Smith River

The Smith River is California’s last undammed river, wild and free flowing from its headwaters in the Siskiyous to the Pacific. Flowing clear and cold, it cuts through steep canyons, nourishes salmon runs, and anchors one of the most biologically diverse watersheds in the state. The trail alongside its lower reach gives the hiker a chance to savor both the river and the redwoods, two of Northern California’s greatest natural treasures.

You’ll view pockets of giant trees, but it’s the green corridor of the Smith that steals the show here. Few rivers anywhere match its clarity. The riverbed, cobbled with smooth stones, lies plainly visible beneath water tinted turquoise in some lights, emerald in others. On a calm day, the current seems to flow beneath glass. Then, after a storm, the river muscles up, roaring around boulders and sweeping driftwood downstream with raw power.

Ah, the Smith River: undammed, wild, and free. It’s the river that defines Del Norte County, shaping its landscapes and its people. Anglers revere it for its salmon and steelhead runs.Anglers cast for steelhead and salmon, kayakers test their nerve in rapids, and generations of families have picnicked along its beaches. Hikers like us simply admire its beauty from the Hiouchi Trail, which rises to the edge of bluffs in a couple places for sweeping vistas of the river curling through its canyon.

The river also carries memory. Native peoples fished its runs long before settlers arrived. Loggers once floated timber down its current, though thankfully the river’s steep gradient made it impractical to turn into a conveyor belt for clear-cuts, sparing much of its watershed from the fate of other North Coast rivers. Today, the Smith remains the last of California’s wild, undammed rivers – a gift not to be taken for granted.

Depending on the light, the season and the weather, the Smith River assumes various and stunning shades of green-blue: jade-green, turquoise, teal…you be the judge. The unique coloration comes from serpentine, a gray-green mineral in its watershed, which just happens to be California’s official state rock. One moment the water looks crystalline and glassy, the next it shimmers like liquid emerald, and when storm clouds gather it turns a deeper, almost mysterious shade of blue.

The river never looks quite the same twice. Summer sun unlocks warm swimming holes, autumn frames the banks in gold maple leaves, winter storms make it surge and thunder, and spring delivers wildflowers along its forested edges. Step quietly and you may glimpse mergansers skimming the current, osprey plunging for fish, or even a river otter rolling in the shallows. Hiking beside it, you feel both its power and its grace.