The big and beautiful New River has many mush and mystery spots - but only a couple worthy of a few hours diversion. But one is one of the first and most famous and fickle of all mystery spots-

The Halls of Karma

This classic arena was properly named by Jim Snyder after a Black Oak Arkansas song about being torn between "God and the Devil".   It was named around 1979- before squirt boating began- when river guides used to amuse themselves by swimming the whirlpools after being shown how by Tim Kanannen.  It is one of the first arenas where squirt boaters sought out big DT.  It is exceedingly fickle and yet serves up major downtime to true devotees.  The best levels are when it is pretty low and stable- from 0 to -2'.  A major portion of the river is slamming off a huge rock at the way bottom left of Lower Keeney Rapid.  The river is quite deep here, even at low levels, although the bottom has been touched a very few times by people who dive deeply into the hearts of big whirlpools.  The charc involves breaking out from behind the rock bearing left. For the best DT you need to turn sharply underwater before you travel too far and tap back into the eddy for support.  This requires engaging the slab very close to the rock- within about a foot of it- and winging down hard right away semi-vertically.  Many people waste hours here by making the mistake of dropping too slowly and trying to link up with an obvious seam about 3' out which is derived from the pillow formed by the

rock.  You can link up with the seam but you rarely get any good downtime at all because you travel fast without spinning and lose any support from the eddy.  Some people, like Jeff Schnelle, get huge DT here and do travel to get it- about 50-80' in 20-25 seconds. But it is all based off an initial deep drop and using support from the river left eddy.  Sometimes you can get a good ride by traveling across the currents underwater and downstream a bit and tapping into the river right eddy.  But this is very dynamic travel and usually people's up buttons get greasy from all the action and they have premature evacuations. At any rate,  this is a superb place to play for many hours and you have to pace yourself, bring drinks, snacks and rest periodically to get the best of the arena.

Thread the Needle

This is just upstream from Fayette Station about a quarter mile where two huge rocks sit in the middle of the river.  The mystery eddy is on attainer’s right below the rocks and near shore.  It is only about a two boat eddy with a vague looking eddy line. It is good at most levels but best at lower levels.  You leave the eddy very high near a micro wave and use a flat slow drop to tap into a distant seam in the currents.  You have to travel 5-8 feet to find the seam and by then your head should be disappearing.  You can usually have your head gone for 2-3 seconds and this is an excellent arena for explosive black attacks or light loops.  It's easy to get consistent results here at lower levels if you have any energy left