"Courtney" wrote in message
ink.net...
You're right about many western boaters freaking out about rocks.
Personally I love them. They make the rapids fun and full of
possibilities!

I don't know anything about class III and less generally rated by canoeist
and IV and V by kayakers. I haven't really paid that much attention to
what
paddlers are rating what. I personally find that in a canoe or a kayak
the
rapids seem about the same to me. In fact strangely enough, I find
paddling
some class IV's in my canoe easier than in my kayak. Yet I've paddled V's
in my kayak but would never take my canoe on one. Don't ask me why
because
really I don't know why. I know everyone is different but I can't see why
there would be a real difference between kayakers and canoeists and their
ratings? As I mentioned I personally find them to feel basically equal.
I
can understand that I see more kayakers on class IV / V. Maybe that's it.
Can you expand on how you came to that?

Courtney

Sure, let me try to explain.

Read the rating scale; who is it written for? If it were truly just a
quantitative descriptive scale which allowed boaters to make their own
assessments about whether or not a rapid could be run, then why does it
contain such qualifiers as 'easy', 'moderate', 'advanced'? Those descriptors
are accurate only from the eye of a kayaker: class 1 really IS 'easy', class
2 really is 'novice', class 4 IS 'advanced', class 5 IS 'expert'. But to a
traditional open canoe, no floatation, no saddle, those descriptors are
skewed, especially at the upper end. Class 1 is novice, class 2+/3- is
'advanced', class 3+/4- is 'expert', class 5 is suicidal. Its NOT an
'intermediate' canoeist who is running large class 3 rapids. Intermediate
canoeists are the folks who lead summer camp. :-)

(Let me add, also, that this is not an inappropriate or immature type of
canoe. Tripping or recreational canoes are traditionally one of the most
common inland vessels on rivers, especially in the east. When a canoe is
given rocker, floatation, a saddle and thigh straps, gear is lashed in,
etc...it becomes a new thing. A canoe-kayak hybrid. As such (being more
similar to a kayak than a tripping canoe), the rating scale will naturally
tend to fit better. But remember; the scale is allegedly NOT supposed to be
taking different types of boats into consideration...)

But canoeists are the ones who spend their lives on the smaller rapids. Yes,
they probably do feel quite similar in a canoe or a kayak, but the
difference is that an open general-purpose boat is at the upper sweet spot
of its intended use range in class 2, while a kayak is way at the bottom.
Canoeists will be able to clearly differentiate between a class 2- and 2+
river, because those differences will affect their boat greatly. A kayak,
however, will not be much affected by the differences, and will not be so
good at differentiating the ratings. Thus, Class 1-3 rapids are pretty much
defined by how they affect canoes, class 3-5 by how they affect kayaks.

--riverman