Mount Hood from the ridge above Shining Lake (Trip 50)

      Introduction

      As a child, I often dreamed of embarking on great backcountry adventures designed to test my outdoor skills in a remote wilderness setting. I would spend hours poring over maps of those increasingly rare but always enticing areas without any roads, planning out huge 100-mile-plus hikes to explore the imagined wonders within those boundaries. Invariably my visions included plenty of wildlife, outstanding scenery, and opportunities for both quiet introspection and grand adventure. In my youthful imagination these trips would last for several days or even weeks, a time span that, I thought, would allow me to fully immerse myself in the solitude and grandeur of the wilderness. In later years, I was lucky enough to take many such long adventures and even to write guidebooks describing some of my favorite long hikes.

      I still take my share of long backpacking trips, but now that I am barreling headlong into middle age, nursing two long-suffering knees, and have a life that includes myriad other commitments, I am forced to put limits on my youthful ambitions. And I am not alone. Many of my fellow baby boomers no longer have the time, the energy, or the inclination to take the kinds of long backcountry adventures that they tackled in their youth. Instead, we seek out short mini-vacations (usually on weekends) to places where we can escape the rat race for a night or two, refresh our spirits, and then return to our busy lives with enough fond memories to sustain us until our next wilderness foray—always, so we fervently hope, not too far in the future.

      Most of us are parents now, determined to drag our children away from the pervasive influence of video games and inane television fiction into the outdoors where they can experience the beautiful “real” world of nature. We do not, however, want that introduction to be so grueling that it will cause tired young legs to reject backpacking for the rest of their lives. Once again, short one-night hikes are what we seek, the kinds of relatively easy trips that get the kids excited about the outdoors, but don’t cause too many sore muscles or painful blisters.

      This book is designed with you in mind. The bookstore shelves are already filled with numerous dayhiking guides. I wrote one or two, and a few of the others are pretty good. But these volumes do not address the unique needs of the backpacker. Hikers looking for overnight adventures are forced to wade through dozens of trips that are unsuitable for backpacking in order to find the few that meet their needs. In addition, these guidebooks rarely provide the kind of information that is most useful to backpackers, such as specifically where to find the best campsites, the location of the nearest water source, or what overnight permits are required. All of these concerns are addressed here.

      Since this book includes only the Portland area’s best short backpacking options, it is not a comprehensive guide to all of the region’s hundreds of overnight hiking possibilities. (See Appendix A, for a more thorough listing.) It does, however, present a wide selection of outings, including a range of scenery and difficulty levels, so hikers of all abilities and interests will find plenty of trips to meet their needs.

Tips on Backpacking in the Pacific Northwest

      Although this is more of a “where