicious lunch of chicken and herb salad dressed with Vietnamese nuoc cham and slices of blueberry-lemon almond tea cake—both items made by yours truly. If you were curious, both recipes are from New York Times Cooking. Accompanying this were a selection of Korean banchan I’d picked up from H Mart on Western in Koreatown.
We were finishing up our meal when my friends came back an hour later, reporting the gray skies had briefly cleared and the three caves on the eastern side were “more of the same,” in my friend Lisa’s words, though none were as difficult to navigate as the second and final cave I’d kayaked through. They’d also seen an injured sea lion on the beach, which by state law visitors are not allowed to help or touch. Curious, I headed back by myself to get a look. The marine mammal looked at me and raised its flipper in the air before giving up. It was sad.
By the time I walked back to the picnic table where my boyfriend and I had lunch, he was packed up and ready to get on the trail. So was Jon, the friend of mine who narrowly missed a falling rock. The three of us had just enough time to hike halfway to Cavern Point before our ferry home. The ocean views were stunning as promised, though we couldn’t finish the entire loop with enough time to make it back to the harbor for our ferry home. Waiting to board, we watched a pair of the enormous island ravens attempt to open the zipper on a beach bag. (One of the guides had mentioned the birds are quite smart, so this was amusing to watch.)
Despite my little scare on the guided tour, the wildlife, scenery and temperate weather of the Channel Islands was already selling me on planning a return trip, albeit for hiking instead of kayaking. (As of publication, I’ve planned a boat tour to the Painted Cave; this option leaves several hours for hiking from Prisoners Harbor, another outpost on Santa Cruz Island.) A little before 4:30pm, the seven of us boarded the ferry, which was already full of weary campers and hikers napping on any available flat surface, for what would be an hour-long ride back to the mainland. On our way home, spotty signal and errant push notifications would reveal that Donald Trump had been shot. (Political) reality would soon sink in. But for a few brief, wonderful hours, we were cut off from the rest of the world—an experience I’ll cherish for a lifetime.
Public and private sea cave kayaking tours are available almost year-round through Channel Islands Adventure Company. The Adventure Sea Caves tour featured here costs $205 per adult plus $66 round-trip ferry through Island Packers ($271 total); you can also opt for the shorter Discovery Sea Caves tour ($145 per adult) or longer, more challenging Ultimate Sea Caves tour ($275 per adult).