"Oci-One Kanubi" wrote in message
m...
"riverman" typed
Which brings up a problem, and perhaps the reason the 10-step scale
has fallen into disuse: if the rating of the rapid must be changed to
suit the craft, then you are not actually rating the rapid, *per se*,
you are rating the rapid/craft combination. By contemporary thinking,
the difficulty of a rapid should be intrinsic to the rapid, measured
by objective criteria, and irrelevant to the nature of any craft that
might attempt the rapid.

I think.


Well, there you go thinking again. We've warned you about that. :-)

Anytime a rating description uses a boat, then its impossible for it NOT to
be a rapid/craft combination. The Class 10 explanation "An inexperienced
boatman in a dependable craft..." actually implies a rapid/craft/boatman
skill connection. However, I think these are all interpretations of the
river itself, and the craft/boatman connection comes out in the description
only. Exactly like what happens when you try to translate from one language
to another. Maybe "petit amie" translates exactly to "little friend" in
english, but any french-speaker know that it really means the equivalent
of 'girlfriend'. I say "the equavalent" because that is an English
translation of a French word. The actual word, to any Frenchman, is "petit
amie".

Saying "a rapid is Class III" means exactly the same thing to a canoeist, a
doryman, a kayaker, a paddleboater and a swimmer; the rapid is Class III.
How they translate that to a flatlander varies according to the boatman,
the craft, etc. The problem is that we keep trying to translate river
rating systems, even to other boatmen, when we really need to just learn to
think in them.

--riverman

Could just be that the locals have decided to make up their own grading
system so that they sound cool, or possibly just lied.

There are a few examples of rivers that are not graded on the
international scale (Grand Canyon 1-10?) but as far as I know people
have converted these to real terms by now.

I have seen some discrepancy over raft vs kayak grading when I've been
in the US, or at least that is our assumption. Some guidebooks have
different grades to others and the best idea we could come up with was
that sometimes big stoppers will look more difficult to kayaks and
narrow technical sections will look more difficult to rafts. This does
not mean that grade 4 in a rafting guide always equates to grade 5 in a
kayak or anything, just that where we have noticed differences of
opinions it depended on which type of craft would find the rapid easier
or harder.

It could also be that the river(s) in question were last graded 20 years
ago when a lot of stuff was overgraded due to thought of consequences. I
fully agree that danger should not be factored into the grade, but
almost every guidebook does so at some time, I've even found myself
using it in my reasoning and I think it's wrong!

There is also the possibility that the outfit is a bit suspect and does
regularly run grade 5 with beginners and the guides do head off and run
grade 6 every day after work - people doing, or claiming to do, that
sort of thing are usually complete dopeheads who have long since
forgotten what grading really means anyway. They probably also aren't
very useful as safety boaters!

There is a fairly good case for expanding the grading system but no-one
will actually make a stand and attempt to do it.

Anyway Zatt, will you be bringing some beginners to Scotland so I can
show them some nice grade 7 stuff????

JIM

ZattleBone wrote:

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.

"Jim Wallis" wrote in message
news:vpjsjb.qgf.ln@Eskdale...

There is a fairly good case for expanding the grading system but no-one
will actually make a stand and attempt to do it.


Jim,

Can you imagine the legal liability that would expose you to? Just think,
someone gets injured or dies on a river that you had just graded as a Class
3. All of a sudden the plaintiffs are trying to make it out as a Class 6 and
of course the victim would never have run it except for the fact that you
graded it as something they could do.

I think that's why we won't see any attempts at grading things in the
future.

Steve Holtzman
Southern CA

Seakayaker wrote:

Can you imagine the legal liability that would expose you to? Just think,
someone gets injured or dies on a river that you had just graded as a Class
3. All of a sudden the plaintiffs are trying to make it out as a Class 6 and
of course the victim would never have run it except for the fact that you
graded it as something they could do.

I think that's why we won't see any attempts at grading things in the
future.

In a particular lawyer infested bit of the US on a very bad day
possibly, but there's been no sign of anyone doing that with climbing
guides here which are every bit as open to the same problems. The
problem with doing it isn't legal action, but knowing you need to do a
good job and not being prepared to make do with a bad one.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch University of Dundee
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

Lets face it the grading thing is not an objective thing but it should
be.

The grading system is closed and this is its problem. Either the grade
system has to be open ended and so we have grade 7 8 ..And as equipment
and skills improve higher or we have to regularly down grade the rapids
because they are easier now than when they were originally graded many
when the paddlers were in canvas boats. This was tried several years ago
but the general boating public ignored it.

In reality it does not matter because once you get to what is currently
accepted as grade 4 in a kayak then you know what you are doing and can
make an informed choice. Grade 5 is what you are aspiring to and once
you get to that level then you have no real worries about what the grade
is but what the water level is!
--
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 query
Maybe these grades are not that high. take the Zambezi. I believe beginners
are regularly taken down grade 5 rapids here 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.

One of the biggest differences between Europe and the USA in grades is
the description that goes with it. British paddlers are notorious at
understating the river - not under-grading - but understating it. Brits
may well tell you - with little knowledge of your ability maybe 'You'll
be OK its only a grade IV ' whereas in the states you are likely to be
told 'Its graded IV but the crux has a nasty undercut........ '

The first time I ran the Gauley I was very cautious to begin with - till
I teamed up with a bunch of other kayak paddlers (I was travelling on my
own) - I was expecting run like the bottom end of the Ubaye whereas it
turned out to be more like the racecourse section in my memories (1987)



In message , Stuart
Miller writes
To get back to the original query
Maybe these grades are not that high. take the Zambezi. I believe beginners
are regularly taken down grade 5 rapids here and if your safety boater was
Alex Nicks then he could well be up for grade 6 after tea !

"ZattleBone" wrote in message
. com...
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.



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

Dave Manby wrote:

One of the biggest differences between Europe and the USA in grades is
the description that goes with it. British paddlers are notorious at
understating the river - not under-grading - but understating it. Brits
may well tell you - with little knowledge of your ability maybe 'You'll
be OK its only a grade IV ' whereas in the states you are likely to be
told 'Its graded IV but the crux has a nasty undercut........ '

Thinking about how we paddled stuff in Europe with a mixed U.S.-Euro
group, I was surprised by how often the danger factor was seemingly
seamlessly integrated by the U.S. paddlers in their rating of a rapid we
were looking at. We looked at the difficulty of staying on the line, and
we noted the dangers associated with messing up there.

The first time I ran the Gauley I was very cautious to begin with - till
I teamed up with a bunch of other kayak paddlers (I was travelling on my
own) - I was expecting run like the bottom end of the Ubaye whereas it
turned out to be more like the racecourse section in my memories (1987)

Ditto experience here.

The only difference in my first Gauley run was that someone had told me
that we would run the entire upper-middle-lower stretch, without me
knowing that it was a marathon length (40+ km) trip! For someone who's
used to paddling moving water, all those quiet floats in between the big
rapids take up an extraordinary amount of energy, especially in the hot
weather we had that day!

--
Wilko van den Bergh
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.
http://wilko.webzone.ru/

Dave Manby writes:

One of the biggest differences between Europe and the USA in grades is
the description that goes with it. British paddlers are notorious at
understating the river - not under-grading - but understating it. Brits
may well tell you - with little knowledge of your ability maybe 'You'll
be OK its only a grade IV ' whereas in the states you are likely to be
told 'Its graded IV but the crux has a nasty undercut........ '

Hee! My limited experience leads me to believe that that's a Brit
thing indeed, culturally, and not just limited to rivers. I'm
reminded of that bit from the movie "Casino Royale" when the
shooting starts and the American and Chinese and Russian generals
are going nuts and screaming on the phone, and the British general
is saying, "Em, Pernilla? I'm afraid I won't be home for tea. Bit
of a war's broken out!"

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?"

--
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::
Mary Malmros
Some days you're the windshield,
Other days you're the bug.

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