"Fred Klingener" wrote in message
...
"Oci-One Kanubi" wrote in message
ups.com...
riverman wrote:

The parallel with rock climbing rating systems is obvious and inescapable.
As the art advanced and more and more routes became 'climbable,' the new
routes weren't labeled 6s. They were stuffed into 5.X. When people
blitzed
past 5.9, the mathematically offensive 5.10, and on were introduced.

The rock ratings are independent of such things as climber ability,
weather,
hangovers, history of mind-altering drug use, etc. They do depend on
physical layout, sizes of features, separation distance between them,
exposure, difficulty of setting protection, etc.

The biggest difference between rock and river rating systems is that the
condition of a climbing route doesn't depend so heavily on the recent
rainfall. Within a day or two last week, my home stream went from
unrunnable low to in-the-trees flood with anything you'd normally call
obstacles far below the surface. The only thing worth rating would be the
total absence of eddies and the presence of strainers lining both banks.

Another difference, I imagine (but am not at all certain about) is that the
hardest climbs were probably all rated by the same handful of leading-edge
climbers, while rapids are probably rated by lots of different folks in
different places, and at different times. Your point about rainfall is
important and well taken: imagine a climber getting to what he was expecting
to be a 5.4a walkup, only to discover that a recent storm has changed it to
a 5.8b. :-)


...
None of this really matters a whole lot.

Finally, we get to the crux. :-)

Just accept that there can be
no absolute quantification of a subjective experience in a dynamic
environment. But it doesn't HAVE to be absolute! My needs are served
perfectly well with RELATIVE ratings. For e.g., if an unfamiliar rapid
is rated Class III relative to half-a-dozen other rapids that I know to
be rated Class III (at specified levels), then I have a good idea of
what to expect from this unfamiliar rapid.

The existence of a rating system erodes the fundamental idea of paddling.
We are each responsible for our own safety and the safety of our party if
we
manage to get anyone to go with us. If I'm contemplating running a noisy
section of river for which the loss of the boat would mean a 25 mile
walkout
through alder thickets, what I'd like most from someone who has been there
a
description of a good place to scout from, maybe an estimate of the extent
of the run, the size of the features, the separation distance between
them,
and the presence or absence of eddies or a pool beyond. The existence of
a
published rating or description doesn't dilute my own personal
responsibility. Depending on the source, the report and rating might be
far
worse than useless.


Good point. Kanubi's point about rating systems being relative falls apart
right here. Being relative, and in the absence of an gubmint sponsored
rating team, its pretty inevitable that it will be locally relative, so
when you get advice from someone that a run is rated such-and-such, you have
to find out if that is a local rating, and if so, has anyone ever challenged
it. I remember oh, so well, when we were opening up the Penobscot in Maine
as a rafting river, and everyone rated the Cribworks as a Class V. Hell, it
was by far the biggest thing any of us had ever seen....but now, after 20
odd years of dozens and dozens of boats a day, tens of thousands of boaters
a summer, and not one fatality, not one serious injury, even among folks who
fell out of their boats, I gotta wonder if our 'locally relative' rating
system really was all that accurate, and if all those Carolina boys who
assured us that it was really just a bony class IV all along were really
right.


--riverman