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riverman wrote:
(This is a repost from another thread. I thought it might be worth its own discussion.) Firstly, the remark in the other thread was perfectly valid, though it could be expressed differently. Rather than saying (I paraphrase) "a class II river becomes a class III river in icy conditions", the poster might have said "though I am competent to run Class III rivers (with, perhaps an occasional flip), in the wintertime I restrict myself to Class II because the potential consequences of a flip are so much more severe." Taken literally, his remark was bogus; but why take him literally? We're just people talkin' here, aren't we? What he meant was "I stick to easier stuff when conditions are adverse," an eminently reasonable policy. What do you think: a) Two identically skilled paddlers in the same type boat, on the same day, paddling the same river together. One is dressed appropriately, one is underdressed significantly. Is the rapid rated the same for each of them? b) Two paddlers on the same river the same day, one is a novice, one is an expert. Is the rapid rated the same for each of them? c) One is in a canoe, one is in a raft. Is the rapid rated the same for each of them? d) A rapid is rated a class 5 (unrunnable) in 1992, but since then, new materials and techniques makes it quite runnable by advanced boaters. Is it still a class 5 rapid? First, let me qualify my remarks by pointing out that "Class V" never meant "unrunnable". Class VI means "unrunnable". For the purposes of my reply below, I'll assume you meant "Class VI". Second, and parenthetically, let me point out that there is a basic fallacy in yer question, since "a" thru "c" are latitudinal comparisons but "d" is a longitudinal comparison. But yer question does point to a problem that needed to be solved: how to let the rating system conform to extant old guidebook ratings still in print and still conform to the notion that "Class VI" means "unrunnable". I say "No" to the fourth question; it does not retain its Class VI rating. The formerly "unrunnable" Class VI rapid must now be rated Class V, but in keeping with AW's new rating system, the former Class VI is now considered a Class V.1 or V.2, where V.1 is as much harder than V as V is harder than IV, and where V is as much harder than IV as IV is harder than III, etc., and, of course, V.2 is as much harder than V.1 as V.1 is harder than V. What the actual degrees are is, by and large, irrelevant. It may be that any grade is twice as hard as the next lower grade, or 50% harder, or 3 times harder or 10 times harder. The point is that the relationship of each grade to the grades above and below are the same. The point of all this is that, as formerly "unrunnable" rapids become run, they are added to the top of the scale, such that nothing below them changes; a Class III will always be a Class III, a Class IV+ will always be a relatively difficult Class IV. Nothing changes except the number of grades inserted between V and VI. Most folks would say YES to questions a-c, and claim that the rapid rating is based on the characteristics of the water, not the boater. But they also say NO to question d, although the rating is now being based on the characteristics of the boater. "No" the (formerly) Class VI is not still a Class VI, but also "no" the downgrading to Class V.? is not strictly a function of the characteristics of the boater. If it were downgraded to an ever-expanding Class V, then I would agree that boater-characteristics were the governing factor. However, if it is downgraded to a Class V.3 or V.1, depending on how difficult it is with respect to known Class V, V.1, V.2, and V.3 rapids, the re-grading itself results from improved boater skills, but the grade assigned still depends upon whichever of the new "V.?" grades is appropriate to the intrinsic difficulty of the rapid itself. [snip discursion on objectivity and interaction between the boater and the rapid, and the "reasonable boater"] None of this really matters a whole lot. 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 difficulty, of course, can be that this unfamiliar Class III might have been rated by a Class V.3 boater whose idea of Class III is not consistent with the raters of those other Class IIIs I have experienced. 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. The idea of establishing an imaginary standard "reasonable" boater strikes me as a bootless exercise. [Heh heh. Remember who used to frequently use the word "bootless" on RPB, lo these many years ago?] There is no governing body of recreational paddlesports that has the authority (or the time, money, and interest) to start from scratch exhaustively defining someone who doesn't even exist. But the AW table of benchmark rapids effectively achieves the same result; it pulls together the experiences and observations of a lot of different boaters of differing skill and differing watercraft, over many decades of guidebook-writing; it effectively achieves the "average" boater by averaging many actual boaters -- far more useful than trying to define a nonexistant average "Reasonable Boater", I would think. In this way, a river's actual rating is meaningless. There is NO 'class 4 rapid', because no one is really the Reasonable Boater. But what is class 4 for YOU may be class 3 for someone who is a much stronger paddler, and class 5 for a newbie. Which actually represents reality much more, since people will argue all day about whether a class 4 rapid is runnable. I think this is nonsense, Myron. Sorry to be so -- uh, shall we say "succinct"? -- to someone whom I like and respect as much as I do you. But it makes no sense whatsoever to assert that "one man's Class II is another man's Class IV." There lies anarchy. What makes sense is an agreed-upon set of standard ratings, by comparison to which previously unrated rapids will be rated, that is a constant against which each of us must measure himself. All I need to know is that I am a Class IV boater who could successfully run the isolated Class V rapid but is currently very much out of shape. From this knowlege I can assess where on the scale of difficulty I can reasonably paddle and where I cannot. Beginners need to accept the recommendations of experienced paddlers until they get a sense of how the scale works and what the ratings are of the rapids they have run successfully and (even more importantly) unsuccessfully. There should be no argument ever about whether a [given] Class IV rapid is runnable; it should be for each individual to decide, and to assert, whether or not *he* believes that *he* would find it runnable, and then to prove it (one way or the other). Ditto for questions of boat type: I paddle a whitewater open canoe. I know that I cannot successfully run all the rapids that my kayaking buddies can, even though I arguably have greater skill than they. I'm over it. I accept it. It takes more skill to negotioate a rapid of any given class in an open boat than it does in a kayak. As long as I continue to paddle an open boat I shall never be more than a Class IV boater. So be it; I'm not gonna go around saying "I'm a Class V boater *for a canoe*." I can boat Class IV rapids, so I'm a Class IV boater, no matter how much more difficult it is to do in a canoe than in a kayak. It's still Class IV. The class of difficulty of any given rapid should never change (until the rapid itself changes); it should be as nearly an accurate expression of relative difficult as we can find consensus upon. It then becomes the job of the boater to adjust his willingness to run a rapid of that class based upon his own skill and experience, his condition at the time, his equipment at the time, weather conditions at the time, and the relative river level at the time. -Richard, His Kanubic Travesty -- ================================================== ==================== 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 ================================================== ==================== |
#2
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"Oci-One Kanubi" wrote in message
ups.com... riverman wrote: (This is a repost from another thread. I thought it might be worth its own discussion.) ... What do you think: a) Two identically skilled paddlers in the same type boat, on the same day, paddling the same river together. One is dressed appropriately, one is underdressed significantly. Is the rapid rated the same for each of them? b) Two paddlers on the same river the same day, one is a novice, one is an expert. Is the rapid rated the same for each of them? c) One is in a canoe, one is in a raft. Is the rapid rated the same for each of them? d) A rapid is rated a class 5 (unrunnable) in 1992, but since then, new materials and techniques makes it quite runnable by advanced boaters. Is it still a class 5 rapid? ... I say "No" to the fourth question; it does not retain its Class VI rating. The formerly "unrunnable" Class VI rapid must now be rateds Class V, but in keeping with AW's new rating system, the former Class VI is now considered a Class V.1 or V.2, where V.1 is as much harder than V as V is harder than IV, and where V is as much harder than IV as IV is harder than III, etc., and, of course, V.2 is as much harder than V.1 as V.1 is harder than V. What the actual degrees are is, by and large, irrelevant. It may be that any grade is twice as hard as the next lower grade, or 50% harder, or 3 times harder or 10 times harder. The point is that the relationship of each grade to the grades above and below are the same. The point of all this is that, as formerly "unrunnable" rapids become run, they are added to the top of the scale, such that nothing below them changes; a Class III will always be a Class III, a Class IV+ will always be a relatively difficult Class IV. Nothing changes except the number of grades inserted between V and VI. 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. ... 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. I avoid rating myself as a such-and-such boater. I might play (and swim) happily in a warm VI within sight of the putin and there are a bunch of kayakers around but walk around a III if I'm out alone in shebabaland. Just my take, Fred Klingener |
#3
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"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 |
#4
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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 -- ================================================== ==================== 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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