good guide books?

Can someone tell me of some good guide books or resources for mountains in Washington, Oregon and B.C., or all of the three? And, where I might be able to find them?


Sorry if this is a repeat, or an overasked question. I tried the search and didn't come up with a book specific topic.

Try Martin Volken's book for bc skiing. Or of course Fred Beckey's 3 Cascade Alpine Guides. Or Jim Nelson and his imaginary friend Peter Potterfield's Selected Clamberin in the Cascades. You could buy them online.
Some pages are missing here. . .

Columbia River to Stevens Pass By Fred W. Beckey


[Edit: changed URL to text link to get rid of formatting problems. --Charles]

Dr. Andalkar's online guidebook:
skimountaineer.com/CascadeSki/CascadeSki.html

Just for Washington, but the Burgdorfer guide (100 classic BC ski routes in WA) is pretty darn complete and has almost a lifetime of ski routes.  Worth owning.  The 2 Oregon guides, Oregon descents by D Wagg and other by CV Tillberg (name escaping me at the moment) are both good though not as encyclopedic as the Burgdorfer. 

The already mentioned Beckey guides will be your most complete mountain/climbing guides. In this vein for Oregon take a look at Oregon High by J Thomas.

Thanks Alpen-Cory!

Oregon High is awesome! (purchase on-line from Powell Books in PDX..out of print but they have many!)

Oregon High is a climbers book and does not have any touring...but has crucial parking, trail and access notes.

Oregon High, Ammar's guide and a short jug of red wine is all you need for planning a decent descent in Oregon!

Pin!

Thanks for the replies everyone...

I got a little anxious and went out and bought a book called "Backcoucntry Ski" by Seabury Blair Jr.. It has 70, mostly intermediate tours in the wesern Washington area.

Nothing to do with skiing or mountainerring, but I also picked up a book called "The White Cascade" It's a ture story about the deadliest avalanche disaster in American history. It is written using actuall acounts from the people who where on board a train that was buried in Steven's Pass in 1910. So far I think it was very well written, and it is giving me a good history lesson on the area as well.

Another must have is "50 classic backcountry Ski and Snowboard Summits in California" by Paul Ritchins, Jr.

now for all you guide book and mountaineering book fans Ive got a tip .Even though i'll be creating my own competition try Tacoma book center by the Tacoma dome on 25th .Used book store worth taking a look at. disclaimer I'm just a customer.

pin!head, I like your style.

One step farther: "Good guide book" is an oxymoron; all you need are good aerial photos, a bunch of topo maps, and copious libations. A great plan is sure to follow.

Here's my list...

[Edit: changed URL to text link to get rid of formatting problems. --Charles]

It's out of print but if you can find it used I think Steve Barnett's "The Best Ski Touring in America" is a great guide to multi-day backcountry ski trips where the objective is more backcountry touring then steep descents. It's been an inspiration for me to get out and do some longer trips.

Ronco

Thanks. I've not been happy with any of the modern guidebooks for Washington. Martin's is good but serves only a limited area. The others (and Lou Dawson's book) don't give much of a sense of what is characteristic of North Cascades skiing, of what is best, of what is desirable, and what is to be avoided. Further, they don't include the most interesting of modern routes, such as the traverses, or ski mountaineering epics, None of them says a word about the huge area of the Pasayten Wilderness, likely the best place for long midwinter trips in the range. Beckey's guides are really the most useful, even though they're not ski oriented. He knows and loves the range, is sensitive to its quirks, and has lots of good photos.

I did like the old Mountaineers guide (from the '60's), Northwest Ski Trails. Maybe that reflects when I started getting interested in the sport, but, despite its limited route selection, it seemed to inspire me to want to get out and explore things. That's what a good guidebook should do.

Northwest Ski Trails, written by Ted Mueller and published in 1968, was 20 to 30 years ahead of its time. It was the first modern guide to ski mountaineering published in North America. Last time I looked, Lou Dawson credited H.J. Burhenne's Sierra Spring Ski-Touring with that honor, but Northwest Ski Trails was published earlier, and it includes true glacier skiing trips.

In his Foreword, Harvey Manning wrote, "The purpose of this book is to introduce touring to skiers who may have wondered about the snow country over the ridge from the chairlift, in the quiet valley beyond, but haven't known how to get there." The strategy of growing backcountry skiing by appealing to lift skiers was revived by Couloir and Back Country magazines over 20 years later. By the mid-1990s those magazines were backed up by movies and improved equipment (especially wider skis) which made backcountry skiing easier. The campaign to promote backcountry skiing finally gained traction then.

I believe that Northwest Ski Trails was the brainchild of Tom Miller, who started the Mountaineers book publishing program with Harvey Manning in the 1960s. Manning told me that the book didn't sell well. It was too far ahead of its time. There were a handful of people doing ski mountaineering (the same people who'd been doing it for years) but all the growth at that time was in skinny skiing.

Notes about the book can be found here: www.alpenglow.org/ski-history/notes/book/mueller-1968.html

This is a good topic and I would love to hear about more guide books. I picked up an old copy of Northwest Ski Trails after hearing about it in a trip report here; I would recommend it just for the old photos alone.

There are certainly better experts on the Sierras than me here, but I found the Book Backcountry Skiing the High Sierra to be a great resource on a trip to the Bishop area a couple seasons back. Also, to expand the discussion to maps, there is a great recreational map of Mt Shasta sold in the gear shop down there that is helpful for that area.

I would have to agree with you, Lowell, Northwest Ski Trails is definitely a classic.
That happens to be the book where we read about what Darryl jokingly referred to as the "NorthEast Passage" into Bullion Basin.

Another great classic that I don't believe has been mentioned is Rainer Burgdorfer's original Backcountry Skiing in Washington's Cascades. Published in 1986, I think Gary Brill did a lot of the photos for the book including the cover shots.

I also have Steve Barnett's book and agree with ronco as to it's utility and classic status.
Steve has also shared his vast knowledge of the Cascades generously on this board along with a lot of the others that have been around a while. Thanks, Steve. And thanks to all the rest of you for your generous contribution to our passion.

And hey, we even have Burgdorfer as a registered poster here.

Great resources, eh?

I have and love both of Steve's books. His _Best Ski Touring in North America_ was the first book that got me interested in backcountry skiing.

Steve's Best Ski Touring in America played a big part in motivating me to ski the Cascade Crest from the Canadian border to Glacier Peak in the 1980s and 90s. I never completed the route the way I originally intended to, but my recent completion of the journey from Mt Baker to Mt Rainier finally brought closure to that dream.

Dream big and dare to fail, eh Lowell. Nice work on that trip BTW. I like how you set your site up to tell about it.

Whenever I plan a trip I do a search on the net for old trip reports, then if it looks cool I pull out the becky and if I think I am going to go there, I buy a map (and forget it in the car in classic hummel style ). To me it feels like I am going on an adventure and I like that...not knowing much about where I am going or how I will get there. That's why I've always felt a torn about another guidebook in washington. I like discovery and the lack of people I see out there, especially in the North Cascades.  In a selfish way, I think that a detailed guidebook would change this, but maybe it wouldn't? Heck there are already more people skiing in the backcountry than I've ever seen! If there were a guidebook, something like becky did but for skiing would be the most interesting. Hundreds of trips in one book, and not just a select few. That would spread everyone out.

That's why I've always felt a torn about another guidebook in washington. I like discovery and the lack of people I see out there, especially in the North Cascades.  In a selfish way, I think that a detailed guidebook would change this, but maybe it wouldn't?

I think more guidebooks to the Cascades are probably inevitable. But I decided some time ago that I wouldn't be the one to write them, for the reasons you describe. That's why I'm writing a history instead.

For me, writing guidebooks is an extractive industry. You extract treasures and package them for sale. Writing history, on the other hand, is like plowing riches back into the mountains. Filling the mountains with stories. At least that's how I justify it.

I don't think all guidebooks are bad. Some of the guidebooks published by the Mountaineers have helped create a consituency for the Cascades--"Green Bonding" as Ira Spring used to call it. Also, I agree that I'd rather see a comprehensive guidebook like Beckey's that spreads people out instead of a selective guidebook that concentrates people.

You got me there! (And I am looking forward to seeing that non-guide non-book.)

We could start a whole 'nuther discussion about the love-hate relationship mountaineers have with guidebooks.

I once read some comments of a French author on this subject. He said that when writing a guidebook (and I paraphrase) "the author must regard the mountain as a lover."

The question, he said, is whether in writing about your mountain you praise her virtues or peddle her merchandise.

Leave it to a Frenchman to frame the issue in such seductive terms!   

Yes, I admit, it is true [hangs his head in shame]. The project is a skiing (and snowboarding) non-guide non-book, with lots of photos (contributions from 48 photographers) but no route maps, no GPS coordinates, no elevation profiles, and no systematic route descriptions. No pushing-the-envelope skiing, either, just varieties of plain old backcountry skiing. DIY. A celebration.

Sorry about the thread hijack, but back on topic, I came across a used copy of Snow Trails, by Gene Prater and published in 1975, before I started skiing and that book got me really interested in exploring the mountains in snow. The book is not really about the kind of backcountry skiing we usually do now, and instead of the detailed route description format, the book is more like an overview, with lots of hand drawn relief maps. I like the book because it encourages one to imagine and look into the many possibilities rather than giving the impression that there is the "one way", only.

In light of some earlier comments, I think some parts of the forward of Snow Trails are interesting:
"As snowshoeing and cross-country skiing grew to be recognized as a sport of more than a few eccentrics, a need arose for information to spread these people out so that they would not trip over each others' skis and snowshoes...the idea behind this book was not to tell someone how to start at point A and proceed to point B, but rather to indicate general areas and let the snow traveler go out and explore for himself."

The backcountry was crowded in 1975, just as it is now! If there are now more people heading into the backcountry, are they heading to more places, leaving the perception of crowding the same? Actually, the backcountry typically doesn't seem very crowded on weekdays, for those lucky enough to be able to get away then.

There can be some benefits to having more non-motorized users in the backcountry. In places like the Cle Elum River and North Fork Teanaway River valleys, use by bc skiers and snowboarders (and XC skiers and snowshoers, too) can be very helpful in keeping the non-motorized protections as strong as they are, in the face of what seems like continuing pressure from motorized users to maximize the terrain available to them as the machines get more and more powerful. Use it or lose it. Non-motorized use of Wilderness Areas during machine season can also help in documenting wilderness violations and spurring enforcement action.

Like others on this thread, I don't like to give away some of my "secret" places (even though no place is unknown)......one book I do like though is called "Oregon Ski Tours," written by Doug Newman in 1967.  It's old, but that's what's neat about it.  It's geared for cross country skiing, and covers the Mt Hood area and Central Oregon Cascades, plus more. The old pictures and history are very informative and interesting.  It definitely takes one back a step in time.