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[Cheat River, WV] [New River, WV] [Lower Gauley, WV] [Upper Gauley, WV] [Ottawa River] |
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Mystery Archives In an effort to document one of the finer aspects of squirtsport- the Mystery Move- we submit this archive of Mystery History. It includes past and present mystery spots and a brief history of the move itself- as written by its founder- Jim Snyder. Feel free to send us any updated or new information to keep the site alive and "deep". Mystery Move - Early History, By Jim Snyder The first true consistent deliberate Mystery moves I knew of were done by myself in the fall of 1981 in a boat called the Slake at Tumblehome on the Upper Gauley. This was 4 years before the move was done in squirt boats and named by my friend Thom Powell from Portland, Oregon. The Slake was a tiny sit-on-top with knee hooks made of ethafoam covered with a sheathing of polyester fabric and epoxy. I was trying enders- which ended up being "unders" because the boat was so small. The boat and myself would get completely sucked underwater for a couple seconds and re-emerge with a respectable Black Attack. I did maybe twenty before leaving the scene bewildered. I pretty much forgot the experience and never returned there in my Slake nor repeated the experience. But maybe it lay like a seed in the back of my mind - waiting for the proper equipment. The "proper equipment" came along in 1985 in the form of a squirt design of mine called the Plane. It had a deck that was level with the water's surface- hence the name. This was before the advent of footbumps brought on by the subsequent Jet design. I was working on cartwheels at the same time- even though those were consistently done for the first time in the Baby Arc in 1983. The following Arc and Sparc designs were too big in the bow to easily effect cartwheels and was a couple of years before the designs got small enough again to make them feasible. Mystery moves seemed to be an aberrant evolution of the cartwheel somehow. I had the move worked out to where I could go belly deep with the entire boat submerged on an eddy line. I went west to teach squirt boating in Oregon without having named the move- but having told my friend Thom about this new move I was working on. So we were paddling down the river and he said, "So let's see the new mystery move you were talking about.." And I really liked the name and so it stuck. It stayed a belly to chest deep move for about a year before we ventured into the truly powerful arenas it takes to get totally submerged. The move went on to become an obsession with squirt boaters and one of the finer play formats in the sport. What follows is an archive of mystery spots around the world- their names, histories, and details about how people tap into them. |
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Proudly Creating kayaks as individual as the paddlers themselves |
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[ PS Composites Inc • 311 Friendsville Rd • Markleysburg PA 15459 • psc@customkayak.com • 724-329-4413 ] |