Yahoo!
Or How to Rate White-water Rapids
Theres the Yahoo System (rating rapids based on how loud people scream
when they go through them). Theres the campfire-story method (rating
rapids based on how many tales around the campfire come out of disasters
that occurred there). And theres the name game (rating the danger of
rapids by their names, such as Widow Maker, Slice-n-Dice, Disaster
Falls, and Sock-Em-Dog).
But there has to be a better way. And there is. The American Whitewater
Affiliations International Scale of River Difficulty is a widely
recognized method of classifying rapids based on their difficulty and
potential danger to the boater. This six-point scale, with higher
numbers denoting more difficulty and often more danger, gives river
runners a general scale on which to measure a rapid and against which to
measure the level of their own skill and experience. Boaters learn on
Class I, II, and III rapids before tackling rivers with higher rated
white water.
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