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Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre as usual for Don and Roberta Lowe
Review: I never did like Don and Roberta Lowe's hiking guides, but when I moved to Portland in 1977, they were they only game in town and I bought them all. This volume has a different format from all their others, which was more typical of hiking guides, containing a single, black and white photograph of a scene along each hike. This guide is larger format and loaded with sharp, well-printed color photographs. I know these hikes like the back of my hand, and their choice of photos is as mediocre as their text. They claim this is more a picture book than a hiking guide, but in fact the text for each hike follows their old plan of basically describing no more than what you can see on a good topo map. There is no "hype" in this book, oh, perhaps a few words at the beginning of each hike, but I always enjoy a little enthusiasm in my hiking guides and more descriptions of sights along the way. There are big disappointments. For example, they basically stop describing what Herman Creek Trail is like up to the Casey Creek Trail. But that's just where the going gets good, entering one of the most magnificent stretches of low elevation old growth in the Columbia Gorge. They don't even mention the climax at Cedar Swamp 7 miles in: a rare and awesome grove of enormous Western Red Cedars, one of the great treasures on this planet (so few of them remain). Then in the description of Eagle Creek, they don't even mention the horsetail falls just above Tunnel Falls, which for my money is a far more beautiful sight. I've always found Tunnel Falls rather harsh and forbidding. The unnamed horsetail falls just a quarter mile beyond is a gloriously graceful and awesome waterfalls, and it is almost sacreligious that they don't even mention it. I seem to recall from one of their books written over 25 years ago that they want you to be surprised, and so may deliberately not describe the major highlights of a hike (besides trail junctions, which is about the only thing they talk about). This is a mistake. Mere words can't possibly give away the true magnificence of these hikes, so no matter how eloquent they might be at describing a particular attraction, there's no excuse for not going and seeing it for yourself. I keep going back to the same trails because the sights are so awesomely beautiful that my brain can't possibly retain the experience of actually being there, and I am forever surprised by the same sights year after year. So, please, hiking book writers, don't be shy about waxing ecstatic over outstanding features of a hike! Give us some incentive to go to these places! I can buy a map to see the trail junctions. I don't need what is in effect little more than a description of a map.
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