Get ready for a lifetime of awe-inspiring adventures! In Washington, backpackers can explore wild beaches, enjoy sparkling lakes and streams, hike amid stunning granite peaks, relax in wildflower meadows, and pass through unspoiled forests. Discover 26 of Washington’s best and most diverse backpacking trips (plus 13 bonus ones) with expert backpackers Douglas Lorain and Mark Wetherington. Backpacking Washington details the premier opportunities across the entire state. This fully updated edition describes scenic escapes ranging from one night to two weeks. Choose from carefully crafted trips in Mount Rainier National Park, Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, the North Cascades, the Olympic Coast, the Olympic Mountains, Pasayten Wilderness, Salmo-Priest Wilderness, and more. Each carefully crafted itinerary offers geographic diversity, beautiful landscapes, and attainable daily mileage goals. This in-depth guide provides all the information backpackers need, including trail highlights, mileage, elevation gain, days on the trail, shuttle distances, required permits, and more—not to mention photographs and detailed trail maps. Plus, ratings for scenery, solitude, and difficulty help you to find the exact adventure you seek. Whether you’re a novice backpacker or a veteran hiker, with this many options, you may have trouble deciding where to go first! Alpine Lakes • Blue Mountains • Columbia Basin • Glacier Peak Area • Mount Rainier • North Cascades • Northeastern Washington Mountains • Olympic Coast • Olympic Mountains • Pasayten Wilderness • Southern Cascades Douglas Lorain’s family moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1969, and he has been hitting the trails of his home region ever since. With the good fortune to grow up in an outdoor-oriented family, he has vivid memories of countless camping, hiking, bird-watching, and other trips in every corner of this spectacular area. He calculates that, over the years, he has logged well over 32,000 trail miles in this corner of the continent, and despite a history that includes being bitten by a rattlesnake, being shot at by a hunter, getting stuck in quicksand, being charged by grizzly bears (twice!), and donating countless gallons of blood to “invertebrate vampires,” he happily sees no end in sight. Lorain is a photographer and recipient of the National Outdoor Book Award. His books cover only the best trips from the thousands of hikes and backpacking trips he has taken throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and beyond. His photographs have been featured in numerous magazines, calendars, and books, and his other guidebook titles include “100 Classic Hikes in Oregon,” “Top Trails: Olympic National Park and Vicinity,” “One Best Hike: Mount Rainier's Wonderland Trail,” “Backpacking Oregon,” and “Backpacking Idaho.” After spending decades exploring the trails of the Pacific Northwest, he now lives in Hamilton, Montana, with his wife, Becky Lovejoy. Mark Wetherington began backpacking in 2007 while a student at the University of Kentucky and obsessively explored the trails and landforms of the Southeast before moving to Montana in 2014. Since arriving in Big Sky Country, he has spent as much time as possible exploring the wilderness areas and other public lands of Montana, Washington, and Idaho via boots, snowshoes, and cross-country skis. Seeking the next “best place to wake up”―from alpine lakes to abandoned fire lookouts―serves as his main inspiration for backpacking. Wetherington has worked in outdoor retail, as a freelance writer, and as a visitor services information assistant for the U.S. Forest Service in Kentucky's Red River Gorge. He has been lucky enough to find a career working in public libraries and lives in Hamilton, Montana. The large and exceptionally rugged Alpine Lakes Wilderness fills a wide swath of land in the central Washington Cascades and serves as a transition zone between the gentler terrain to the south and the icy crags of the North Cascades to the north. This is a land of heavily forested canyons, ice-sculpted peaks, and enough lakes to make even residents of Minnesota, with its famous “10,000 lakes,” envious. The Pacific Crest Trail cuts a swath through the rugged heart of this wilderness, along the way visiting many of the best beauty spots and offering side trips to many more. Close proximity to Seattle and easy access to both the north and south trailheads (you can even do it with public transportation) make this an exceptionally convenient extended backpacking trip in addition to being an exceptionally beautiful one. The trail isn’t easy, with thousands of switchbacks along the way that constantly take you up and over ridges and down into deep valleys, but it’s well worth every drop (or gallon) of sweat. *** Glacier Peak Wilderness contains some of the most spectacular scenery in the northern Cascades. The Ptarmigan Traverse, described as one of the most beautiful routes in North American mountaineering, crosses the high coun