He’s Been a St. Louis River Guide for Years. Here’s What It’s Really Like.

From the outside, being a river guide looks like a sweet gig.

You get to paddle a canoe nearly every day, tell people about landmarks along various waterways, soak up plenty of sun, share laughs with coworkers, and get some valuable Vitamin D, fresh air, and exercise.

But things viewed from a distance can often be deceiving. So what’s it really like to be a professional river guide? How is the river-trip sausage actually made?

To find out, we caught up with Mark “Malko” Malkowicz, the manager of outfitting at Big Muddy Adventures in St. Louis and a longtime guide on the region’s big rivers.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Malkowicz filled us in on the nitty-gritty details of his seemingly awesome job.

What’s the worst day you’ve ever had on the job?
It would have to be weather-related. I’ve been on a 100-mile river trip where, for like four days, it never really got below 80 degrees. Even in the middle of the night, it was like 83 degrees. You’re just lying there in your tent, sweating. Then during the day, even while trying to make people’s lunch or serve dinner, it was like 103 degrees. So that was a really, really hard time to keep myself comfortable, let alone 10 clients.

This was on the Mississippi?
Yep. We were on our Century Series expedition, and we were down near the Bootheel of Missouri. Those trips end in New Madrid, Missouri. So we were pretty far south.

What do you do when the clients are getting restless?
I guess in those scenarios we keep the customers pretty happy. I mean, we’re the ones doing all the moving of the gear and the cooking and the cleaning. So on those hard, hot days, they’re kind of just floating in the river. Usually, we do a pretty good job of making sure we’re the ones going through the rough stuff, and they’re getting catered to. So I don’t know if they noticed it as much as we did.

Have you ever suffered any bad injuries?
No, nothing actually. I’ve been pretty lucky. I mean, I’ve cut my finger here and there, cooking dinner or cutting ropes or whatever. I’ve chopped my fingers pretty good a couple times, but nothing too serious. I think it’s just a matter of taking it slow, moving slow.

 

What about muscle soreness?
Yeah, I do experience soreness. There’ll be days when, especially early in the season, when we have like our first four or five days in a row of river trips. All of a sudden, it starts to get hot, and I’m dragging these 400-pound canoes around and water jugs and helping people in and out of boats. I always describe it as a “good sore.” I don’t wake up like I’m unable to move or stiff or in pain, but I wake up, and I’m like, “Oh, I can tell I’ve been working.”

What about blisters on your hands from all the paddling?
So, before I was a professional river guide, I painted cars for 20 years. I’ve been using sandpaper my whole life. So my hands are just like a giant callous. As far as my hands go, they’re in pretty good shape.

Is there anything about the job that gives you trouble, physically?
Really, a big thing for me is combating sunburn. There’s a lot of sun exposure with this job. There are no trees to get under when you’re in the middle of the Mississippi. You can lose track of that for eight hours and then be sunburned for the next week. So you really have to make sure that you’re comfortable tomorrow.

I’m constantly trying to cover up. I wear a big-brimmed hat all the time, and sun hoodies with little hoops that go over my thumbs to cover half of my hands.

Do you use sunscreen?
Very rarely. I feel like if I try to wear traditional sunblock every day, I would wear gallons of chemicals every year. I mean, I will put some on my face and the back of my hands and my feet, but other than that, I just cover up. I wear a sun hoodie and a big hat every single day.

How many hours per week do river guides work?
Seasonal guides work 30 to 40 hours a week. Full-time guides work 40 to 50. And the scheduling is so crazy and sporadic. Sometimes we’ll have a morning trip where you have to be at the warehouse at 6 a.m. Other times we’ll have dinner trips, where we’re starting at 5 p.m. And sometimes you’ll have a late-night trip and then an early-morning trip the next day. So scheduling can be pretty intense.

Do river guides have other jobs in the winter?
Yeah, it’s kind of cool. Some of our guides are like the traditional traveling seasonal guides. One of our guides has worked on the outskirts of Denali National Park in Alaska, doing four-wheeling tours. Another guide has done ziplining and rock-climbing tours and worked at ski resorts. Or some of our guides just kind of travel personally during the offseason.

What do you do in the winter?
I travel and spend a few weeks somewhere living inexpensively. I’ve spent a winter in Egypt. I spent a winter in Mexico. This last winter I was in Ecuador for most of January. I don’t really try to do anything too glamorous — just find a cheap apartment and then live there for a month. It’s kind of nice: Live like the people do, eat like they do. I like the cultural experience of it.

What’s the biggest tip you’ve ever gotten?
That happened just the other day, actually. A few other guides and I took a dental office out on the Mississippi. At the end of the trip, I think they handed us 400 bucks.

 

Let’s back up for a minute. How did you get into paddling? And how did you become proficient at it?
Growing up in the St. Louis area, we have the Ozark streams just south of us, a couple hours away, that offer world-class canoeing. It’s like crystal-clear, spring-fed rivers. They have kind of a swift current, and they’re bendy, so they’re really challenging to keep a canoe upright in when you’re young and first starting out.

The consequences of flipping your boat on the Mississippi and the Missouri are bigger, but on those small Ozark rivers, it’s actually harder to keep your boat upright. And when I was young, we’d flip our canoe three times on one trip, just trying stuff, but you’d figure out so much. So I think I learned a whole lot paddling those windy Ozark streams, where you’re slamming into trees and sliding over rocks. You’re crashing all the time until you really figure it out.

How do those skills translate to big rivers like the Mississippi and Missouri?
The reading of the river is kind of the same. You have to look for the same activity on the surface. It’s just such a bigger scale. So I always say starting off on those Ozark streams and doing like eight-mile float trips when I was five years old with my dad and brother — just starting young and always being on those rivers — helped train me. Paddling the Ozark streams is how I got the skills.

When you say Ozark streams, do you mean the Current and the Jacks Fork?
Exactly. Those were the two big ones. I grew up paddling them with my family.

Did your dad teach you?
Yeah, pretty much. We’d go with family friends. My dad and older brother would be in a canoe together, with all the food and other important stuff. And then me and one of my buddies or a neighbor would have an empty canoe, and we would try to sink it and just screw around. We’d fill it full of water and still try to canoe in it. You learn a lot about canoeing when you can wreck one and just go crazy with it.

So your family owned a couple of canoes?
No, we would always rent canoes, actually. At least a couple times a year, we would drive down to Pulltite Campground on the Current River and then have the outfitters take us up to Akers Ferry. And yeah, my dad and brother would have all the important stuff in their canoe, and me and a neighbor kid would just be crashing down the river.

Speaking from my own experience, I remember canoeing with my father on those rivers. I didn’t realize how difficult it was to steer a canoe until I climbed into the back of one and tried. We flipped constantly.
No, it’s definitely a thing. It takes a while to learn. First you’ve got to learn what you want the canoe to do, and then you’ve got to figure out, like, how do I make the canoe do that? So there’s like two steps to learning how to canoe.

Because it isn’t just like driving a car, where you just go around the turn. It’s almost more comparable to drifting a car. You almost aim where you want to go, and then you motor into it. So it’s kind of a weird mix.

And for you it was a lot of trial and error?
Yeah. I guess when I first started, I didn’t care if I crashed, so I would roll the canoe all the time, and it would be fun. And then eventually my dad stopped going, and I had the stuff with me in my canoe. I had to figure out how to not be the one to flip all the time.

And then I just wanted to go on longer trips. So with my dad, we’d go on one-day trips. And then my brother and I started doing overnight trips, and we would take my dad on overnight trips. We kind of expanded his abilities and love for the river.

And then, once he started to slow down and retire from paddling, my brother and I started doing 100-mile, five-day trips. Or one time, we paddled the Missouri River through the entire state of Missouri in about three weeks — basically the MR340 route, without the race. We’d stop somewhere for 24 hours and just listen to music, party, eat, and hang out. Which is much more my speed than racing.

 

Overall, are you happy you made the switch from the body shop to the river?
Yeah. It seriously doesn’t feel like I work at all. It’s crazy that I’m doing this for a living.

If someone wants to be a river guide, what’s your advice?
Get experience in the type of water that you want to guide. If you want to be a guide in the Grand Canyon, find a raft and some big whitewater and do it on your own first and get some experience.

Canoeing, same way. If you want to be a canoe guide, rent a canoe and go on some trips by yourself, where you have to plan the route, plan the food, and execute the trip. Once you do everything on your own for a while, guiding will feel easy.

But if you come into guiding without doing that first and you’re kind of learning the hospitality side and the paddling and adventure side all at once, that can be a lot. I already had the paddling and adventure part down, so when I started guiding, I focused on getting better at talking to people and that kind of thing. That’s what I needed to improve.

Bottom line: Get as much experience as you can on the water that you want to guide before you become a guide.

Is hazing a thing among river guides?
Not really. The consequences of what we do are so big that we have to take it pretty seriously. There’s not too much screwing around. And even at the warehouse — where we hang out before and after trips — we want everybody to want to be there.

I think hazing might run people out in this industry, especially in a place like St. Louis where we don’t have a million guides knocking at our door and wanting to guide. So we kind of want to make the guides we have happy.

We’ve had basically the same crew now for five years, so it’s a little different for us. But I could totally see hazing happening at the big whitewater rafting operations, where they hire 40 seasonal guides every year and it’s a lot of turnover.

What’s the best day you’ve ever had on the job?
I feel like I tell myself this is the best day pretty often, which makes me know that I’m lucky. But those first warm-weather trips of the year are usually kind of perfect.

Because on the first couple of trips of the year, the water is super cold, the air can be cold, and it can be windy. It can be a little intense and nerve-wracking.

But as soon as it gets warm, those first really nice weather days of the year, I tell myself every year, “This is the best.”

What should new guides look for in an employer?
Make sure it’s not a revolving door of guides. Look for a crew that’s been there for a while. Even the management at some places can be a revolving door. So find a place that has some long-term employees.

Guides have a reputation for partying hard. Are the rumors true?
Yes. [Laughs] But I think we do a really good job of partying after the river trips. Safety is always such a big, big, big deal that we don’t party on the river.

But I would say our guide crew is a fun group of people. We’ve been together for so long now that we even hang out on weekends and go on river trips on our own. It’s fun to see the two different personalities that the guides have, too, because we do keep it super safe and serious when we’re working, but then as soon as we’re on a trip without customers, we’re a different crew.

What keeps you doing this work?
It’s just the simple fact that if I wasn’t being paid to do this, this is exactly what I would be doing anyway.

Back when I worked at the body shop, I would always call the other technicians crazy for fixing their buddy’s Camaro on their day off. But now I’m that guy in my free time. I had a day off yesterday, and I drove four hours to go be on the water and fish. So yeah, on my days off I pretty much do the same thing that I’m doing for a living. So I feel lucky to get paid to do it.

Author: Shawn Donnelly is the managing editor of Terrain.

Top image: Mark Malkowicz guides kids on the Missouri River. (Reiss Wegman)