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

...
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.

O Myron, my mistake; when I type "relative", I mean "relative to the
other classes", not relative to whatever other arbitrary criterion
(boater skill, craft, weather, geographical region) you might choose to
apply. The whole purpose and intent of the AW "benchmark" rapids is to
obviate the possibility of *local* relativity; to standardise the
system across the US. I should have typed:

AW has addressed this
problem, too. AW has set up a table of benchmark rapids. They list
several rapids in each class in each region of the US, to be used as
standards. Any writer describing any rapid in the US should rate it
by comparison with whichever of these benchmark rapids he is
familiar with; if he is not familiar with at least one of the
benchmarks in each class (up to his skill level) in the AW standard
table, he is probably not sufficiently experienced to be rating
rapids for others' use.

I s'pose I should have mentioned that a benchmark Class III in the
Rockies is judged, by people who have paddled both at the cited levels,
to be of the same difficulty as a benchmark Class III in the Southeast.
Here are the examples from the AW website for Class III:

north east
.. dimple-swimmers youghiogheny, lower pa 1.6-2
.. railroad esopus ny summer
.. slalom rapids tohickon cr. pa 1.8
.. entrance youghiogheny, lower pa 1.8'-2'
.. zoar gap deerfield, fife brook sect. ma 900-1000
.. railroad youghiogheny, lower pa 1.8'-3.5'
rocky mountain
.. raft ripper arkansas, browns canyon co 1000-3'
.. seven steps arkansas, browns canyon co 2500
.. pinball arkansas, browns canyon co 2500
.. government rapids san juan ut 5000
.. lunch counter snake, alpine canyon wy 10,000
.. split rock rapid yellowstone mt 3000-5000
south east
.. nantahala falls nantahala, gorge nc 3.25
.. double trouble ocoee, middle tn 1200-1600
.. diamond splitter ocoee, middle tn 1200-1600
.. narrows chattooga, sect. iii ga/sc 1.8'-2.3'
.. grumpy/snow white/ ocoee, middle tn 1200-1600
.. entrance ocoee, middle tn 1200-1600
.. double suck ocoee, middle tn 1200-1600
.. on the rocks nolichucky gorge nc 1500-2000 (2-2.2')
.. wooten's folly clear creek tn 2000-3000
.. dick's creek ledge (first ledge) chattooga, sect. iii ga/sc
1.8'-2.3'
west coast
.. meat grinder/quartermile american, s. fk., chili bar run ca 1800
.. wolf creek selway id 2.8'
.. railroad bridge drop (meadworks) green river gorge, upper wa
low-mod
.. trouble maker, s turn american, s. fk., chili bar run ca 1000
.. oak creek falls deschutes or mod
.. rubber salmon, middle fork id 2'
.. badger colorado, grand canyon az 15-22000
.. triple threat american, s. fk., chili bar run ca 900-5000
.. rock and roll/satan's eyeball wenatchee, lower wa 6000

Go to http://www.americanwhitewater.org/ar...y/Bnchmark.htm if
yer interested in reading the benchmark rapids of other difficulty
levels. You'll also notice all the *caveats* that you propose, already
propose by AW.

So. Is this perfect? Of course not. But it does mean that if I go
paddling in Colorado and Wyoming, knowing that I can effectively
navigate the Middle Ocoee (for which several rapids are listed here,
and several others in the Class III+ table), and knowing that Western
Whitewater describes Lunch Counter as clearly the most difficlt spot in
the Alpine Canyon of the Snake River, that I can be fairly confident in
taking a group of Ocoee-grade Eastern boaters down Alpine Canyon, even
if I have never been there before. I may read the book carefully for
indication of where and how to scout Lunch Counter, or I may keep a
probe team of my best boaters far enough in front to identify the
horizon line and pick a scouting landing, but at least I will know that
the trip is within the bounds of reason.

Fred, above, pooh-poohed guidebooks and rating systems in favor of
classic exploration. There is a lot to be said for that if you have
the time; I certainly love it when I have the opportunity to be probe
boat on a river I have never run, and I have run one or two with no
prior intelligence. But if you run rivers that way, you will run a
number of rivers that turn out to be too easy to be interesting, or
that contain portages-from-hell. It will be an adventure; it will be
worth doing; but you will not maximize yer whitewater jollies.

in July, 2000 I spent a month in the central Rockies the year after my
friends Jon and Karen moved from Washington DC to Boulder. The three
of us and a nice guy and good boater from Boulder named Steve spent 22
consecutive river days circumscribing Yellowstone. We started by
basecamping at Jackson, WY for the Gros Ventre Landslide section, Wind
RIver Canyon, Alpine Gorge, and the Snaggletooth section of the Grey's,
went southwest to Idaho (boring section of the Blackfoot; we called it
the Cow**** River), then north to Bear Trap Canyon, and east (Gallatin,
Yellowstone, Stillwater) and south again (Shoshone, North Platte) and
back to Colorado (South Platte, four sections of the Arkansas) -- and
I'm leaving out several. I was previously familiar with those around
Jackson, House Rock of the Gallatin, and the Arky, and my Boulder
friends were previously familiar with the Arky. ALL of the others we
picked out of the guidebooks. We made short lists of Class IV (or
nearly Class IV) rivers on our planned loop, consulted gauges and
release schedules, then Jon, Steve, and I took turns as probe boats on
unfamiliar water. We could have just picked rivers off the map and
explored, but I really wanted to get the most of my rare Rocky Mountain
paddling time, so the guidebooks and USGS gauges were a treasure to me.
It worked out fine. Occasional rapids (Kitchen Sink, and the Shoshone
at Cody) gave one or more of us a bit of trouble, but we never got so
far over our heads that we could not scout safely and perform safe
effective rescues when needed. In the Shoshone gorge we were pretty
much maxed out, but we had expected that when we put on, and we had all
made the informed decision to try the toughest thing that we would run
all Summer.

The guidbooks, USGS gauges, and a fairly consistent rating system
(despite tales we had heard about "Western Class IV" versus "Eastern
Class IV") served us in good stead and we were able to explore and to
have fun, without undergoing undue risk. The only time we were burned
was on the Cow****, and in that cass it was because an easy river had
been overrated; we never encountered a difficult river that had been
underrated (iow, where Western Whitewater erred, it erred on the
conservative side). It was up to us, however, to assess the weather,
remoteness, water level, and my ability to run in a canoe nearly
anything Karen and Jon could run in their kayaks.


-Richard, His Kanubic Travesty
--

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Richard Hopley Winston-Salem, NC, USA
rhopley[at]earthlink[dot]net
Nothing really matters except Boats, Sex, and Rock'n'Roll
rhopley[at]wfubmc[dot]edu
OK, OK; computer programming for scientific research also matters
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