Above 15K or so, everything but Skull washes, for the most part. The lines throught the rapids are the same - no harder to get where you need to be, but the consequences are pretty high if you have a swimmer in the water. From a rescue kayaker's perspective, it's a goddam nightmare. The eddy lines are huge & very squirrelly, and if you are trying to tow a swimmer across one you'll have problems- unless you're in your T-Canyon. If you have swimmers at this level, you had better have a raft nearby because there's no easy eddies from Marble to Last Chance.
I had a friend swim below Marble, and the guys in the raft just watched as he floated further away while I'm screaming, "ROPE!". I had him on my sterm loop 4-5 times & had to tell him to let go; we got flipped together along eddy lines and in the middle of rapids, and I couldn't paddle him across the eddy line before getting sucked back into the flow. I finally was able to get him out at the scout eddy at Skull- he was completely exhausted and about as close to a flush drowning as I'd ever want to see.
The Classification rating, as it applies to individual rapids, remains a III to III+ for the most part. Making the cut at Skull is not that hard, either. But it's a different river above 10000, and I think overall you had better be a competent IV boater with a good crew.
