Over the last several years, I've hiked most of the trails described in "100 Hikes in Northwest Oregon." Sullivan's diving directions, trail descriptions and maps have always been perfect and immensely helpful.

The trail descriptions are both concise and crystal clear. Sullivan does not meticulously describe each detail, which leaves much to discover on your own and allows for a more personal hiking experience. He writes eloquently, and often includes great tidbits of scientific and historical information that add context to your hike. For example, he might briefly describe how a specific area was geologically formed, and point out some evidence that you'll find along trail.

Sullivan's practical advice is invaluable. If he tells you that a trail passes poison oak, you better wear long pants! If he tells you that a trail is open from July to October, don't show up without snowshoes in March! Clearly, he knows these trails well. Readers should not overlook the preface, where he provides an equipment checklist, low impact camping guidelines, contacts for trail conditions, and other useful information.

The one downside of this guide is that so many people use it. If a hike is within an hour of Portland, and is featured in this book, you can count on a crowded trailhead on a nice weekend. Plenty of the featured hikes are off the beaten path, and still consistently provide solitude. Just plan on driving for awhile.

Anybody who hikes in Oregon should consult "100 Hikes in Northwest Oregon," or one of Sullivan's other books. I also frequently use his Oregon Coast and Central Oregon guides, and they too are first rate.

Just a quick additional note: When you do hike, always leave no trace! If you see trash, pick it up! Always be respectful of our Earth, and all of its creatures.

I bought this book two years ago to add to the many guide books in my library. After two years of hiking many weekends in northwestern OR and southwestern WA, it's become clear that this is the book that get's used the most. Most of the trails are suitable for the whole family. We've hiked into the crater of Mount St. Helens, eaten wild huckle berries in Indian Heaven Wilderness, hiked every slope of Mt. Hood, visited water falls in the Columbia river Gorge that we didn't know existed and more.

Many of the trails are suitable for the occasional dry weekend in the winter months as well. Sullivan provides many low elevation trails which extend the hiking season year round.

If you live in southwestern Washington or northwestern Oregon, you should own this book.

I bought this book prior to a trip to Oregon in hopes of finding some beautiful hikes. This book was a valuable tool in my search. Every hike was accurately described from details on finding the trailhead to distances traveled including the level of difficulty and points of interest along the way.

Whether you are a climber, a hiker, a car traveler, or just an armchair explorer, the Beckey guides are the indispensible resources for your mountain experience. The three volumes are filled with information about the natural and human history of the Washington Cascades, as well as complete route and access data for every significant summit. The photos alone are reason enough to own these books. If you are interested in really "knowing" the Washington Cascades, you MUST have them in your library. Highest possible recommendation.

The series of books by Beckey on climbing and high routes in the cascades gives the most comprehensive and complete presentation of cascades. Each peak is described with great detail and the photos and pictures are great. This is truly a great guide!

I have used this Guidebook so many times in the past 12 years that I've had to purchase it three times. The definitive section on the Picket Range alone is worth the price of the book.

For those who want to experience the North Cascades as they were in the 30's and 40's, reading the "Trails and Alpine Hiking Approaches" section will steer you in the right direction. This book is rife with golden kernels of information found nowhere else. Any serious climber should have all three of the Cascade Alpine Guide books.

Mike Quinn

Writer-photographer Suiter provides a literary portrait of Beat era poets Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, and Jack Kerouac in Poets On The Peaks, which centers around their early experiences as fire lookouts in the 1950s. As such, Poets On The Peaks provides a hard book to easily categorize: it covers beautiful Cascade Mountain scenes and peaks, fire lookouts, and literature and biography alike. The writings of these three juxtapose nicely with the photos and images, making this a recommended gift choice for the holiday season.

In his first book, John Suiter has produced a work that contributes significantly to the literature on early development of the Beat literary movement and to understanding the disparate characters of Snyder, Whalen, and Kerouac. Using the common experience of all three men serving as fire lookouts in the Northern Cascades in the early to mid 1950's, the author evokes portraits of how each writer was influenced by wilderness and the isolation of a fire lookout, and how each used the experience in his work. Drawing from recent interviews with Snyder and Whalen and others who knew them during the early 1950's, from previously unpublished letters and journals, and from extensive close readings of all three writers, the author crafts a portrait of the evolution of a literary movement, of a wilderness ethic, and perhaps unintentionally, the devolution of Kerouac contrasted against the focus and dedication of Snyder and Whalen. The book is illustrated with photographs of the fire lookouts and their locales.

"Poets on the Peaks" by John Suiter is a beautiful and insightful book. The text and pictures hold your hand through wonderful reminiscing with and about some of the greatest poets of our time. The landscapes that inspired the poetry that Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen and Jack Kerouac are famous for is staged perfectly throughout the book. It gives you a sense of time and place that makes you feel as if you were in those look out towers and you experienced that electric and quiet time. Learn, escape, and love with this book. It is well worth it!

I've just purchased this book and I'm more than *delighted*! The photographs are ultimately enthralling, and the narration is so honest. I work for a non-profit striving to protect more public lands in Washington permenantly as Wilderness, and books like these that reach a large public audience and tell it like it is help us along our path to success... I love to hike and I love to see the areas that I hike in stay put! It's nice to be able to see which areas are protected and which are not before even exploring on one's own. BUY IT!

Sure, Harvey's opinionated, but it's excellent stuff. Nice, quick background on these amazing places, why they are still wild and protected, and just enough detail to get you in and out without giving away all the surprises. The best guide out there.

The interesting thing about the 100 Hikes series is how well it integrates with Fred Beckey's books. Ira and Harvey get you to the base of the peak; Fred gets you up it. The series go hand-in-hand. Some of the most valuable information in the whole series comes in the form of the forewards and introductions. While opinionated, the views expressed are those of someone who has spent a lifetime exploring, protecting and enjoying the areas treated by the books. The route descriptions are accurate (more or less), and the small maps are clear and understandable. If you don't have this book, go get it. You would do well, in fact, to get the whole series. NOTE: hikes 10, 14, 33, 70, and 79 are awesome.

This book (and it's companion volume) are highly appropriate for families, children of most ages and for less than highly active adults.

Thoroughly Recommended!

We bought this book when my son was 3 and my daughter was still catching a ride in the backpack. We needed easy but nice hikes and boy did we find them. It gives good accurate directions and realistic difficulty rating. A big plus if you are hiking with toddlers. My kids are now 6 and 4 and is still our favorite hike book. You won't be disappointed and you will find a ton of hikes that are close to home yet you feel miles away.

This book will give possibilities for varying degrees of difficulty hikes and day spots to visit. The best resource I have ever found.

If you already know the baisics of jugling (3 ball cascade and reverse cascade/2 in one hand, ect.), but would like to learn more, this book is perfect for you. It may not be the best book from which to learn the baisic three ball cascade, but it contains clear and detailed instructions for many of the essential three ball patterns. This book is an incredible resource for even an experienced juggler. A must have.

An excellent resource for all jugglers. When I got this book I had already been juggling for several years and was working on seven balls, and still use it as a valued resourse. Gillson highlights cleary 88 excellent patterns, from the most common to some very rare and innovative. Beyond the Cascade is a wonderful way to increase your 3 ball repertoire quickly, and also a way to gain some great ideas for numbers work. I have also carried many of the tricks and patterns over to rings and clubs. This book is a valuable resource to jugglers of all levels.

So you've learned to juggle 3 balls. You're probably doing what's called a "cascade," with the balls forming a figure eight pattern. Now you figure you want to do more, so plan to move on to four. Wait!! There are literally hundreds (probably thousands, depending on how fine a distinction you want to make) of three ball tricks, most more interesting and challenging than the basic 4 ball patterns. From basics like under the leg, behind the back, the shower, and clawing, to exotic and beautiful patterns like Mill's Mess and Burke's Barrage, this will give you a clear explanation of 88 of them.

Most of us who enjoy nature have relied upon "bird books" or other guides to the species at one time or another as we inquire about our surroundings. These dull but thorough reference books often make their topics LESS interesting, quelling the interests that they're supposed to serve. We look up our bird, animal or plant and then move on having learned little more than its Latin name. Ugh.

This book shines like a beacon to future nature writers as it uses every description as the basis for a prosaic mini-essay; rewarding curiosity with enlightenment, fascination and delight. Imagine a reference book so enticing to read that you can't stop reading with just one description. Instead, the object of your curiosity serves as a mere starting point in the book; the first page of what often becomes a genuine sit-down-and-read-it experience.

If every nature writer put this much love into their topics, the trails would be overrun with enthusiastic hikers. Here's hoping that the author visits your neck of the woods soon, and provides you with the same exuberant writing he's given us here in the Pacific Northwest.

I also have ordered this as a gift for several this year, including the revised edition for myself. Definitely not just a reference book but a great read also. I actually read the whole book,rather than just saving for information on specifics, when I got my first copy years ago.

A Second edition of a classic. Mathews created a field guide that is a must have for every PNW adventurer. As a park ranger I find myself reaching for it daily to answer questions. The writing is suberb and one finds oneself reading it by the fire on a cold winter day just because. I give this book as a gift more than any other item.

This book gave me a great description of the routes to some of the most scenic and captivating peaks in Washington. I especially liked the way he gave other options to chose from if you didn't like the route he chose. The only problem I had was a very minor one, I felt he could have added several more Olympic peaks like the bailey range, stone, and some lesser known (which means less crowded) peaks like McCartney or Warrior. Other than that this book is a must have for everyone from a scrambler to a technical mountaineer looking to climb the Highest peaks of Washington

Smoot bills his book as a "Selected Climbs" for the rest of us. I'm not quite sure I buy that, but I do think this book deserves a spot on the shelf nestled in between "Selected Climbs" and Beckey.

Compared to Goldman's "75 Scrambles", it is noticably better in some respects: it covers a wider range of climbing (all the way from class 2 to easy class 5); it covers a wider variety of climbing (more snow routes); and it does a better job at providing and describing options beyond just the most popular route.

I think the book is great because it combines
routes from 4 different books.
3 of Beckeys,one the Guide to the Olympics.
It shows the approch roads, trails, every thing on the same page.
I don't have to figure out which Face or route to do
he has already picked the best routes.
There is a lot of climbs that I have wanted to do
but haven't done them because I wasn't sure about the
trails or logging roads in the area.
Now I can do them.
A lot of the climbs seem to be easy on the technical side.
I like that, Now I don't need a partner just
take off on the spur of the moment and go climb something.
There are also some good moderate climbs for a
weekend party of climbers.
I think he has made a good choice of mountains,
the "must do" ones for Alpine climbers.
They are cool looking and in scenic areas.
Some thing for everyone except the hard core rock jock.
The best thing about the book is the author has done
all the home work, you don't have to wade
through a bunch of stuff. Just Climb

Aha! So there IS a portion of California, beyond San Francisco and the wine country worthy of a visitor's exploration. Ms. Weisbrod writes of her discoveries in an entertaining fashion. She interweaves history's passages with the rugged and winding terrain of today, storytelling at it's best. Which way to go? What to see? Where to stop? Where to stay? Whether you carry along "Scenic Byways of Northern California" as a guide to your next adventure, or savor the read from the cozy cushions of your armchair, you will enjoy owning it--and giving it as a gift!

Marie Weisbrod shares from her experiences traveling the history-rich northwest corner of California, visited by few modern Californians. This is an excellent guide for those interested in exploring quiet backroads, away from vacationing crowds.

Ms. Weisbrod has written a wonderful travel book that belongs in every vagabond's library. She has traveled extensively in the Siskiyou-Cascade region, which serves to make the area spring to life through her personal observations and lively retelling of historical events. I can't wait to see more from this gifted author.

This is not a politically correct book.

It challenges ideas of Native "authenticity" and gives short shrift to out-of-town environmentalists (rather shorter shrift than I entirely agreed with, in fact). When Tom decides to act against a copper mine, he does so not out of simplistic ideological purity but because of a complex of reasons, largely having to do with his own identity. (And he was uncritically working as a logger before that.)

Nevertheless, this is a profoundly environmentalist novel, with intensely beautiful descriptions of wilderness. It's an environmentalist novel because of the unbreakable connection it creates between humans and their environment and because of its challenge to the ideals of short-term profit. (At the same time, the problems of poverty are never glossed over.)

Owens wrote beautifully and incorporated stunning passages of magic realism. Tom is a believable character--confused, irresponsible (college drop-out), lonely, fierce, and ultimately heroic in the same way animals are in those old Western novels where wolves and mustangs leap off cliffs rather than be captured.

This book combats the usual conservative white male destruction of the enviornment, and offers instead a compelling look at the incredibly brave and noble traditions of Native Americans and their conservation efforts. Copper mines are not usually something I could care about, but this book challenges the assumption of the domineering white patriarchal culture, and I for one am grateful.

It is the "forks" in the river and the road for the citizens of Forks, a small town which perviously had logging money running through its veins, but now it is considering an infusion of mining dollars as the mills close down. Native American Tom Joseph returns home to attend his uncle's funeral and to unconsciously assume the mantle of trickster and to learn what drove his uncle to acts of ecoterrorism and monkeywrenching. Readers will get a true feel for the temperate rain forests of Western Washington while reading this novel, and may be tempted to don a slicker or their climbing boots by the time it is finished. Owens lets the reader decide many of the outcomes in this novel, though the meaning is always clear, the humor is rampant and the small town was probably a role model for Northern Exposure, right down to troubled sexy waitress and a fly bouncing around in the pie case.

For wilderness supporters, this book is a horror story. The book is based on the very real possibility that a copper mine could be opened with the attendant roads and carnage, on Miner's Ridge, north of Glacier Peak in the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area. Congress left a loophole big enough to drive a front-end loader through when the Wilderness Act was passed. The road isn't there yet, but Owens' vision is remarkably clear. Take heed, and enjoy