Featured image credit: Hannah Bailey
They’re best friends to humans, both on and off the snow, and if you tour around the Cairngorms you may have spotted them on the hill. Zig-zagging their way up the tracks in packs, charging down the Ciste Gully or Head Wall, traversing the windy ridge or dropping down Coire Raibert, they’ll have been barking mad for Scottish snow and on the hunt for PAWder (sorry). I am, of course, talking about dogs; adventure-loving mountain dogs.
“They’re best friends to humans, both on and off the snow”
Over the past two seasons, I’ve spied these smile-inducing ski touring dogs on the hills enjoying it as much as the humans themselves. Some dogs, of course, are purely out there in a recreational sense but there are also specially trained canines that are part of SARDA Scotland (Search and Rescue Dog Association) or Mountain Rescue Search Dogs England. Both are charities, running alongside the Mountain Rescue Teams around the UK, that train dogs and their handlers to search for missing people. They are 100% volunteer run and are on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to help save lives in the big outdoors.
I’ve spent some time photographing and documenting some of the characters you might meet on the hill. Some of them are ski touring dogs, some of them are rescue-making dogs; all of them are absolute legends (AKA top dogs).