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