60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Portland: Including the Coast, Mount Hood and St. Helens, and the Santiam River

I like the size, color and composition of this book. It looks and feels good (soft pages). In addition, it's got up-to-date references for many wonderful places to hike around Portland. I found it easy to comprehend. Great gift!

Now in an updated and expanded second edition, 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles by hiking expert and travel writer Paul Gerald showcases a full sixty superbly developed trails within an hour's drive of Portland, Oregon. These are enthusiastically recommended excursions that offer mountain views, forest solitudes, magnificent waterfalls, and wonderful ocean beaches. From flower-filled meadows on Saddle Mountain to a spectacular view of Multnomah Falls (the highest in the state), 60 Hikes Within 60 Miles is additionally enhanced with a list of hikes appropriate for children, ideal for wildlife watching, impressive for multi-use, seclusion, and local history.

Over the past 25 years I've bought dozens of Pacific Northwest hiking guides and this is just about the most enjoyable one I've ever owned. It is about the only hiking guide I've ever sat down and systematically read from cover to cover, simply because it was such a joy to read and because it contained so many treasures. The author isn't merely interested in telling you how to get there and how not to miss a turn in the trail, but he shows a genuine love for each of these hikes, pointing out what is amazing about each of them, often giving a little history about the trail or other anecdotes associated with a hike, including personal experiences which are genuinely amusing or informative. I especially enjoy his appreciation of trails through old growth forests, something you don't often see in hiking guides. Most hiking guides seem to get worked up only by big, expansive views, but this author sees beauty and magnificence on all scales. Although I was familiar with at least half of these hikes, I learned about a lot of new ones that I've already started exploring. For example, check out the old growth noble firs along the PCT from Barlow Pass to the overlooks at White River Canyon. These trees are absolutely mind-boggling, not because they're big around but because they grow so amazingly tall and straight. It stimulated me to read more about these trees and I learned that they can soar into such heights with so little girth because the wood is hard and light. No Douglas Fir could get this tall without putting six feet of girth on themselves. Here you see flawless, branchless trunks as straight as nature can make them, no more than three to four feet in diameter with no perceptible taper rising two hundred feet like the pillars in a cathedral before finally displaying a puff of foliage at the top no more than 15 feet wide and 30 feet tall. And then the emerald forest of moss-infested silver firs and mountain hemlocks that follow closer to timberline have the head shaking in wonder over such stunning beauty. Thanks to this author, I discovered this incredibly beautiful section of trail after hiking all over Mt. Hood for 25 years without having discovered it. There are lots of other new possibilities of this magnitude for me that I am eager to try out, thanks to the enthusiasm and attention to detail of this author.

An excellent guide for day trips around Portland. The author is an acqaintance of mine and on several occasions I witnessed the care with which he took in making book an accurate guide to Portland-area hiking. Gerald is a great writer and he not only gives you the details of the hike (like clear directions on how to get there, an art all too often lost in Portland hiking books), but puts the hike in a brief desciptive context of history, forestry and asthetics that is rare in a hiking book. The book helps the hiker know more about Oregon and its natural treasures.

60 Hikes Within 60 Miles : Portland (60 Hikes Within 60 Miles)by Paul Gerald is incredibly well written and includes great maps and a rating system that is very useful. I just love my copy and strongly recomend this book to those looking to get out into the great outdoors.