Excellent debate guys!

I'm rather intrigued by the eastern US vs western US vs Europe thing.
I've only paddled in Europe and the Western US and it has struck me that
most regions have a few rivers of each type!

If I was going to generalise I'd have to point out that Britain is
completely different to all of the above :-)

Take for example a couple of Californian classics like Dry Meadow Creek
and Brush Creek (have run the latter, only looked at the former) - they
really are not a lot different in character to some of Scotland's
granite gorge rivers, like the Meig and tributaries of the Etive.
Scotland is a bit short of high volume runs, but in a good spate rivers
like the Orchy and Spean develop a character like the Inn, or the
Skykomish, not as big but similar in feel! I thought boating in the
volcanic gorges of the WF Hood and White Salmon was pretty special, and
then within a month of coming home I discovered that some of the Clyde
has a similar geology, except much older and more weathered so it takes
more looking for, and is actually nowhere near as spectacular!

Comparisons aside, Britain is different, it's mainly different because
it doesn't have a snowpack so all rivers are rainfall fed, which
generally means we have to do them in the winter - that can really
affect your optimism for a certain grade! Then again the US is
different, I don't know a Tuolumne in Europe for example (maybe I
haven't looked hard enough?), the mountains are higher and as riverman
says the environment is younger, and in many cases less spoilt / more
wild which can add a lot both to enjoyment and consideration of what
you're going to do if it all goes wrong! The closest thing to the T
would be the Verdon canyon, totally different in character (limestone
gorge with siphons undercuts etc..) but similar length and commitment,
and both are pool drop although most of the T's drops are easier.

Anyway I think I digressed several times there!

I've learned to cope with a 6 grade system. I actually prefer the big
volume runs of the Western US (although some could do with the pools
shortening) and I don't have much problem matching up grades for very
different styles of river. However there are limitations, lets go back
to brush creek again shall we? It's graded 5, it has some largeish
drops, some blind chutes and a few falls with rocks at the bottom that
you can't really inspect, but is it really as hard as grade 5? Probably
not if I can paddle it in a playboat first time on it, but it is harder
than a 4, you can't obviously scout everything from the boat and
certainly can't see routes down everything. The same thing with the Meig
and various "rocky ditches" over here, there is no sustained difficulty,
there are some very technical moves sometimes potential for getting
badly hurt (lets keep grading objective?) and occasionally a leap of
faith is required (I love leading a competent grade 4 boater down the
Meig for their first time - you want me to do what?). Clearly some
things are outside of the boundaries of our 6 tier system - I don't
really know the way forward, adding higher grades as people do harder
stuff is one way but it doesn't address the differences in the nature of
the runs that we seem to agree is so important. Perhaps parallel grading
systems are required where some note about the nature of the run can
help with understanding what a grade means to you?

Here is an example, the St Joe (ID) at 8000 cfs, graded 4 for that flow.
It's not a terribly wide river so feels pretty huge with that flow, it
looked alright from the road so we got on. After a short while low
visibility (mainly due to the gradient, but partly due to mist) had us
climbing out to look at what might be a line of holes. From above it is
clearly a grade 2 wave train with the peaks just starting to break a
bit. Did that a couple more times, one bit was probably grade 3 and then
reached tumbledown falls. Yes grade 4 I guess, certainly wouldn't have
been very happy trying to read it from the river but inspection revealed
it be a 2 move rapid - launch, head left of centre on obvious green
wave, then cut hard right using a boily eddyline to take you onto the
tongue that avoids the ledge completely (OK perhaps the level was way
above what the grade was for?). After that we had decided that we were
happy with the feel of it having run the hardest part and finished it as
we would have started had it not been for the idea that there was going
to be some grade 4 round every corner (i.e. picking the biggest
wavetrains to wavewheel down). Ok so I'm partly arguing with the grade
here, it is now more common to grade for the average difficulty not the
hardest fall, but that aside had we known a bit more about the character
(big flushy water) (and yes we should have been able to work it out from
the road, but everything looks smaller from the road....) we probably
wouldn't have been looking out for an Orchy style grade 4 ledge drop
that gets harder in high flows (yes I know some of the Orchy drops get
easier) and would have played even harder on the first half :-)

Do I make some sense?

JIM

PS: everything I've run in the West (CA, OR, WA) has been graded on a
scale of 1-6!

riverman wrote:
"Wilko" wrote in message
newswG9b.44887$tK5.5159039@zonnet-reader-1...

From what I've paddled in Europe, and (mostly the eastern part of) the
U.S., I got the impression that western U.S. rivers are more like what
we have over here. Sure, there are pool and drop as well as more
continuous rivers here, and there definately is a big difference in
volume between the multitude of rivers and creeks here.

In general, I found the rating of the rivers I ran in the east to be
quite different from those I ran in Europe. From the experiences of
those Eastern U.S. paddlers that I've taken on trips in Europe, I got
the impression that they weren't so used to the more continuous nature
of the creeks and rivers I took them on. They tended to rate those
European creeks/rivers higher than I would, I assume that had to do with
the more continuous nature of those streams.


Hmmm, good observations, and I don't see any simple explanation. However, my
experience is that European rivers (if there is such a generic term) are a
differnet animal entirely than Eastern or Western water.

The eastern US rivers tend to be relatively short and intense, as the
Appalacians are an old, narrow mountain belt, and there is often only a few
miles between where the water has enough volume to have carved a good bed,
and when the rivers dump out onto the piedmont and flatten out with mud
bottoms. So, yes, eastern boaters will run a 2-mile stretch of rocky water
several times, and call that a 'run'. Several larger rivers (the Hudson, for
example) have several play stretches, but mostly because the rivers cut
across resistant geology and develop rapids in areas where they could easily
be long, class 1-2 stretches instead.

Western rivers, OTOH, tend to drain huge drainage basins, and the mountains
belts are very wide and relatively young. So the rivers can come down out of
the hills already with substantial volume, toss among miles-long stretches
of boulders, then canyon out and become long fla****er floats. The
whitewater stretches can be VERY continuous (my personal favorite is the
dozen-mile long nonstop 'Idaho Class 3' stretch at the top of the MidFork
Salmon.), but once the river changes its nature, its a long-term change.

European rivers, OTThirdH, are a mix of the two. The mountains are very old
and worn down, like the Appalacians, however they are very wide and can
support large rivers. The european steep creeks (like the ones in Slovenia)
are similar to the Eastern US rivers in nature, but because of the
dependable drainage of the Alps, they run more consistently and carry a lot
more debris through their drainout. However, because of the intermittent
nature of big floods, the rocks are sharp, poorly sorted, and the river bed
is relatively immature. So you end up with an eastern-style rocky creek,
that runs a western-style length before it changes its nature.

I think both eastern and western boaters overrate anything they are
unfamiliar with. Calling Hance in the Grand Canyon a '10' is a joke to any
eastern boater who can navigate rocks. Calling Magic Falls on the Kennebec a
'4-5' is a farce to any western boater who has run the V-wave in Lava. Any
US boater who comes to Europe is going to overrate the rapids, until they
get used to the continuous and rocky nature of them. I think European
boaters see both long runs, and rocky runs, so they might not overrate US
rivers quite so easily.

I know here in Kinshasa, I have had so many people tell me how the rapids on
the outskirts of town here are 'Unrunnable' that I want to puke. Its
basically a solid class 5-, with an entrance where you skirt a huge Lava
LedgeHole-sized pourover, run a Hance Lookalike wave train, then catch a
Niagara Whirlpool-sized eddy. I've run stuff this big in rafts a dozen times
with no problem. The stuff downstream is rumored to be worse, but I wonder
if its just continuous instead......

--riverman