Cathy Perfect - Kern Valley Sun

Shortly after 5 p.m. on Saturday, the Kern County Sheriff’s Department Search and Rescue team from Bakersfield responded to a report that two young men were stranded on the rocks in the Kern Canyon, just east of Callbox 2 on Hwy 178.

Bill Beaury, former captain of Kern River Valley Search and Rescue, and a seasoned first responder, happened to be traveling through the canyon with his wife, Cheryl, when he spotted the young men on the opposite of the river.

Two unidentified young men await their rescue from rocks in the lower Kern River on Saturday evening.

'If it would have been an hour later, I never would have seen them,' Beaury said, 'their clothing just blended in with rocks.'

Beaury wanted the pair to stay put until the Search and Rescue team arrived, but it took some talking. The young men were prepared to try it on their own.

'They threw their shoes across the river, so that when they jumped in the river, swam across, and got to the shore, their shoes would be dry,' Beaury said. This further hampered the rescue efforts, he said, because the pair’s shoeless condition limited the options rescuers could consider.

The rescue itself did not take long, but Search and Rescue personnel waited awhile for a Bakersfield CHP unit to arrive and close one lane of traffic. By 7:30 p.m. or so, the unidentified pair, whose main concern was, 'Are we going to have to pay for this,' was brought to safety.