Dog Mountain Trail

Author's Comments

Late May, mid-morning, and the meadows are doing the thing they are famous for. Yellow balsamroot in waves, the Columbia a long blue ribbon below, the wind moving the flowers in patterns that almost photograph and mostly do not. Dog Mountain in wildflower season is one of the most crowded trails in the gorge for good reason, and you will not have it to yourself. Accept that early. The climb is unrelenting. Twenty-eight hundred feet in a little over three miles, mostly exposed, and by ten in the morning the sun is on you without apology. I start before dawn when I come here in May, headlamp on for the first switchbacks, and I time the upper meadow for the hour just after sunrise when the light is still raking and the flowers throw their own small shadows. That window is short. By eight the light has gone flat and the magic has moved on. The wide shot is obvious - balsamroot in the foreground, Mount Hood across the river, the gorge falling away. Make it. Then put on a longer lens and work the detail. A single bloom against the haze of distance reads more honestly than the panorama, at least to me. The mountain wants to be photographed big and I keep finding that it photographs better small. Bring more water than you think. Bring the permit. Come down before the afternoon heat sets in and the trail turns into a slog. This is a hike that asks something of you, and on the right morning in the right week of the right month, it answers.

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