Backpacking Oregon: From Rugged Coastline to Mountain Meadow

Your Guide to Oregon’s Best Backpacking Trips

Colorful desert canyonlands, stunning wildflower meadows, glacier-clad mountains―find your favorite scenic escape in Oregon. Authors and hiking experts Douglas Lorain and Becky Ohlsen present 26 of the best backpacking opportunities in the country. Explore the various landscapes of the Wallowa Mountains. See the peaks of Mount Hood and the Three Sisters in the High Cascades, as well as the gaping chasm of Hells Canyon. Each carefully crafted itinerary offers geographic diversity, beautiful settings, and attainable daily mileage goals.

This in-depth guide provides all the information backpackers need, including trail highlights, total mileage, elevation gain, days on the trail, shuttle distances, required permits, and more―not to mention professional photographs and detailed maps. Plus, ratings for scenery, solitude, and difficulty help you to find the exact adventure you seek. As an added bonus, the authors include recommendations for 16 additional backpacking trips. Whether you have three days or two weeks, an adventure filled with spectacular sights and superb vistas awaits.

Douglas Lorain moved with his family to the Pacific Northwest in 1969, and he has been obsessively hitting the trails of his home region ever since. Spurred by an unquenchable thirst for new trails to explore and a great enthusiasm for backpacking, he has now hiked more than 30,000 miles through every corner of the American Northwest and many thousands more in other western states and Canadian provinces. Despite a history that includes being bitten by a rattlesnake, being shot at by a hunter, being charged by grizzly bears (twice!), and donating gallons of blood to mosquitoes, Lorain claims that he wouldn’t trade one moment of it because he has also been blessed to see some of the most beautiful scenery on Earth.  His other books for Wilderness Press include Afoot & Afield: Portland/Vancouver, Backpacking Idaho, Backpacking Washington, Backpacking Wyoming, One Best Hike: Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail, One Night Wilderness: Portland, and Top Trails: Olympic National Park & Vicinity. Lorain is a photographer and recipient of the National Outdoor Book Award. His photographs have appeared in numerous magazines, calendars, and books. This third edition of Backpacking Oregon was updated and revised by Becky Ohlsen. Ohlsen has lived in the Pacific Northwest since 1995 and is the author of Walking Portland. She also writes travel guidebooks for Lonely Planet, covering Sweden, Oregon, and Washington, among other destinations.