Squirt boating is an interesting activity. Even to most whitewater paddlers this rare subculture of kayaking is nothing short of a mystery (pun intended). Our buddy Paul Bartholic from Asheville has devoted a good part of his boating “career” to perfecting moves like the whirly-gig, mystery move, flying fish, and the screw up…these ancient squirt moves are at the roots of some of today’s most popular freestyle tricks. At the helm of this underwater movement since the 80’s is Jim Snyder who needs no introduction to most whitewater paddlers. Each year Jim travels to Japan on his annual squirt pilgrimage and this year he invited Paul to join him. We look forward to seeing some of their footage when they return from their 8 day trip.

In the meantime enjoy this short video of Paul getting some DT on the Cheat River…

(please note: squirt boaters DO wear PFD’s when traveling downstream..but sometimes they take them off for destination mystery moves. These moves take place in safely approved locations by experienced squirtists.)

video courtesy of Ben Durrant

[quicktime width="400" height="300"]http://www.astralbuoyancy.com/astralvideo/downtime2.mpg[/quicktime]

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 8:06 pm and is filed under Downtime, Video Archive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.