Customer Reviews

Olympic Mountains trail guide: National Park & National Forest

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

 

 

I have done about 80 hikes or climbs in the Olympics in the past two years. I think every description I have used in this book has been accurate. It includes some handy small scale maps as well. The Olympics is one of the best places to hike, winter or summer, and Woods is certainly the expert on the hikes and the history. A must for anyone who is even considering a hike of any length in the Olympics. Like one other reviewer implied, this book is way beyond the simple hike books that simply describe the popular hikes.
Add this book to "Climber's Guide to the Olympic Mountains" by the Olympic Mountain Rescue and you will have everything you need to explore the Olympic Mountains on foot.

This is not your average modern hiking guide with detailed maps, charts of elevation, photographs and how-to's with the discovery done for you, in advance. What Bob Wood has done is to write a scholarly book that happens to be a fine companion on a hike in the Olympic Mountains. It is common to find a hiker sitting near a rock at Marmot Lake, at Three Prune or Home Sweet Home or under a particularly unusual tree or flower paging through the book. It is quite common to over-hear a hiker saying, "Well, accoring to Bob Wood, the trail is easier whern you go north to south." Bob should know the Olympic Mountain trails because he has hiked over 1000 miles of them, in both directions at least one time and he makes extremely exact, if not scholarly, notes on flora and fauna, adds historical notes in just the right amount, adding caution, humor and some personal observations. But he keeps himself out of it and leaves the discovery to you. The true beauty of this book -- and you can call it a classic -- is that it lets the reader, or the hiker, discover the magic of LaCrosse Basin, Honeymoon Meadow and the thousands of bends in the hundreds of trails in this beautiful national park. You'll be enthralled reading this book at home in the winter as you will when you pull it out on the Skyline Trail to see where the Elk will cross the trail. It is factual, extremely helpful -- if not vital -- in the hands of the experienced hiker on a Bailey Range Traverse as it is in the hands of the day hiker, venturing out for the first time. Best of all, the Olympic Mountain Trail Guide does not take away the surprise and discovery of putting on the boots, lifting the pack and walking in some of the most beautiful country in the world.

Don't purchase this information-dense book thinking you're going to get something that you can use like a Spring and Manning "100 Hikes" guide, with their 100 pre-planned trips. Instead, this book is best used by getting a map first, finding a potentially interesting trail, and then looking it up in the book (it'll be in there!). What you'll find then will be a wealth of information about the trail for planning your trip.

The book also includes fairly detailed information about climbing Mt Olympus in an appendix.

I owned the 2nd editon for many years and it guided me on numerous trips. But there were some gaps and the age of the book was becoming noticable. So when the 3rd edition came out, I was very excited. Was I let down? NO. Wood accurately describes ever wonderful mile of these mountains and fills in the gaps present in his earlier editions. The new maps are wonderfully done (though still a bit cartoonish) and the new Trail Info summaries make life even easier. I'd recommend this book to anybody hiking anywhere in the Olympics. His 2nd edition was pretty darn good to begin with, but the 3rd some manages to improve on it.

I have done dozens of hikes in the Olympics, including a couple two-week hikes and have been to most of the areas described in the book. Robert Wood has done a brilliant job describing the hikes and the area. I grew up hiking the Cascades and reading the Harvey Manning/Ira Spring books, but they don't come close to this one. Wood's knowledge of the history of the area, his experience gained through hundreds of hikes; and his obvious love for the area, clearly show through in this well-written book.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the best trail guide book ever written and I doubt that it will ever be topped.

We used the book to research our hikes before we arrived in the area. It helped us plan our route, time and stopover points. It gave a number of clues to things we didn't want to see as well. Couple of things you should know when using the book though. Trail descriptions don't always start at a trailhead so you might have a longer trip to get there than you think. Significant information is contained in the introduction to each of the sections and without it you will be confused by some of the trail information. But the biggest clue is this...don't try to use this book without a detailed map of the area. You will have lots of trouble finding trailheads if you use only the book. For example, Hike 133 tells you to take a specific FS road. However, there are two major forks that are not marked and without a map you'll have the opportunity to spend 3 hours driving each option like we did, on some "interesting" logging roads. You can get the maps at local stores like the Merchantile in Lake Quinault. We are very happy that this book directed us to the South Fork Hoh Trail (Hike 162) which was outstanding. The trails from the visitor center are a disappointment after that great trail.

If you like Falcon type guide books, you probably won't care for this book. Trail descriptions don't offer elevation gain, they don't tell you what the trail has to offer (great views, low traffic, bears, et cetera), descriptions are not well organized, and the book does not offer descriptions of how you might link say several trails together to provide a loop - in other guide books you might hike the Seven Lakes Basin Loop, while in this book you have to find each individual trail description and connect them for yourself. Really, this offers little more than what you can find from just using your topo - of course a topo offers more info than you find here. For me, it defeats the purpose of guide book - which I use to guide me toward the trail I want to take QUICKLY - what's the elevation gain, what does this trail offer, what time of year is best, trail tips, et cetera. This book somehow manages to avoid all of this and still be very dense with information and convey the information in a very disorganized fashion. In addition, when hiking the Seven Lakes Loop, my topo AND the park map both listed trail names differently than how this book listed them - possibly an error in the book and possibly just outdated information.

Get this book only after you have spent some time in the Olympics, gotten a good feel for things, and want a resource to complement your own personal exploration of this glorious region. This is not a book you get as an intro to the Olympics and MUST be used with a topo.

Robert L. Wood is the recognized expert on the trails of the Olympic Mountains. I don't think a backpacker will find a better guide, but the real beauty of this book is Wood's descriptions of the trails, which can put even armchair hikers in the middle of the mountains.
I guess the only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is that the maps are terrible and you've got to buy a separate guide if you want to hike the beautiful, wild beaches of the Olympic Peninsula.
A very minor quibble, considering the fine, lyric writing, is the way the trails are organized. For example, many of the named trails don't begin at trailheads, but rather from junctions at other trails. Thus if you want to plan a short hike, you must make certain the named trail does not begin 15 miles up the path of another trail.

First, please note that I have purchased this book but have not yet truly used it (i.e., I haven't yet actually gone to the Olympics). My purpose in purchasing it was to try to get a sense for the hiking options in the area compared to other national park destinations.

I bought two Olympic hiking guides in addition to this one: "Day Hike! Olympic Peninsula" by S. Blair and "Hiking Olympic National Park" By E. Molvar.

Compared to those two books, this one certainly includes a larger number of hikes. To my mind, however, it misses two critical pieces of information. First, no guidance is provided as to the likely degree of difficulty, either in terms of elevation gain/loss or in terms of the author's opinion (e.g., moderate, strenuous, etc.). This makes it much harder to choose hikes that are likely to be within our comfort zone-- especially on days when the knees are feeling sore!

Second, I find the author's descriptions of the hikes to be very clinical and not that helpful in terms of helping me prioritize where to go. I want to know which hikes have outstanding mountain views, or delicious woodsy spots versus long slogs through forested areas with little to appreciate. There is no ranking or rating scheme for this, and it's a bit much to ask a reader to slog through detailed (and often somewhat clinical) descriptions of the 177 hikes mentioned to try to get a sense of that.

I think this book could be useful as a reference-- if one already has a pretty good idea of where to go. But it's not the best in terms of prioritizing how to spend your time. To that end, the "Day Hike!" book by Blair is better, although it includes only about 70 hikes.

Recentley, one of my older customers at my work gave me some old topo maps of the Olympic Pennisula-with Wood's book I was able to match up trails on the maps with waytrails in his book(trails that are no longer on the new topos). The history he writes about is fun to read and he is through with his descriptions of the NF trails, which many books ignore. I also love how he gives elevation at every trail junction, not just at the start & end. A definte must have book if you would like to hike in the Olympics.