DBP MAGAZINE ONLINEEditor-in-Chief "Chicago" Mike Toughill is co-founder of Dirt Bag Paddlers and former Peshtigo River Manager at Kosir's Rapid Rafts in Wisconsin. He's been Wallacing since 2003.
It was after lunch when we got back to Poplar. Some commercial trips were out, and more would be coming down the mountain soon. The river had dropped quite a bit, but still felt really big to me. It put a knot right in the pit of my stomach. Some days I’d pay to have […]
The rains came to visit East Tennessee on Friday, March 17th. I was happy to see the water levels rising, knowing that I would be home on Saturday and have something good to kayak. When I got the weather forecast I started watching the gauges of my favorite rivers. The main one that I was […]
“Never let them look in your box.” It’s probably one of the first and most profound lessons I’ve learned from a boatman. It seems almost too simple. You can ask almost any river guide, what’s in the box and likely get the same answer. “It’s a secret.” The secret can also apply to: that bag, […]
EDITOR’S DESK– Here in America, children grow up learning the simple rhyme, “April Showers bring May Flowers.” April’s wet weather also brings the rivers up and marks the traditional beginning of the commercial whitewater rafting season. Although hardcore dirtbags never truly pack away the boats and gear, this is the time of year that hardcore […]
EDITOR’S DESK: Dirt Bag Paddlers, One Love One River, and World Wide Wallace… The main phrases of our community embody our ethos of unity. Taken directly from our official mission statement- “Reminding each other that our community is the same no matter where the River is, the color of skin or language spoken. On The […]
EDITOR’S DESK: The commercial rafting season here at Kosir’s Rapid Rafts, the original headquarters of Dirt Bag Paddlers, has always opened on the first weekend of April. We thought we would close out our international focused March issue of DBP MAGAZINE ONLINE .COM with our typical photo spread by showing the rest of the global […]
Last summer, two major milestones of my life passed. One, thirty one years had gone by since beginning a career as a river guide. That also meant that in late June more than half my life had been spent as a guide. Neither three decades of working on the river nor my sixtieth birthday caused […]
March in the Upper Midwest means Old Man Winter is due to depart, taking with him the ice and leaving his snow to melt into the ever increasing flow of our little known but much loved whitewater rivers. It’s also when the Wisconsin and Illinois boating community looks forward to Rutabaga Paddlesports’ annual Canoecopia, billed […]
In the spring of 2015, hundreds of activists in kayaks and small boats fanned out on Puget Sound to protest Shell Oil Company resuming oil exploration in the Arctic. The paddle-powered environmental groups vowed to disrupt the oil company’s efforts to use Seattle as a home base for their rigs returning from Alaska’s northwest coast, […]
Held on February 16-19 in Rishikesh, India, the 2017 edition of Ganga Kayak Festival was a great success! DBP MAGAZINE ONLINE .COM is proud to be an official media outlet for the third year running, delivering post-game coverage to the international paddling community on behalf of our friends at GKF. DBP Admin Deepak Rana, a […]