Guidebooks help reveal new ways to explore Oregon
Herald and News
Klamath Falls, Oregon
April 25, 2004
By LEE JUILLERAT
There's a reason my rucksack and backpack get heavier.
Normally, when I'm planning an outing, the routine includes
making copies of pages from hiking guides about specific trails
or climbs. Those few pages weigh much less than the whole book.
Sometimes that's not possible. One book that can't be condensed
into a few carefully chosen pages is "Field Guide to the
Cascades & Olympics," the second edition by Stephen R. Whitney
and Rob Sandelin, $19.95, The Mountaineers Books.
There are many good outdoor guides but "Field Guide" is special.
Handy color tabs provide easy access to a variety of topics,
including geology, ferns, mushrooms, flowering plants, shrubs,
trees, insects, butterflies, birds, mammals and even amphibians,
reptiles and trout and salmon.
 |
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Photocopying
passages from guidebooks about specific trails or climbs
can help lighten your load when hiking. |
|
Those
tabs also lead to more than 700 color illustrations with
excellently drawn images of everything from yellow spotted
millipedes to Aleutian maidenhair ferns to Shasta fir cones.
The comprehensive field guide is amazingly specific. The color
illustrations and brief written explanations help explain the
difference between squirrels and chipmunks, and identify
variations between Townsend's and yellow-pine chipmunks.
It's easier to be more selective with other recent publications,
including "Best Hikes with Dogs: Oregon," and the second edition
of "Hiking Oregon's Geology," both by Ellen Morris Bishop, both
$16.95, The Mountaineers Books.
"Dogs" lists 75 dog friendly/fun/safe trails. Along with the
usual driving-to directions, the listings include information on
specifics, such as whether dogs can run free or be leashes, plus
"best canine season." A chart also breaks hikes in categories,
including "easy on paws." "good for senior dogs" and "best for
well-conditioned dogs."
Unfortunately, few of the trails are in the Klamath Basin, but
the list includes hikes on the Upper Rogue River, North Umpqua
and Union Creek trails.
There's also good general advice on 10 canine essentials, what
to pack in a doggie first-aid kit and ways of reducing dog
impacts on the environment.
"Hiking Oregon's Geology" expands the original edition, but even
with 90 trails the only three in the Klamath Basin are Mount
Scott, The Watchman and the Pinnacles at Crater Lake National
Park.
For people heading out of the area, the book provides
information on places like Steens Mountain and the Pueblo
Mountains of far Eastern Oregon, and Upper Table Rock, Mount
Ashland and Pilot Rock in the Rogue Valley.
It's further afield, but "Washington's Highest Mountains: Basic
Alpine & Glacier Routes," by Peggy Goldman, $17.95, Wilderness
Press, is an impressive compendium of that state's climbing
routes.
Based on personal experience, Goldman's writing is accurate and
helpful. And, with my summer plans including more travels in the
Lake Chelan region of the North Cascades National Park, copies
of selected pages will be in my backpack.
Staying at home will be "High Rocks And Ice: The Classic
Mountain Photographs of Bob and Ira Spring," $18.95, The Globe
Pequot Press.
"High Rocks" features a dazzling array of black and white
photographs that reveal the allure of glaciers and mountain
peaks.
The brief narratives provide helpful insights. My favorite is
about a photo assignment in the Canadian Rockies, where one of
the brothers settled in a crevasse and photographed a climber
leaping across the yawning opening. From another story I learned
that the Paradise Ice Cave on Mount Rainier I visited in the
early 1970s was actually another, now vanished ice cave on the
Stevens Glacier.
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