: Bill Tuthill

Typed in essage-ID:

Big waves don't increase
the difficulty rating on a river.

They do increase the intensity of a swim, however. On the other hand,
swimming in big water might be safer (except for the problem of

hypothermia)
than swimming in low water, because there's less possibility of entrapment.
I've been surprised in recent years by the length of swims taken and survived
by rafters wearing drysuits.

Assuming that one didn't just screw the pooch and swim from the absolute top,
where there is no reason to flip, the swim would be less than 100 yards at
release leaves. You may swim farther than that before you get to shore or back
in the boat, but you are already in the pool below.

Go to AW safety, then standard rated rapids for class VI. Mash and PSH are the
ones that they rate staright class IV at release levels.

Koontz's Flume can be a booger. I think that it gets overrated because of the
danger factor from the river right sieve,
but I don't have a problem with calling it a class IV.

But why does the description assign difficulty as III-IV (V)? Is the (V)
a high-water rating? Usually I take that notation to mean that there is
one class V rapid on the run, usually portaged.

I don't know, but that is what I would assume also. But that isn't really the
case with Lower Gauley. I've ran it at levels above 6000 cfs (release leave is
about 2800 cfs) and although you probably didn't want to come out of your boat,
the difficulty factory didn't go up a lot.



SYOTR
Larry C.