Well said, JP.

I think a lot of boaters out there would benefit greatly to doing their homework. There's a lot more to it than just looking for a green light.

See, now with the color analogy, I disagree with you, Jay. Low, medium, and high are both measurements.

While whether or not you prefer orange or blue is a preference that really has little importance beyond aesthetics. My argument has always been that the low/medium/high debate needs to be rooted in the river's hydrological and fluvial rthyms, rather than simply being a matter of preference arbitrarily left up to a group of individuals to decide on. Yes, it is a preference.

So is how much salt you put on your food. But if you don't have standards to meassure it, how can you be sure it'll taste good for ya?

And of course we can all agree that's at the heart of what we are discussing. I'm just saying it shouldn't be left to Elf Boater X's opinion and his merry band of low water wingnuts. Nor should it be left to Floodstage Freddy and his Fratternity of class Five Freaks to opine about what they think defines the three brackets of the spectrum. It should be left to the river.

Then we have our guages. And, we have the cup rock. From this, we have the cupdate, and thousands of words typed by PPeeps describing how to interpret it to your liking. But until USGS puts an online guage up in there, we are stuck with this visual guage. Its been described in great detail. Verbally, with photos, ect. So after all this I'm hard pressed to see any problem here (with regard to FITW).

Paddlegirl has, through this process, sparked a possible worthy topic about how to correlate PP w/ AW. But that would be its own topic, and to get anywhere with it we'd have to delve deeper than the initial observation of some dicrepencies and move forward with spotlighting the top five worst or something. Then take a fresh look on a community level and make those five river descriptions more accurate. But that takes more mental effort than an online community devoted to whitewater can muster, perhaps? If so then we have to be happy with the imperfect info we have, which is already arguably too much.

I tried to get community involvement with this stuff a few times, and it ussually fizzles out. Its up to all of us to participate, otherwise just accept what ends up as the default.

All I know is that we are lucky to have all kinds of water coursing through these cracks in the mountains. It still flows downhill, just like yesterday, and I'm about to go get some!

How did we get to Robe?

I just say that you cannot rate "Fall in the Wall" unless you fall into the wall.  I have never seen anyone run it at the PP "fat-high" and certainly not "soiled undies"!!!  I'd love to see video though, and I'll hold the camera and rope anytime!

When I said "new" boaters maybe I should have said new boaters to that run, because that's what I mean.  At low flows FITW is perfect for new class V paddlers.  At "medium" not so much.

I just don't want people thinking that FITW is some evil run.  It was one of my first V's and is an awesome low stress day at low flows.  I know people have gone up there recently and been scared off, maybe forever.  That sucks.

If you are comfortable with the falls at the beginning, I'd say you'll have a good time on the run.  If you're a gnar boater, that level will increase.


Edited by Travisimo - 10 Jul 2012 at 10:37pm

Being nestled sky high in between the lush cleavage of town wall and haybrook does not give you northerners the right to call our local goodies "Janky" 

It is interesting to hear that what a river can hold should be used for the level.  Interesting, but I disagree.  Many runs, like the Muddy Fork of the Cowlitz through Stevens Canyon are suicide unless they are super low...  Where I do agree that the river itself is low, when I talk to kayakers or look at "levels" I want to know what it can be run at, not how full the riverbed is. 

As far as my fascination with the waterfall...  it's fun, it's the name of the run, and I feel like the "acceptable" level has been pushed up by cutting it out of the run.  As one of my first waterfalls I will always think of it as part of the run.

I just love FITW and want to see more (capable) paddlers on it, go get it!




Edited by Travisimo - 11 Jul 2012 at 10:42am

Call it med-high last night.  Maybe a couple inches of the downstream point showing.

Cupdate at 6:30 pm today. 

Your correct, picture is turned wrong i just needed to rotate it. perfect medium level.

FYI, I'd like to paddle FITW on FRI FTW on my way to the Cooper. Har har har.

Anyone wanna get it semi early? I'm from CO and have never run it so I dont mind a little low flow scraping. Within reason.

Thanks!  That thing sucked.