"Phat Ratty Ratt" wrote in message
...
"riverman" carped:

"DL Luinstra" wrote in message
...
GAULEY FEST 2003

(snip)

This line is from the page on that site about the description of the
Lower Gauley below the meadow:

It'd be nice if you ID'ed the page, so that others could easily find it
(and
see the context of what you're grousing about). It's at
http://www.americanwhitewater.org/rivers/id/2379, for those who want to
read
it.

"If you go for the river right eddy just above the rock make sure that
you
make it. A couple years ago a first timer to the Lower G. flipped on the
eddy line, missed a couple of rolls and got stuffed under the rock after
he bailed out of his boat."

An alternative description of the warning is at

http://www.americanwhitewater.org/ol...GauleyCare.htm.

I don't know about the incident mentioned

It's easy enough to know about the incident. Just surf on over to AW's
Safety
Database: http://www.americanwhitewater.org/sa...hive/state/WV/. Look
under "Gauley." The more complete report is at
http://www.americanwhitewater.org/sa...rchive/id/619/.

, but if its referring to a kayaker death,

A little simple research shows that it is.

that seems like a rather insensitive and cavalier way to encourage
people to paddle safely, don't you think? Especially coming from
AW....

Point about sensitivity well taken. You been writing any funny April
Fool's
jokes lately about paddler deaths?

Seriously: the wording might not be perfect, butt I think you're reading a
lot
of insensitivity into it. For the record, I was on the river that day. So
were
many other RBP'ers (after all, it happened during GauleyFest weekend!);
the
accident was discussed at length soon thereafter. I have friends who were
in
the group that was paddling with the victim. Some were very badly shaken.
One
couldn't paddle the "hard stuff" for years thereafter.
Knowing how tough it was for my friends, who took extensive measures to
try to
save his life, and who were very upset, I'd be very watchful for
insensitive
descriptions of the event. I don't think the descriptive sentence you
quote is
bad. It's a *warning*, for Kevin's sake. It gets the point across.

Who edits this stuff?

Volunteers. You want to help?
The StreamKeeper Project is "staffed" by a couple hundred dedicated AW
members
who give their free time to get river beta out to the boating public.
Nobody
pays them for it. There's no glory. They just put the info out there. In
this
case, the Lower Gauley StreamKeeper is warning people of a potentially
fatal
hazard. And you want to poke holes in his rhetoric--or, rather, you want
"AW,"
apparently a huge monolithic organization with vast resources, to bring
this
miscreant StreamKeeper back into the fold.
There's NO WAY that anyone involved with AW could get out there and
micromanage
the river descriptions posted on over 4000 reaches.
As the head of the StreamKeeper Project, my hands are full enough without
engaging in that kind of nitpicking, believe you me.
Read the Disclaimer, linked from every one of those river pages:
http://www.americanwhitewater.org/faq/disclaimer.phtml. It says "Opinions
expressed on these and associated pages are not necessarily those of
American
Whitewater, its officers, directors, or employees."

Anyway...thanks for your feebdack, and thanks for supporting AW with your
continued membership!



Hey Ratt: nice to be talking at you again. :-)
(By the way, that wasn't a funny April's Fool story about a kayaker
death...it was a highly satirical piece about the MiddleEast peace process.
But I'm amazed at your powers of recall, either way.) And I think my
feebdack about the cavalierish wording was well taken, so thanks for your
reply. Didn't realize you were da man I was rhetoricizing about.

Anyhow, I'd love to help edit stuff. Get me on the list, send it my way. Not
much paddling here in Congo anyhow. Enjoy the Fest.

--riverman