optimator
12-20-2009, 20:59
My Son and I are going to start section hiking thru Oregon after the New Year. Which guide books would you all recommend?
Many Walks
12-20-2009, 23:31
Check out the PCT Atlas at Blackwoods press by Erik the Black. www.blackwoodspress.com (http://www.blackwoodspress.com) Handy guides broken down into 5 sections of the PCT. Small, lightweight, water resistant and informative. We bought the full set for our thru. I believe he is running a pre-order discount now too.
It really depends on what you want in a guidebook. PCT Atlas is a great summary of map and terse location and elevation profile info, albeit some find it a bit expensive. The Wilderness Press book for Oregon & Washington is good, but heavy to carry in total; folks hiking with this will typically cut it up and just carry the relevant pages. Has color maps and lots of text; the upside is lots of geologic and other interesting stuff, the downside is that some folks feel that they have to wade through less essential stuff sometimes to get basic trail info they want.
It's very common to at least carry the data pages from the PCT data book, also by Wilderness Press, basically just locations, elevations, mileages between for the whole PCT, derived from the three WP books (SoCal, NorCal, OR/WA).
For information about trail towns and logistics stuff, Yogi's guide (http://www.pcthandbook.com/) is excellent.
Different people have different takes on this stuff. One person might tell you to just take databook pages and maps (Halfmile's (http://www.pctmap.net/), perhaps). Another might opine that you can do it all with the WP book pages, and that's sort of a traditional way, and it includes maps. And indeed the PCT Atlas is great; you can download a sample of Erik the Black's work there from his site to see for yourself what you get.
The PCT Wilderness Press Guidebook for Oregon would be fine.
In it you will also find some great OR alternates such as sections of the old Oregon Tr. and around some wilderness lake areas where finding water will be less problematic.