RIVER GRADINGS

Grade I Easy: moving water with the odd disturbances in the shape of small, regular waves and slight meanders.
Grade II Moderate: the water is faster and rapids are more frequent; rocks, waves and small stoppers are found but always with an obvious channel.
Grade III

Harder: the pace quickens with fairly big waves, and stoppers which are quite capable of holding a boat firmly. Rapids are much more continuous and, although the route is fairly obvious, it is necessary to be able to manoeuvre the kayak well.

Examples:

    River Tryweryn, Graveyard and slalom section, North Wales
Grade IV

Difficult: long stretches of heavy rapids and falls with irregular waves and often powerful holding stoppers. The route is not obvious from the water, and bank inspection is usually necessary. A mistake or swim could be serious.

Examples:

   Town Falls, River Dee, Wales

   The middle Ogwen (usual high water conditions), North Wales

   Cobden’s Falls, River Llugwy, North Wales
Grade V

Extremely difficult: longer rapids, large drops with very big waves, dangerous stoppers and rocks to negotiate. This is a challenge to any canoeist. Although never absent in the lower grades, in grade V, substantial danger is always a possibility. Continual inspection and/or protection is often necessary.

Examples:

   Aberglaslyn Gorge (just off flood), North Wales

   Fairy Glen, River Conwy, North Wales

   Middle Ogwen (in full flood), North Wales
Grade VI

Limit of navigation: a line down exists - just. Luck may often play a part. There is always a real risk to life. Very favourable water conditions and protection may make rapids of this grade feasible. Very skillful paddling and the ability to pick the ideal days are also involved. Most of the time, however, they are too dangerous to canoe.

Examples:

   Upper two rapids of the Haffes, South Wales

   Ceirw Falls (high water)

   Pontardawe Clydach Falls, South Wales

Notes

Waterfalls vs Class VI

The new generation of boaters are running harder and harder falls, and at higher and higher water levels. There is a grey area where class VI runs into the, "waterfall usually portaged", description.

Many waterfalls are runnable only when the rest of the river is too low to contemplate. Often it is not feasible to run them when the rest of a river is worth doing. It is for this reason I tend to sometimes describe them as waterfalls, best portaged, rather than grade VI rapids, and not to challenge someone to prove me wrong.

Portages

"Uncanoeable sections", for whatever reasons, are marked as portages / ‘X’.

Weirs

Dangerous weirs are marked as definite portages, whilst comments are made on those requiring inspection. Unusual spate water can make normally safe weirs dangerous. For example, in medium conditions, the horseshoe weir on the Afan can be run on the left. In flood it becomes a real killer with a towback of around 25 feet. Complacency towards weirs is always risky.

There are various pointers to the presence of a weir. Firstly, you may expect one because the guide say so. However, it is important to remember that weirs may change. New weirs may be built - eg. on the lower Tawe. "Bad weirs", may be made much "badder"! For example, the weir above Pontypridd on the Taff is now a definite portage.

There may be an unnatural slowing to the river - weirs are often used to control the flow. There may be a distinct horizon line. There may be a roar or rumble on a flat section - ask yourselves why, but remember that very quiet weirs can be extremely dangerous - eg. the ones below the egress on the Tryweryn! There may be an old mill on the banks - eg. Overton weir on the Dee. There may be new weir buildings or huts, or canalization as with the middle Ceiriog weir.

The message is clear - keep your eyes open, scout well ahead, and if in any doubt, portage. Remember, there are three categories of weirs:

  1. Safe

  2. Dangerous

  3. Grey area - in which case they are dangerous! By grey I mean anything that the particular paddler isn’t 100 percent sure about should be treated as dangerous.

The message is clear - if in doubt PORTAGE.

Grading - Comment

The grading of rivers is very difficult. Paddlers have argued about, chewed over and spat out the systems available. There is still no universal grading system that every paddler accepts and, even if there were, people would still grade rivers differently. Paddlers are subjective, myself included, no matter how hard one tries to remain objective. It is tempting to grade a river as hard if one follows a poor line and takes a thrashing on a usually easy line: "it’s a hard IV" - "No, it’s an easy V"-type arguments are familiar to most.

Grades III, IV and V are usually where the discrepancies exist (and also most serious consequences) but this is not absolute. With harder and more dangerous rapids being tackled, there are more class VI rapids appearing. Of course, if one philosophizes, no grading system can be absolute. Where does class VI end and a new class VII start? Or, is it possible to extend grade VI as VI+, or ‘super sixes’ in order to cover all eventualities?

Tunnels, sluices, and low bridges may increase the seriousness of particular rivers in particular places, and I have chosen to comment on this in the introduction and text sections of each description. Protection can, at times, make rapids and falls safer, as can prior knowledge of previous accident black spots, and I have tried to comment on this in the text.

If a river is continuous at a particular grade, it will usually make it more serious but not necessarily more technical. The moves may be the same, but, instead of having to perform them over 100 metres, it may be necessary to do so over a few kilometres! Many paddlers survive class IV rapids but not class IV rivers. It is always harder to maintain skills over a sustained period of time. This, probably, along with the much bigger volume, are two reasons why many UK boaters get a shock to the system when launching on, for example, a comparably-graded US or even French river.

Lastly, grading rapids is not as specific as, perhaps, we would like. There are a range of "grades within a grade". By this I mean that there are "soft touch" grade IV rapids, and "top end" class IV with a whole host in between. The words "grade" and "class" are used interchangeably very much according to my whim - they mean the same thing. Occasionally, to emphasise the point, I use a + or - to clarify the grade as much as possible. I also comment strongly in the text. For example, if you have struggled down the isolated class IV Town Falls or Bala Mill Falls, don’t expect an easy ride on the hard, continuous class IV rapids of the Pontardawe Clydach.