BUSH CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM
by
Roland Burton
From: Varsity Outdoors Club Journal (VOCJ) Volume
XIII, 1970
This system was figured out on an attempt on Mt
Judge Howie [sic] by Peter Macek and Rick Price.
To describe the difficulty of their routes, rock climbers have designed
several classification systems, the most popular one grading climbs from
one to six, with a separate system for aid climbers.
Skiers have also adopted, for runs, a six class system, namely: beginners,
intermediate, expert, extra caution, closed, and avalanche danger. However,
anyone who has tried to travel in our area soon realizes that rock bluffs
and avalanches are trivial problems compared with the vegetation of our
coastal rain forest. Here is a system for describing bush traverses.
B1: No bush, similar to Granville Street at
3a.m. on a Sunday, or see the American Forest Service trail network.
B2: The occasional fallen log must be stepped
over, occasional branches may stick across the trail. Some difficulty
to motorcycles.
B3: Here the bush first becomes noticeable;
inexperienced mountaineers are heard to mutter under their breath. May
have to cross small streams, the occasional patch of huckleberry bush,
or some slide alder. The trail becomes difficult to follow.
B4: All members of the party are at least intermittently
swearing; blueberry and slide alder abound, ground slopes up in direction
of travel; there may be the odd devil’s club or other prickles
plant, maybe a hornets’ nest or two.
B5: All members are now swearing continuously,
except when gasping for breath, while climbing over fallen logs about
four feet off the ground, surrounded by devil’s club, slide alder,
vine maple. Visibility is less than eight feet. Ground, when it can
be seen, slopes about thirty degrees at right angles to the direction
of travel.
B6: A genuine B6 requires at least two kinds
of poisonous plants: for instance stinging nettles and devil’s
club. In addition, there should be slide alder twenty to thirty feet
high, growing among fifteen foot blocks of granite. There are bears
in the spaces between the granite blocks. Visibility four feet or less.
Not sufficient room to swing a machete.
B7: The use of napalm, defoliants, and the like
are frowned upon by the Conservation Committee.
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