Does flatwater need classifications similar to whitewater?

[tketcham]

Considering some of the replies so far...

the problem with classifying flatwater is far more extreme than WW will ever be simply because WW is generally graded either by the average or peak for a particular section or river, while flatwater can encompass every description known because you can literally have riffles, blowdowns, strainers, ledges, ponds, lakes, overgrowth, tides, and meandering bends, all within a few hundred yards. Add in current, wind funneling, wind fetch, and the human factor (crowds, fences, bridges, etc.) and it becomes a real dogs breakfast.

Flat water has no gradient but it can be as rough as you want.
Lake Tahoe has a surf club. Big lakes with long fetch can have enormous waves.

That's the argument for breaking flatwater down into categories that reflect the difficulty and risk of paddling in various conditions encountered within that category. As with whitewater, each flatwater category would have ratings based on the range from least demanding to most demanding conditions. Currently the all encompassing category of flatwater is basically worthless in assessing the proficiency needed and risks involved in paddling a body of water. Quietwater and bigwater are probably the most used and best understood terms for categories of flatwater, but they're not defined and don't have a common understanding of difficulty ratings within each category. Moving flatwater has no common understanding and yet is where paddlers often get into trouble.

I see the problem with [quickwater] as the same problem with "Class 1" designations. My local river has a ~15 mile stretch that is called class one by everyone who ever wrote about it AFAIK. Yet it is sometimes strewn with serious hazards - sweepers, strainers, powerful eddys, etc. Right in the first hundred yards, last year there was a 90° bend with a strainer on the outside. I've watched multiple "experienced" class 1 paddlers get in trouble there, including several swims and one pinned boat. This whole stretch is what I think of as quickwater, and in my estimation is closer overall to the lower end of class one.

The snake in Idaho can be fickle.
How about 1a, 1b, 1c? With weather/hazard criteria identified for each?

Maybe thinking of quickwater as class 1 whitewater misses the mark and it needs to be broken into two broad categories, much as quietwater and bigwater reflect the two broad categories of non-moving or slow moving water. For moving water not considered Class 2 to 5 whitewater, quickwater could be the less difficult category and something called "heavywater" (or something similar) for the more difficult category. Each category would include a range of difficulty/risk levels depending on conditions likely to be encountered.

I often think about trips in terms of consequences. How likely am i have a problem? If i have a problem, what will happen?

That's what the range of risks within each broad category would provide for paddlers. From limited risk with good weather and paddling conditions on quietwater to the potential for drowning or severe injury with bad weather and hazardous conditions on bigwater or heavywater. (Again, these are just suggested terms.)

So categories for the range of water types encountered might include: quietwater; bigwater; quickwater; heavywater; and whitewater. Not saying those are the right categories or terms, but something to start with and certainly more descriptive than simply whitewater and everything else; i.e., flatwater.

 

[scoutergriz]

Tketcham, the problem I have is that in the case of the river I described, 90% of that river is flatwater, usually with minimal or no current, but with very short, sudden changes like a "flood barrier" barely breaking the surface at regular flows, but can be 2-3" above the surface during summer flows or 2-3' below the surface with spring runoff, millponds where the dam has collapsed creating a 10' section of swiftwater, or a collapsing clay cliff that on one trip is just a slightly higher current or no current at all, that can literally change overnight with the erosion of a glacial erratic, or a sudden slump creating a partial blockage, raising water levels and flow overnight until the clay is washed away or a storm pushes the boulder into the hole below.
so do you change the classification just for that 10-30' hazard, or for the entire section? do you adjust the rating everyday to account for overnight level, velocity, or hazards that literally come and go day by day?
Unlike most white water rivers, this is in a very wide, flat, valley prone to flooding and created eons ago by glaciers and, in spots has over a hundred feet of till and sediments, in a Carolinian forest setting that is literally alive and changing day by day if not hour by hour, not solid granite or limestone that can change maybe annually at best.
"quietwater; bigwater; quickwater; heavywater; and whitewater" can literally describe ALL aspects depending on the day, water levels, heavy rain or storms, erosion, and even wind direction and force. Many southern Ontario rivers in the Great Lakes/ St. Laurent basin are similar- very few are in predictable, long-lasting, rock-cut channels but are in highly variable silt and till- based channels that are constantly changing and eroding-- I've literally found the main channel shifted and an oxbow lake created, after a single overnight thunderstorm, and the water level change by 3-4' in sections in the same day. in 60 years of paddling the only constant is that nothing is constant, and nobody I know has ever been able to classify it with any accuracy
within an hour's drive I know of 7 such rivers...

 

[Punkinhead]

I'm don't see who would benefit from such a classification system. The flatwater paddlers who don't check the wind, thunderstorms, or water level and don't have the ability to recognize a strainer aren't the people who are going to check some complicated classification system.