Hiking Mount Hood National Forest [Paperback]

Marcia Sinclair (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 143 pages
• Publisher: Frank Amato Publications (March 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1571882715
• ISBN-13: 978-1571882714
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #996,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Hiking guide? Hardly., July 11, 2005

By 

C. Roberts (Kalama, WA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hiking Mount Hood National Forest (Paperback)

If you are interested in learning about the history of Mt. Hood National Forest, then this is a great book. However, if you want a guide to the best hikes, maps, elevation gain, distance, time needed to hike, trip highlights, and landmarks, then you will be sorely disappointed by this book.

It is obvious the author has a great affinity for the forest, but this should be marketed less as a hiking guide and more as an overview of current issues and past events in the forest. Thirty-one hikes are "profiled", but little more than their name, how to get there, a level of difficulty, and amount of use is listed. There is a long discussion about each hike, but each discussion goes off onto a tangent about other issues about things the author saw on each hike. There are some useful nuggets in the discussion, but it is difficult to wade through the "fluff" to get them.

It is a well researched book, but in no way is this a useful hiking guide. Buy Fred Barstad's book of Mt. Hood and Badger Creek Wilderness instead. It isn't as pretty looking as this book, but it will be far more useful.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Guide that Dares to be Different!, October 8, 2008

By 

T. Kloster (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hiking Mount Hood National Forest (Paperback)

The previous review of this book hits on an important disclaimer: this is not a traditional hiking guide, with the usual trail maps and route descriptions. A quick flip through the pages makes that point obvious. But there are many such books to be found, and I would point to Doug Lorain's excellent "Afoot & Afield Portland/Vancouver" and William Sullivan's "100 Hikes in Northwest Oregon and Southwest Washington" as the definitive trail guides to the Mount Hood area. Or, you can simply go to the free online guide at PortlandHikers.org for trail descriptions.

Marcia Sinclair's book dares to be different. It's a terrific addition to your hiking library if you count Mount Hood and the vast Clackamas River country among your favored stomping grounds. The production quality of the book is lush, with dozens of color photos, and several fascinating historic images. Each of the featured destinations is described with great attention to what you will see, hear and feel along these trails, instead of a conventional trail log. In this way, the book is a good complement to more traditional guides, which rarely give this depth of interpretive understanding of the forest environs. The author draws from her unique experience as a former Forest Service worker to provide historical and natural history details that are otherwise undocumented for the Mount Hood area.

I would have given this book five stars for it's uniqueness and overall quality, except that Frank Amato Publications allowed for some uneven editing, including several inverted photographs. But don't let these minor oversights prevent you from picking up a copy -- it's an excellent, well-written work that you'll enjoy reading!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a stand-alone guide, March 5, 2009

By 

Gordon Banks (Amity, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Hiking Mount Hood National Forest (Paperback)

This is a very interesting book. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to go into more depth about the natural and cultural history of the region for each hike. It is quite lacking as a stand-alone hiking guide as it doesn't even give the length of the trails, the key points to watch for at junctions, the elevation gain, etc., which is essential knowledge if you are going to rely on a book for your hike. For example, her entry for the Clackmas River Trail hike goes on for 2 pages about the history and sad fate of the Clackamas tribe. This is information I really did want to know, and could never have gotten without doing some research on it. Here it is put beautifully into the context of the trail. She also has excellent photographs of the features seen on each hike so the hikes are better illustrated that any other books covering the region. There are some editing problems, such as the use of the term "ancesters" when she really meant "descendants." I'm not sure why she didn't include some more basic information about each hike. It would have only taken another paragraph or so to give the distance, elevation gain, etc. I recommend this book to those who share my interest in the history of the areas.