Hiking Near Seattle

Useful Information

• Permits and Fees
• Conditions: Weather, Trails and Roads
• Maps
• Planning a Trip

Permits And Fees

Most of the time, you will be either in a National Forest or in one of the three National Parks.

In a National Forest you will need a NW Forest Pass in order to park a car in the vicinity of any of the trail heads. At the moment, the pass costs $5 per day or $30 per year. Usually you can buy the pass in any town on your way to the hike.

In a National Park you will usually have to pay an entrance fee. If you plan to do some overnight backpacking, the parks also require that you obtain a backcountry and/or camping permit. See the detailed fee information for North Cascades, Mt. Rainier and Olympic National Park fees & permits.

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Conditions: Weather, Trails, Roads

Weather

• Interactive Weather Map for Washington from the National Weather Service. If you click on the correct part of the map, the site will report current weather forecast for that region. The trick is knowing where to click because only the major cities are marked. Alternatively, you can type the name of a nearby town in the form below:
  

  Search by city and state. Press enter or select the go button to submit request

• Washington Mountain Cameras directly showing conditions at some of the major locations.
• Mt. Rainier Weather Forecast -- in raw format, just for the high parts.

Trails

• Hiker-submitted reports on current conditions of the trails from the The Washington Trails Association. At this point, it is my favorite source of information on trail conditions. Its only shortcoming is that some trails are missing or do not have recent enough reports.
• Official trail condition reports are available for the Mt.Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

Roads

• Washington State Mountain Pass Road Report has current information about all passes and major mountain roads in the state of Washington
• Detailed forest road conditions report in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

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Maps

In general, people use Green Trails maps which you can buy at most map and bookstores or on-line. There are also some decent free maps available on-line for specific regions. Here are a few:

• North Cascades National Park (400 kb PDF)
• Mt. Rainier National Park (1.6 Mb PDF)
• Olympic National Park (1.1 Mb PDF)

I also find the National Geographic TOPO! software maps very helpful in planning my trips because they offer better detail than the Green Trails maps. They are somewhat pricy but the software communicates well with most popular GPS units allowing me to both set up waypoints and important features on my GPS before the trip, as well as to download and view my tracks after the hike. The current version (4.0) supports both Windows and Mac computers (I have an earlier version -- 3.3). But you should always have a proper paper map with you on a hike, and for that Green Trails are your best bet for standard hikes because they very clearly mark all the maintained trails in the region, while the TOPO! maps do not mark trails with their numbers or names, and do not distinguish between "official" and unofficial paths. (Note: This software will not allow you to upload maps to your GPS unit -- just waypoints, routes, and other information that you yourself add to a map; also beware that this is a somewhat complex piece of software; I like it but other people do not -- read some other reviews first before buying.)

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Planning a Trip

On-line Sources

The Washington Trails Association has a great tool for searching hikes by various criteria such as hike's length, elevation gain, attractions, etc. They also let you browse through the database of hikes. Finally, they have a forum for posting up-to-date information about the current conditions of the trails. This is particularly useful if you want to hike at unusual times of the year when official reports are not available or recent enough.

Seattle P-I regularly publishes reviews of different hikes in the area. They keep a complete archive.

Books

There are lots of books with hike descriptions for the state of Washington. Below are my two favorites:

100 Classic Hikes in Washington This is a collection of 100 best hikes in the state, including all three National Parks. The hikes range from short strolls that can be completed in a few hours, to multi day trips. In the current edition, each hike is accompanied by at least one color photograph and a map. If you are looking for inspiration, this is a perfect book to start with. You can get it from Amazon.

Best Loop Hikes Washington This book also describes a 100 wonderful hikes. Unlike the other book, this one focuses exclusively on loop hikes. Many hikers prefer to avoid retracing their steps, if possible, so this book is an ideal source of advice. There is a photograph and a map accompanying each hike description (though they are all black and white). You can get it from Amazon