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ssss1 boasts a picture-postcard view of Mount Hood.

photo by Paul Gerald

An excellent time to schedule a backpacking trip with kids, especially into the Cascade Mountains, is late August. This is huckleberry season, when children (and adults) can stuff themselves with handfuls of the delicious berries. In fact, one measure of the success of a hike at this time of year is how purple one’s fingers and tongue are by day’s end. In addition, the mosquitoes are usually gone by this time, and the mountain lakes remain warm enough for a reasonably comfortable swim. Finally, your trip will take place just before kids go back to school, so they will have impressive stories to tell when the teacher asks the inevitable, “So what did you do this summer?”

For further information on backpacking with children, see the recommended reading in Appendix B.

How to Use This Guide

The trips in this book are broken down by geographic region, starting from the southeastern Olympic Mountains in the north and working down to the Mount Jefferson and Mount Washington area in the south.