Could just be that the locals have decided to make up their own grading
system so that they sound cool, or possibly just lied.

There are a few examples of rivers that are not graded on the
international scale (Grand Canyon 1-10?) but as far as I know people
have converted these to real terms by now.

I have seen some discrepancy over raft vs kayak grading when I've been
in the US, or at least that is our assumption. Some guidebooks have
different grades to others and the best idea we could come up with was
that sometimes big stoppers will look more difficult to kayaks and
narrow technical sections will look more difficult to rafts. This does
not mean that grade 4 in a rafting guide always equates to grade 5 in a
kayak or anything, just that where we have noticed differences of
opinions it depended on which type of craft would find the rapid easier
or harder.

It could also be that the river(s) in question were last graded 20 years
ago when a lot of stuff was overgraded due to thought of consequences. I
fully agree that danger should not be factored into the grade, but
almost every guidebook does so at some time, I've even found myself
using it in my reasoning and I think it's wrong!

There is also the possibility that the outfit is a bit suspect and does
regularly run grade 5 with beginners and the guides do head off and run
grade 6 every day after work - people doing, or claiming to do, that
sort of thing are usually complete dopeheads who have long since
forgotten what grading really means anyway. They probably also aren't
very useful as safety boaters!

There is a fairly good case for expanding the grading system but no-one
will actually make a stand and attempt to do it.

Anyway Zatt, will you be bringing some beginners to Scotland so I can
show them some nice grade 7 stuff????

JIM

ZattleBone wrote:

Anyone know the differences in the two grading systems?

A friend has just come back from South Africa where (as a complete
rafting novice) he was running Grade 5. The kayakers supporting the
raft all went off to do a Grade 6 run in the afternoon. The numbers
seem a bit high to me.

Any ideas? Is a grade 6 raft-rapid actually a grade 4/5 kayak-run?

Zatt.