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Let's have a brief look into the world of Rock Climbing. Take a 5.9 rating for example in 4 different locations: The Red River Gorge, KY, The New River Gorge, WV, Looking Glass Rock, NC, and Yosemite, CA. At the Red and the New the 5.9 is significantly easier than at Looking Glass or Yosemite. This happened because the new and the red were developed after the climbing rating system was expanded past just 5.10, while looking glass and yosemite were developed earlier with 5.10 being the top of the rating system.
Now this has a little application in the current debate, mainly that different geographic areas will lend themselves to harder or easier rating systems. Personally I've found that the US has a much softer (easier class 5's) than other countries. Go to europe and or new zealand and the entire Green would be rated 4+. And the Raven's Fork would be rated 4+ (with 3 class 5's and one walk for atomic supercollider).
Now comes the question why I think the southeast is softer than the rest of the world. Well, I'm betting that it's because most of the first descents here were done in the mid to early 90's when you could only get boats over 10feet long. And believe me paddling the green in a T-Canyon is freak'n hard. The southeast remains to be rated soft because you have to stay consistent with the area otherwise ratings are completely worthless. As for arguing over which rapids are 5.0, 5.1, I'm not sure you can really pull of any good arguments. "Well this rapid requires the fabled righty duffek boof, so it must be a tenth harder". I don't know slight increments are very difficult to argue over at all.
I leave with my last remaining comment that rapids should be rated on difficulty alone (just an opinion here), because if ratings included consequences, places like New Zealand would be entirely class 5 because every single rapid in that country is sieved out to hell. I don't know maybe a second rating for danger like in climbing with the 5.9r (for bad fall potential) and 5.9x (for it would probably be better if you just didn't fall).
Anyways, those are my thoughts,
Rob Tompkins
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Rating Systems New 
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