>> Does anyone have a suggestion as to how to rate trips, paddler skills, and equipment? I would like to present this to the club so that we can place people and equipment on the right trip. I am aware that the BCU rates skill level by their One Star, Two Star, etc... Are there any clubs out there that use this system or something similar now? If so do you rate trips in the same manner? Looking for any suggestion and trying not to reinvent the wheel, last time it came out square! Thanks Jeffrey Bingham >> I'm acting president of a new sea kayaking club in the Twin Cities called Inland Sea Kayakers, which is a chapter of the Minnesota Canoe Association. ISK is so new that we do not yet have a rating system and official trips policies; however, I like the rating system developed on the West Coast by George Gronseth and others, not because it is necessarily the best possible rating system, but because it is at least a standard rating system used in whole or in part by several clubs. The system rates trip difficulty from SK-1 to SK-VI based on distance, currents, sea state, and other factors, something like the whitewater class scheme, and also lists the skills and experience required for each category. Though the SK rating chart looks complicated (see http://students.washington.edu/~ukc/sea/UKCSea.html#searating), the bottom line for most people is literally the bottom line on the chart, where the required skills for each trip category are listed. The rest of the chart is mostly for the use of the trip leader. One or more clubs have modified the SK ratings by adding letter grades to indicate the anticipated degree of exertion, so you know whether it will be a fast or a leisurely trip. See http://members.tripod.com/~SKABC/tripclass.htm for example. I like the idea of the BCU star rating system, because if you know what level a paddler is at, you pretty much know what his or her minimum skills are. It also gives the individual paddler a more objective scale to rate himself against than the beginner- intermediate-advanced scale. However, though I would like to encourage ISK members to participate in the BCU Star program, I don't forsee making it mandatory in ISK. A large number of sea kayaking clubs have posted their trip rules and classification schemes on the Web. A good place to start your research is the list of clubs on the BASK Web site at http://www.bask.org/clubs.htm. Hope this helps. Chuck Holst *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Fri Jun 04 1999 - 12:46:19 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:09 PDT