>>513135Am a raft guide/ ww kayaking instructor. Can confirm all of this as true.
Coming from kayaking one thing ive been hating about the industry these past 5 years is the tendency to inflate the difficulty of the river to your customers to make them think they're badass.
i.e ive heard guides of various companies tell their raftees that:
The Upper Pidgeon (TN) is all Class 4
The Nanthahala (TN) is all class 3 with a class 4 at the end
The Chili Bar section of the American (CA) is some of the best raftable class 4 in cali (Not even close)
The White Salmon (WA) is the perfect example of pool drop class 4 (i ended grilling the guy on it afterwards, he had only been on 3 different rivers, none of which are pool drop)
The Deschutes (OR) is all class 4
And so on. Ive seen this shit written on raft shop pamphlets as well. There's no point in having an international standard if your just going to inflate everything.
/soapbox/
But being a raft guide is a chill job and you meet a lot of good people and have some interesting times. The coolest life experience ive had was guiding a raft of 6 12 yr old Japanese school girls who spoke no english down a solid 3 section with some technical moves on it. I basically learned how to R1 that day
