Mount Baker Dogs

Wild wolf dog

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Heading up Welcome Pass, a trail that gains 2800 vertical feet in a little under 2 miles. It is the quickest way up to the alpine meadows but it is also the most grueling.

I love the alpine mushroom growing in the snow.

Welcome Pass wildflowers

Flower Dogs

It's really hard to get photos of two active and quick dogs like Lupe and Marcos. But every once in a while there is a moment of repose that comes after a long slog up a mountain. It usually comes up in a wide open field, a sanctuary away from it all, a place where nothing happens. In this field of wild flowers, we just stayed still and looked at Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan looming in the distance with the sun reverberating off their glaciers. We all sat still basking in the sunlight with really nothing better to do in the universe.

Dogs of the Explorers

"Indeed, having a mascot, a pickup mutt, has been a long American tradition dating back at least to explorer Alexander Mackenzie’s 1793 cross-continent journey. Lewis and Clark kept along a Newfoundland named Seaman that protected camp and provided companionship while shooing away grizzlies. Having a pickup dog is about as “American” as apple pie. Those of us who travel with dogs know that when one observes nature through the eyes (and noses) of their dogs, they can see all of the details that one would have missed otherwise. And as traveling companions, there is nothing better than a dog, who rarely complains, and is frequently a source of a lot of laughs."

From the forthcoming Pick-Up Dogs: How Two Rescue Dogs Save the West from Being Won