Customer Reviews

100 Classic Hikes in Washington

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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...

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.

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!

While this edition supplies something that the other books in Spring and Mannings series don't, namely color pictures, there is really very little new here. The authors have updated the text in a few instances and their introduction/preface is new, but there are pictures and descriptions in this book that date to the First Edition.

And I must ask "Why?" Why was it necessary to publish this book? Spring and Manning endlessly lament the fact that most of these hikes are overcrowded, overused, overloved, trampled beyond all recognition, and yet they publish a "new" guidebook so that these very places may be abused to a greater extent. I don't get it.

If you don't own the other books in this series and don't plan to buy them, by all means buy this one. Just don't be suprised if 2.5 million others are at the trailhead with you.

I have read countless hiking books but never have I encountered a preface like this book. Authors Spring and Manning spend many pages going into a diatribe about how the Forest Service has ruined many Washington trails and how ATV's and encroachment has destroyed much of the pristine beauty of the state. I agree with their comments wholeheartedly, but wonder if such "strident" opinions (to some people) are really suitable in a hiking guide. For me, the political opinions were not a distraction, but I want to mention them in case you are expecting simply a typical guidebook with no ancillary commentary.

Now, to the book itself. Washington is a magnificent and beautiful state to hike. Even without the magnificent hikes in and around the Seattle, there are plenty of other trails to explore and enjoy. This book does it all! It is an exceptionally well-designed book for hikers across the spectrum. Whether you're a neophyte or have climbed Denali, this book contains all the essential information you need to tackle the hikes listed. The photos are all in color and are breathtaking! You really get a sense of what each hike will look like before you undertake it. Every hike also has a brief map to accompany the text description. The maps are easy to follow and instructive. There are also black and white photos of each trail, with two color sections.

Equally pleasing is that the authors take the time to describe each hike in extensive detail, though they are never wordy. They list the elevation gains, give succinct but necessary directions to each trailhead and provide ample analysis of the strengths/weaknesses of each trek. The book is small and light enough to carry in your backpack, if you feel the need to consult it while on the trail.

I have over 50 hiking books in my library and it would be hard to imagine a more complete, more photographically stunning or better written guide. From desert to mountains, Washington has it all. I enthusiastically recommend this gem with the small warning about the authors injecting personal opinions about the Forest Service.

"Ira and Harvey," as my hiking partner and I fondly refer to the authors, are probably the best hiking writers / photographers I've ever encountered. Yes, the book is opinionated; there is no doubt about that. However, that is what makes it special. If you want a book with 1000 hikes and a short listing of facts, this book isn't for you. However, the authors have pulled together their favorite 100 hikes and feel free to tell you exactly why they think they're great. Ira (Spring) was a famous photographer in his day, and I enjoy drooling over his photos of the sites I'll see on the way to hike. We usually preface our hikes from this book by reading the hike description aloud and laughing over Manning's excesses.

My edition is one older than this listing, and in it, as another reviewer remarks, the authors do rail against motorized vehicles. Anyone who's been asphyxiated by a 4-wheeler and coughed for minutes after its departure can appreciate and agree with their rants.

In the edition I have, there is no negative mention of dogs or horses. In fact, Harvey references hikes with his dog fondly. I have noticed in later editions of Mountaineers books anti-dog writing which bothers me - a lot. However, I have never seen that in this book.

If you can only own one hiking book for Washington, this is the one. It's entertaining, informative, recommends fantastic hikes, and has great photos.

...and recommend in its stead : Hiking Washington's Geology, ISBN: 0898865484.

I live in WA state, and have owned "100 Classic Hikes in WA" for 5 years; I repeatedly "try" to reference for new hiking ideas, but every time end up closing the book in disgust. Here is why:
1. The prose is terrible (excessively 'flowery' and overblown);
2. Non-stop negative "preaching" against the forest service, motorized vehicles, horses & dogs on the trail.
3. Hike descriptions, when not oriented on preaching, are not very descriptive of the specific features as seen on the hike.

Because of this, the valuable information, such as difficulty of hike, accesibility of trailhead, & attraction of hike (view, flowers, etc) is very hard to extract from the hike descriptions.

I consider myself an experienced outdoors-person, and hit the trails almost every weekend during good weather. Sometimes I hike with friends, sometimes I take my dog, sometimes I bring the trailer & ride with my horse, and sometimes I take a mountain bike. My point is: these men found innumerable ways to slam almost every activity I do in the mountains: according to their never-ending negativity, the only good trail is one in which only a walking human is allowed.

My recommendation to the authors is to spend less time 'educating' the public with your incredibly biased opinions and more time on the purpose of the book: educating people on the best places to go in WA for a great hike.

"Hiking WA's Geology" is a much better book, even if you are not interested in geology for the following reasons:
1. Hike descriptions are written by authors experienced in technical writing, i.e. you recieve the most amount of pertinent information in as few words as possible.
2. Many of the trails are 'off the regularly beaten path'
3. Descriptions give detailed information along each section of the hike, so the hiker knows not only the 'what & why' of what he is seeing, but also any technical challenges that might arise (paraphrased e.g.: 3 miles down the trail, the trail becomes difficult to follow, watch for campsite #22, walk to the left, find the trailhead again).

My criticism of this guide applies to all of the so-called "classic" hikes series. It is difficult for me to write, because Harvey Manning was once one of the best guidebook writers on the planet, and Ira Spring's photos are awesome.
But that was then, and this is now. The books are poorly edited, inaccurately updated, sloppy attempts to sell a few more great color pictures and once-good-but-now-preachy Manning writing.
Anyone who has been on any one of the trails of this guide should be able to find at least one significant innacuracy in the description, largely because I'll bet the authors haven't hiked on some ot the trails since they wrote the first edition, almost a half-century ago.
Sadly, some of the photos in this book are in error, too - such as the photo of the "marsh marigold" on page 234, which is actually a Western anemone; or the photo of the "avalanche lily" on page 198, actually a glacier lily. Worse still is the picture on page 35, which shows campers tending a fire in an area where fires have been banned for the past 20 years.
In sum, the classic series does little to enhance the fine reputations of these two guidebook authors.

This is a beautifully illustrated book - I'll certainly give it that. I didn't get into the prose, though, because as I thumbed through the summary description of each hike, I was disappointed to find how few of them are accessible to the casual hiker.

I'm going to Seattle in mid-May and I wanted to take a few hikes while I was there. Of the 100 hikes listed in this book, less than 5 of them are accessible in May, and all of those are either on the coast or east of the Cascades. The weather isn't the authors' fault, but one would hope there would be a few "classic" hikes that would be accessible at other times than mid-summer.

The other disappointment was that a very large percentage of the hikes involve trips of multiple days. I'm sure they're gorgeous, but this borders more on camping trips than hikes.

I found Foghorn Outdoors Washington Hiking: The Complete Guide to More Than 400 Hikes (Foghorn Outdoors) to be a much more useful guide.

This is an excellent compilation of the favorite hikes of two experts on Washington trails. Spring and Manning have been hiking the trails and writing books about them for decades and their excitement, joy and orneriness (occasionally directed toward the forest service, the park service, motorized use of trails, horses, etc.) shines through in this great book. The photos by Ira Spring are fantastic.

This book is guaranteed to have you dusting off your camping gear and heading for the mountains!