I get to have an incredible hike every day with my Elkhounds, however some of the winter mountain hikes are truly fabulous. Hiking with a dog, especially multiple mountain hiking Elkhounds in a scenic winter wonderland, well that is pretty special.

These dogs love snow, you have to see it to believe it. Unreal love of snow. The will go and go till I am so tired out I have to call them back and head home. I can snowshoe a long ways, but these guys have some stamina let me say. We have a ton of nice power snow this year. It makes for a tremendous workout for the dogs. It’s way up to the chest and back of all of them, even Takoda is deep in snow this season. Me of course, I am sinking in with my new Atlas Traverse snowshoes about 16 inches. The kids bought me a new pair for Christmas, the largest they make in the mountain snow shoe, it’s barely big enough.

I used to always use the old style, but in the bush and heavy steep terrain we travel these days, these new snowshoes are the answer. The dogs are bred for working, we still raise the ancient lineages and they have been working in snow for centuries, so it’s nothing new to them. Genetically they are hardwired to work all day with me in the mountains in these conditions, this is the hiking dog of all hiking dogs.

When it comes to outdoor adventure in the winter with dogs, you cannot find a better dog than the Elkhound. I have been taking the camera a bit more on my hikes this winter and will hopefully post a quite a few of our outings. This set of photos I had Takoda, Tekla and Tuva, Tora, Kamp, Kalia and Kai, although not 100% sure if I have all of them in the photos in this post, but I will post again.

We travel some new trail areas each day most of the time, unless of course I am tired from the day before or something, then I chose to take a trail I have already been on, the snow is firmed up, I travel much faster then, and I can keep up. If I am running new trails I can’t keep up, as they can motor quite a bit faster than me. Elkhounds though are bred to range around me, so I never have to worry where they are, they wait, and find me if I get behind. Their job is to scout the trails ahead, and to the side and behind me for any signs of danger. We rarely encounter much in the real deep snow regions but to them, work is work. Everyday is the day to be prepared, so they scout the same all the time.

Well, I will end this post with some cool images of our day out, they found some scent down at the creek, neat to see all of them sticking their head into the snow banks. Enjoy,

Merv