Washington Scrambles: Best Nontechnical Ascents

Ratings and descriptions are well aligned with my experiences so far

We have been having a blast working through Peggy Goldman's classic "75 scrambles in Washington", with 30 hikes completed so far from that book. The new book one is similar but quite a few new hikes and some improved maps and descriptions of the old ones. We just did our first hike from this book, Hawkins Mountain, and it went very well and the description was fine, although it could have mentioned the need to avoid the dangerous cornices on the summit ridge. We checked the description of one of the hikes we did from the old book, Mt Wow, which is also in the new book, and found an improved map and slightly improved description, although I still think the discussion of what to do on the ridge in that hike is confusing. A disappointment is that she did not update the description of the Three Fingers climb to reflect the road closure. I was surprised to see it left out one of our favorite hikes from the old book, Vesper. Overall this is a great addition to our hike book collection. We still recommend doing some independent research on conditions, access and routes before taking any of these hikes, but that is pretty easy to do these days using the internet.

This book is perfect, it's very well written, good photos, and lots of great ideas. They included a bunch of stuff that isn't as well known which is great. They also include some stuff that is substantially harder than just a typical scramble, but for most people who are excited about this sort of thing, I think that was a great move. I've given this as a gift probably 5 times now!

I havnt done too many of the routes since I got it; late fall conditions have arrived in the mountains and many of these mountains are out of season for my skill level. However, I attempted Mount Stone in the Olympics after reading about it in this book, and while we didn't make it all the way to the summit (turned back very close because my partner was uncomfortable with the steep class 3 with wind loaded dry powder on top) it was a fun climb. there are 8 or 9 routes in this book that I already climbed before getting the book. I'm looking forward to following more of these routes as the weather allows.

In an ideal world, guidebook authors would test their route descriptions (by having someone else follow them) before publication. Realistically, this will never happen, so I cannot be too upset about inaccuracies and ambiguities in this book. I still do much better with the book than I would without it. It gives me excellent ideas for scrambles. The inaccuracies and ambiguities actually teach me a lot more about the mountain than I would learn by following perfect route descriptions. Some of the scrambles take you off the beaten path, to places where I would not have expected to be able to use a guidebook at all. It would be helpful to have waypoints with GPS coordinates; most guidebooks provide them these days.

This is a great guidebook for Washington scrambles.

Nice update. Useful for supplemental research on routes. Be sure and check latest through forums or the agency administering the area for road conditions, trail status.

Great compromise for me and my husband -- not quite mountaineering but more adventurous than hiking. We did Mt. Baring based on the description in this book and were very pleased with the description. Great buy!

A good source book..