River Grades - Rafts vs Kayaks

ZattleBone <Zattlebone DeleteThis @yahoo.com> wrote:
 >
 > 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.

The original poster never followed up, so we don't know which rivers
these were. The Cassady/Dunlap book _World_Whitewater_ describes
only two difficult runs in South Africa:

Orange River (Senqu) gorge below Augrabies Falls, 8 km, class 4+ P
Tugela River, Colenso to Causeway Bridge, 64 km, class 4 P

Perhaps the "P" (for portage) is now being run and is class 5 or 5+.
In my opinion, if kayakers are regularly running a class 6 drop now,
either it was overrated, or has changed to class 5.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: River Grades - Rafts vs Kayaks 

"Oci-One Kanubi" <rhopley.TakeThisOut@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:5ef7701c.0309161216.713ef4f@posting.google.com...
 > "riverman" <nospam.TakeThisOut@sorry.com> 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<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: River Grades - Rafts vs Kayaks 

Dave Manby <dave DeleteThis @dmanby.demon.co.uk> 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 malmros DeleteThis @shore.net
   Some days you're the windshield,
   Other days you're the bug.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: River Grades - Rafts vs Kayaks 

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 wilko.TakeThisOut@dse.nl
Eindhoven The Netherlands Europe
Look at the possibilities, don't worry about the limitations.
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://wilko.webzone.ru/" target="_blank">http://wilko.webzone.ru/</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: River Grades - Rafts vs Kayaks 

I always liked the way of describing grades as

grade 1 take the mother in law
grade 2 take the girlfriend
grade 3 take the wife
grade 4 take the mistress
grade 5 take the photographs
grade 6 take the mother-in-law

Change to suit your sex

old joke I know but someone might not have heard it
--
Dave Manby
Details of the Coruh river and my book "Many Rivers To Run" at
http://www.dmanby.demon.co.uk
 >> Stay informed about: River Grades - Rafts vs Kayaks 

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
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.dmanby.demon.co.uk" target="_blank">http://www.dmanby.demon.co.uk</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: River Grades - Rafts vs Kayaks 

In message <gp7r82e2x2t.fsf DeleteThis @nautilus.shore.net>, Mary Malmros
<malmros DeleteThis @shore.net> writes
 >Dave Manby <dave DeleteThis @dmanby.demon.co.uk> writes:
 >
  >> I always liked the way of describing grades as
  >>
  >> grade 1 take the mother in law
  >> grade 2 take the girlfriend
  >> grade 3 take the wife
  >> grade 4 take the mistress
  >> grade 5 take the photographs
  >> grade 6 take the mother-in-law
  >>
  >> Change to suit your sex
 >
 >Not sure that'll work; women might have intentions toward members of
 >the opposite sex that go beyond either wanting to impress them or
 >wanting to kill them. Just guessing...

Joyce Mckinney has just returned to the radio station I listen to, as a
subject of conversation, she was the woman who kidnapped a Mormon
missionary and chained him to her bed and had her wicked way with him.
In the trail she came up with the immortal line -'I would have skied
down mount Everest naked with a rose between my teeth for him' - such
was her infatuation!
 >

--
Dave Manby
Details of the Coruh river and my book "Many Rivers To Run" at
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.dmanby.demon.co.uk" target="_blank">http://www.dmanby.demon.co.uk</a><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: River Grades - Rafts vs Kayaks