Product Description

Based on their more than 100 years of combined experience in Washington's backcountry, Spring and Manning have selected their favorite trails for this compendium of classic hikes. Full-color photographs throughout supplement the authors' first-hand descriptions of the trails they have hiked many times over. Featuring spectacular views, flower-filled alpine meadows, lakes and streams, ancient forests, animals and birds, and solitude, these trails will give hikers a taste of Washington's best. Infused with a strong conservation message, this guide not only introduces hikers to Washington's gems but encourages them to become active participants in an effort to preserve and, in some cases, reclaim the remaining wilderness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #115892 in Books
• Brand: The Mountaineers Books
• Published on: 2006-08-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.com Review
Classic Hikes is a greatest hits of previous Mountaineers guidebooks for Washington, collecting in a single volume 100 hikes from the guides to the Alpine Lakes, North Cascades, Glacier Peak, Mount Rainier, and South Cascades and Olympics regions. The intelligence behind the selection comes from Ira Spring and Harvey Manning, who between them have more than 100 years of hiking experience in Washington. Owners of other Mountaineers guides will notice that the production values of this volume are even higher than usual; color maps and photos adorn high-quality (recycled) paper. At-a-glance information for easy browsing includes the following: mileage, suggested duration in hours or days, high point, elevation gain, seasonality, topo map codes, and additional contact information. The text synopses are colorful and politically opinionated (woe to the dirt biker who crosses paths with these two!). Their sense of tradition is also readily apparent: "To start with the ice cream and work through the meatballs and potatoes to the soup is not esthetic. Coming to the Enchantments by way of Aasgard is in very bad taste."

While avid hikers will have plenty to argue about concerning the sins of omission, it's hard to argue with the inclusion of Mount Rainier's Wonderland Trail, Whatcom Pass in the North Cascades, Image Lake in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, the Enchantments in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, and the Olympics' High Divide. These represent some of the most spectacular hikes in North America. The downside is that you're not likely to find solitude in such places, no matter how remote. But there are 95 more trails to choose from, many of similar scenic beauty and slightly less fame.

Review
Worth purchasing for the photos alone. -- The News Tribune [Tacoma, WA]

Customer Reviews

Good orientation of area trails with great color pictures
I was very pleased to find this book last year while planning a trip to Washington. I was interested in finding some good trails for full day hikes. This guide gives a great overview of neat areas to be found in this very beautiful state.

A lot of hiking guides have limited pictures which are often in black & white. Not so for this guide. Each of the hikes described has at least one full color picture along with a nicely done (non-topo) trail location/route diagram. Thumbing through this guide, looking at the beautiful pictures, and reading the trail descriptions definitely further enticed me to do some hiking in Washington, more so than any other trail guides I've seen. The pictures really make you want to go see for yourself!

After thumbing through the guide, I picked three trails in the Olympics to do full day hikes on: Sol Duc Trail, Hoh River Trail, & the Cape Alava / Sand Point loop trail. The hikes and scenery were wonderful! I thought the guide did a very good job of giving me an overview of the area and general trail difficulty to help in planning before arriving in Washington. Of course, some of the trails described are going to be a little more popular than lesser known trails not described. But, coming from out of state, this was fine by me.

If you are considering a trip to Washington and would like to do some hiking or backpacking, this is a great book to get you acquainted with some great places, and pictures to get you salivating. Since the map diagrams in the book are designed to give you a feel for the route and location only, they are probably not what you would want with you on an actual hike. For that, I would recommend picking up topo maps for the area of interest.

I highly recommend this book to fellow out-of-staters considering a trip to Washington. Thanks to this book, we saw some places that we might have missed otherwise. If there is a downside to this book it is that every time I pick it up and thumb through it I see great pictures of places that I would like to go to, but may not ever do. So many trails, so much scenery, so little time...

AWESOME!
So far I have only done four hikes in this book, but I intend to try them all! The colorful pictures are a nice incentive to hike that long distance. From a one and a half mile hike to a 500 mile hike, this book will accomodate any level hiker and any time limits they may have. This book gives directions as well as how many miles the hike is and the elevation you will be gaining. It provides estimated time allotments and phone nubers to call to reserve camp sites and see if trails are open. Best of all there are hikes from the Pacific Ocean to the Cascades. This book is must have for hikers in the great state of Washington!

A good guide by some old negative fussy butts.
The trail descriptions and the amount of information in all of Ira Spring and Harvey Manning's books are great. They provide some great info, but....they are two of the most negative guide book writers that I have ever read. They hate dogs, motorcycles, bikes, and horses, as well as the Forest Service and NPS. Fine, hate them, say it once, get it over with and then shut-up about it. But no, they go on and on and on about motorcycles, mountain bikes, and everything that does not meet their definition of appropriate recreation. I took a black marker to all of the negative comments in their North Cascades book, and black ended up on almost every page. Again, it has good information and can be really helpful if you can stomach the negativity.