snipped

Ah yes, fond memories of the Sun Kosi and Rob Hind saying, "Bit of a
class II coming up, nothing but a few waves really..." Or Green
Slime saying, "The next rapid? Dunno, really...can't be much of
anything, can it?"

Many years of paddling with slime this is incredibly true to me. I
paddled in BC with him and he could remember almost every twist in the
road to get to the put in, he had paddled there a couple of years
earlier, but on the river he could not recall a single rapid till the
bottom of the run and then he would say "Oh yeah I remember that run,
I'm sure the take out is just round the next bend"!


--
Dave Manby
Details of the Coruh river and my book "Many Rivers To Run" at
http://www.dmanby.demon.co.uk

To get back to the original post. the numbers could be simply correct.Take
the Zambezi, I believe beginners are taken down grade 5 in rafts on the
Zambezi and if your safety boater was Alex Nicks then he could well be up
for grade 6 after tea!

"ZattleBone" wrote in message
om...
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.

ZattleBone wrote:

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.

The original poster never followed up, so we don't know which rivers
these were. The Cassady/Dunlap book _World_Whitewater_ describes
only two difficult runs in South Africa:

Orange River (Senqu) gorge below Augrabies Falls, 8 km, class 4+ P
Tugela River, Colenso to Causeway Bridge, 64 km, class 4 P

Perhaps the "P" (for portage) is now being run and is class 5 or 5+.
In my opinion, if kayakers are regularly running a class 6 drop now,
either it was overrated, or has changed to class 5.