The Washington State Hiking Podcast

Best summer hiking vacations near Washington in Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia

• Jennie Thwing Flaming and Craig Romano • Episode 71

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Jennie Flaming:

Jennie, welcome to the Washington State hiking podcast. I'm your host. Jennie Thwing Flaming,

Craig Romano:

and I'm your co host, Craig Romano, Craig

Jennie Flaming:

and I are happy to have you here. We provide practical and timely, seasonal hiking advice for hikers, trail runners and potential hikers and trail runners of all skill and ability levels that is helpful, accurate, fun and inclusive. Hey, Craig, so this week we're talking about summer vacations that are outside of Washington, in our neighboring areas, and some wonderful places to go for a summer vacation around hiking. So we're going to talk a little bit about Oregon and Idaho and British Columbia. And

Craig Romano:

for the same reasons we were talking about Washington, the summers are great here. I mean, it's a lot of it's the same weather patterns. The summertime best time to be in throughout the greater Northwest.

Jennie Flaming:

It really is, totally agree. So let's start with Oregon. Craig, tell everybody a few of your favorite places for a summer vacation around hiking down.

Craig Romano:

Yeah. So yeah. I mean, Oregon's a huge state, and thing is, if you're looking for places to base out of, not as you know, you get into some of these great hiking areas, not as populated. So you can certainly camp. Of course, people love bend, bend. Bend is big. Bend is turning into a big city. But there's, there's other places to go so, so some of the more obscure places, perhaps obscure to people up here, maybe not to Californians or to Portlanders, is that I like to stay again? You know, people love Hood River for the for the gorge. Yeah, and Hood River is lovely, but it's the same thing. I kind of compare, like in Leavenworth, I go to Wenatchee instead of level. Same thing, instead of Hood River, I stay in The Dalles. It's a little bit farther out, a little bit warmer, a lot more hotels, cheaper, lots of good eating. You're on on the east end of the gorge now, instead of in the center of the gorge, but lots of access to gorge trails that aren't as popular. And you can also, again, you can get into Mount Hood at certain areas of Hood in the Badger Creek wilderness. And you can also get into Mount Adams, because you run on the border. So you can use it as a base, you know, on the Washington side, to getting into some great places, Indian heaven, wilderness areas like that. So I really like the Dallas. Oregon coast is great, but for the lot of the same reasons, I stay away from the Washington coast. It can be really, really busy and foggy. But if you go farther south, the weather patterns change, and you're much farther away from from Portland. Bandon is probably my favorite town on the Oregon coast. It is absolutely lovely. Love the area. It can be expensive in the summertime, not many hotels, but I tell you that the beach access, there's some great places again, if you want, Coos Bay, a little grittier, a little more history, but I'll tell you what's interesting about Coos Bay. You know, a lot of people would just drive through, it's a mill town, and not exactly give the warm fuzzies, but there's a lot of history in that town, and Coos Bay is really reinventing itself. I went to a conference there a couple years ago, and I was blown away one by the food. There are some amazing restaurants coming out of this area. So Coos Bay can be a great place to base out of to to check out a lot of the coastal areas that are going to be more expensive to stay at lots of camping in the area. So to definitely check that out. And then the other area I like, again, pretty far for Washington. It's actually closer to San Francisco. You get down into

Unknown:

Medford, Ashland in that area, it's got more of a California Climate too. It's, it's Ashland is very, very close to California. But talk about, it's fascinating. Ashland is a true, true mountain town. If you're a trail runner, it's an incredible place. It's got quite a scene there in the Siskiyou mountains, you're actually close to the Cascades too. It's got, you're close to, a lot of wilderness areas. It's a trail town. The PCT comes right through, through that area to college town. There's great restaurants and, you know, shops for for outdoor rec and everything. So, yeah, definitely check. Ashland is really, really cool. I would go there more towards the end of summer, and interesting enough. I have a conference coming up there in September. So so I'm planning on definitely spending some time to nice floor. And you also Medford too. I should mention you can use Medford as a base to to create a Lake National Park. Yes, if you want to stay on the hot side again, away from Medford is pretty big. It's a big sized city. You've got Klamath Falls, and in Klamath Falls, it's still sizable enough. There's hotels and restaurants. You've got the Klamath base in there, which is an amazing place for bird watching late summer, and you're close again to Northern California. You can get down into the lava beds Mount Shasta in that area. So these are great places to check out. I know it's it's a hall from Washington, unless you live in Vancouver, Washington, it's not that bad. Seattle, so, So spend some time down there. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised to getting away from the the Cannon Beach area, which is beautiful and everything, but, but very, very

Jennie Flaming:

popular, yeah, you know, the one area. Those are all fantastic suggestions. I also wanted to just add in that northeastern corner of Oregon that's like, yeah, just kind of south of Walla. Walla and Clarkston in Washington State.

Craig Romano:

Enterprise is a nice little town near wallawa lake. Joseph,

Jennie Flaming:

yes, yeah, yes, and Joseph too. I want to refer everybody back to our March 5 episode with Matt and Adam that was all about Oregon, and they talked about this area in some detail. It is hot, but some of it is at elevation, so it isn't quite as hot as it could be, and as some other parts of eastern Oregon are. And there's, again, lots of places to go that are not busy at all, and that you could probably pull together kind of a last minute trip, especially if you were camping, because there are just so many options. So I just wanted to, really

Craig Romano:

want to get off the the grid if last minute you've got places south of of the wall was like the strawberry mountain wilderness, John Day, little town of John again, these are really off, off the beaten path. Cool the Steens scenes. Mountain is amazing. It gets, it gets hot in the valley, but you get up and tie Steens is 8700 feet, I think, or ninth. It's up there. It's one of the highest mountains. It's incredible. So these are, yeah, if you're really looking to get away from it, all these are so you get burns would be the most sizable town there, if you're looking for a place to stay, Yep, yeah, really, really, great.

Jennie Flaming:

Love it. Okay, let's move over to our eastern neighbor, Idaho. And I, my husband, Jay, is from Montana, and so most of the time I've been in Idaho has been driving between Washington and Montana, and I'm probably not alone in that, but I have not spent a lot of time in Idaho, and I am aware that I'm missing out. So I'd love to hear from you Craig for hiking getaways in Idaho. What do you recommend?

Craig Romano:

Yeah, you know, Idaho is big, and being on the west side of state, I don't get there as much as I as I should, because I love the state. It's a beautiful state. And in Idaho is really interesting. It's actually three different states. The northern part is very much. The pan is Washington. It's Pacific Northwest. The Southeast is Boise, Idaho. I'm sorry, the Southwest is Boise, and the Southeast is Utah, culturally and just geographically. So it's three different states. It's really weird how I mean, so you're going to get a different flavor in all those areas. So if you're familiar with the with the Northwest, you know you want that. You know rainforests and mountains are going to be because you have interior rainforest the whole panhandle. You can stay at Sandpoint, which is a beautiful, absolutely beautiful town. It's getting a little pricey now it's it's kind of one another one of those places like Winthrop in in Leavenworth. People are going to check out the old mining towns of Wallace and Kellogg in that area. You know, 40 years ago, it was absolutely depressed. Nobody would we just drive through. But the towns have reinvented themselves. There's Ski Area towns now. A lot of the, a lot of the the homes have been restored to you could rent if you're if you're just cycling the trail, the quarter lanes is an 80 Mile bike trail, paved bike trail that goes right across the Panhandle. Great. There's a big state parks in the area you can camp in, and then you get like the Bitterroot divide, which is the Montana, Idaho, I've hiked in there. And crowds are something you can only, you know, dream of. It just doesn't exist there. So this is a really, really neat area. It's close to Spokane, so you will get people coming in from there. And again, if you you want to stay in the city, you want to stay in Spokane or colane, which is a wonderful town, those are close enough that you can certainly do hiking trips from moving first. Yeah, go ahead.

Jennie Flaming:

Well, in our June, on our June, 5 episode that was about hikes in Spokane with Emily mandagi, she recommended some great hikes around standpoint. So go back and listen to that episode and check that out, because she had some great suggestions.

Craig Romano:

Yeah, it really is a beautiful town, and it's not. And there's, there's, there's paved Rail Trail in that area. It's a big state park. There's lots of easier stuff in the valley. And then you can get up higher into the mountains, sending out, going north of Sandpoint to Bonners ferry. And up that area, there's on the Kootenai River, kind of dips down, and there's a nice National Wildlife there's great access to the Idaho, Selkirk mountains in there. So priest, Lake area, really, really cool. Again. I think if you're listening from Spokane, you're well aware of this area, but, but Seattleites might not be so now, going farther into Idaho is when Idaho becomes more Idaho and less Northwest. So down McCall, which is kind of in the middle of the state, going down that's become a really, really powerful. Popular base here with skiing. It's also kind of one of the entrances to the Frank, Frank Church River, no return wilderness, which is a huge roadless areas, one of the, one of the largest roadless areas in North America. It's different to whitewater rafting. Idaho is supreme in that. And then farthest out again, a Boise. Even though Boise is, you know, it's a big city, it's grown a lot. I absolutely love Boise. I was just there last year for a marathon, either frequently, it's a quick flight if you don't want to drive there. It's a beautiful city. Wonderful food, great. It's trail town. It's got an incredible Green Belt trail. And right outside the city itself, it's a huge network of trails. So again, it's one of the places you can just take a bus or an Uber up and really spend time. And then any along, anywhere along this the Snake River Valley, again, you get in some neat places. Probably the supreme place in Idaho to hike, and I've not been there nearly as much I need to go back, is the Sawtooth Mountains. So staying in Stanley, in that area, you're up really high. The Sawtooths are classic, beautiful Idaho Rockies. This is north of Sun Valley. Sun Valley, of course, very popular, very pricey, but, you know, it's gorgeous and a lot of history. If you earn Ernest Hemingway fan or But Stanley is you're on Red Rock. Was it? Think about redfish. I gotta look this up. It's been a while since I've been there a big lake in big lake in the middle. There great place to base. Out of lots of camping. There's lodges and everything. And then there's some spectacular hiking in the in the sawtooth as well as in the white cloud, the Boulder White Cloud mountains, which are even higher on the east side of that valley. So and then again, you can keep going farther, which I've not explored, towards Utah and Yellowstone, that area, I've got to get out there. There's some great hikes in that area, salmon, some of those places I've not been to yet. So the country is just too damn big. I can't keep up with it. Yeah,

Jennie Flaming:

I know. I know. All right, so let's make this even more challenging by going to an even bigger and maybe even more beautiful area, which is our northern neighbor, British Columbia in Canada. And despite the current tensions between our governments right now and our government's quite bad behavior as a neighbor, there is still a long history of of both of our countries, but also between Washington State and British Columbia. We have a long history of kinship, shared economy, shared values. And so I just really want to encourage you, if you are nervous about going to Canada. Don't be like, it's really important for us to go spend our dollars and support our neighbor. And also, there is some amazing and beautiful hiking there. And we've had, you know, in the last couple months, a couple of other episodes about BC. So this time, Craig and I are going to take us a little further away from the border to some of our favorite destinations for hiking in British Columbia. So, Craig, why don't you go first?

Craig Romano:

Yeah, and actually, what you said, Jennie, is correct. And just to anyone, if you're wondering, historically and culturally, of the all the border states, you know, I grew up in New Hampshire and New Hampshire borders Quebec, very, very culturally different. British Columbia and Washington are probably the most closely related of any of the of the state provinces on the border. We do, really do have a shared culture and a shared value, and I would love to keep that intact. I love British Columbia. I love the people in British Columbia. I live very close to the border. I've spent a lot of time up there, so please don't be afraid to go up there and show the people that you support them. So yeah, I've talked a lot about Vancouver, really close and but when I want to go a little bit farther in, here's two of my favorite places I like to go to. One is Vancouver Island. Even though it's not geographically very far, it takes a long time to get there. So again, a lot of people have been to a lot of Americans who have been to Vancouver Island, perhaps they've only been to Victoria, which is a wonderful city, and it's a great place to hike. But go farther up the island, there are great places. And right in the center of the island is the city of Courtney. A little Courtney, the commax Valley, great place to base out of. You can do some great coastal hikes. You can get to other islands, Denman Hornby in that area, and then you can get to the forbidden plateau area on Strathcona Provincial Park, which is the largest park on Vancouver Island. It's over half a million acres um. If you go up to Campbell River, which is another great place you can base, you can get into the interior of Strathcona. And again, more remote hikes in that area. Vancouver Island is spectacular. Love that. And then my other favorite place, again, for so many reasons, it's really not that hard to get to when it takes me an hour to get across the border and then to get I can get to Revelstoke in about six hours, because most of the way is actually divided highway. It's really good road to get. In there, Revelstoke is it's interesting. It's in the transition zone. It's in the Columbia mountains, the manashi mountains. It's not quite the Rockies. It's definitely not the Cascades. I mean, it's whether I it's one of the wettest interior ranges of British Columbia. I will mention, though I've been going there for many, many years, and like most of the area, climate change is definitely occurring, and it's not nearly as wet the last couple of times. First time I remember hiking there, it rained every single day. I was there in July. In the last couple of times I've been there, it's been sunny almost every day that I was there. I love staying rebel Stokes in old railroad town around the Trans Canada Highway. It's been changed. It's starting to change. I'm afraid. I don't want to become a Whistler or to become a Leavenworth. It's not there yet. I hope it doesn't quite get there. A lot of the good change though, good restaurants, good hotels, you're close to camping. Mount Revelstoke National Park is right outside the park right side of the city, so that's really and then Glacier National Park, not to be confused with the Park in Montana. It's one of my all time favorite places in British Columbia. Absolutely love hiking there. Most of the hikes are day hikes there, but they're hard, serious elevation, grizzly bear country. That gives me a thrill as much as climbing up in the area. Yeah, just the area stunning. Like, yeah, I can't, I can't rave about it enough. Just one of my favorite areas, the glaciers are incredible in there. And again, sadly, I'm watching the the recession of those glaciers as well. Too. Lot of history, too. Matter of fact, when the the railroad was put through, there a lot of work with horseshoe tunnels and everything. But the other kind of interesting fact is that was the last piece of the Trans Canada Highway when it was finally connected in the 1960s This is amazing. That's how rugged that terrain is, yes.

Jennie Flaming:

And think about how far that is from the east coast of Canada. It tells you something about what it was like for for them to build the highway over so many mountain ranges out west.

Craig Romano:

Yeah. And that one in particular, how rugged the snow sheds in there, and everything you drive itself. Matter of fact, the very first time I ever explored that area was on my second trans North America bike trip, trip. So I'm on a bicycle 1981 going across Canada. So I biked across that first time. I've been to rebels. I mean, I've seen the changes in Revelstoke. Revelstoke was a sleepy little railroad town back in 1981 and now it's definitely a destination resort area,

Jennie Flaming:

yeah. Okay, so I've got two for British Columbia. Like you, I'm a big fan, and so it is not hard to come up with a long list, but like you, I managed to cut it down to small number. Okay, so the first one would be Kootenai National Park, which is almost in Alberta. It's very easy to dip a toe into Alberta while you're there, if you want to. So this is the area, kind of north of Sandpoint, Idaho. And you know, the Canadian Rockies, Banff and Jasper get a tremendous amount of love, and they should. They're incredible. But I'm going to tell you that Kootenai National Park is just as incredible and significantly easier to navigate, less crowded, either easier to find camping and a place to stay. So when I go there, I like to stay in radium hot springs. And there's a couple options. One is, there's a campground at radium hot springs that's a Parks Canada campground, and that's pretty cool, because you can walk over to the hot springs. It's not right there, it's like a mile and a half, but on a trail, or you can drive. So that's awesome. That's one of my favorite campgrounds that I've ever camped at. And then the other option is just a couple miles from there, the town of radium has quite a few hotels, and there are vacation rentals in the valley, kind of all through the Columbia Valley there. So I love that area. There are so many wonderful hikes.

Craig Romano:

Flow lake in the rock wall, right? It is one of the most spectacular

Jennie Flaming:

hikes. Yes, America, yes. And I also really love it's really short. But Marble Canyon is another one of the coolest places that I've ever been. It's so awesome. So anyway, there are just many wonderful places to explore around. There lots of hot springs on the way there and on the way back, lots of great stuff. And then my other one, just to kind of pull this together, is Whistler. Whistler is a fantastic summer destination, incredible hikes. I My favorite one, which it's a little complicated, but bear with me, is to take take the gondola up to the top of Whistler. I. Yeah. And then there's a chair lift then that you take from there up to that's the highest kind of chair lift part in Whistler. And then, and that part's, I won't lie, it's, it's not good for people who aren't keen on heights, because you're just on a chair. I don't like chair lifts ever, and I really don't like them in the summer, when you're just looking down even further. Ah, but it's okay when you're writing up. I wouldn't want to go down on it. But anyway, um, so you get up there, and then that's where the cloud raker, like metal sky bridge, is. And then you can do the either the half dough or not Half Dome. What am I saying? That's the half note trail, or the high note Trail, which is just a longer version of the half note trail. And and just to save you, a mistake that I made, like by the time you've ridden all these gondolas and chair lifts and whatever, and the fact that this is above the tree line and there's no shade, don't underestimate this hike, like the longer version of it, is tough to do in a day hike with all of these transportation connections, anyway, and then you can, you can hike down to where you rode the chair lift up the first part, and then you can take the peak to peak across to black home. And that whole thing is pretty cool. But I love that hike. The views are. That's maybe the best view hike I've ever done. I don't know Mount St Helens is a very is very much up there, but it's pretty cool. And there's lots of other hikes in Whistler that don't involve chair lifts, but that's my favorite.

Craig Romano:

Have you hiked panorama ridge in garibaldi? No, I haven't. The views are amazing. You're so again, you can use Whistler as your base. You can hike. And Garibaldi Lake is a day hike to get in there, but there's, there's great camping if you want to base out of there again. Make sure you get your reservations. And if you're strong hiker, a trail runner, you can, you can certainly do panoram Ridge in a day. It's above Garibaldi lake. So you've got this amazing view of the lake, and it's got this aquamarine color. And then garibaldi, which is just this incredible volcano with huge glacial systems, that's probably one of the best views I've seen an area, so definitely, next time you're up there, check out. It's a classic hike. It's incredible, awesome. It's not technical, not like the Black Tusk, which is technical. You can just hike up on that ridge. It's all Alpine. I think you'll really like

Jennie Flaming:

it, yeah, oh, I'm sure I would. The other thing too I would mention about Whistler is Whistler is getting more popular in the summer. It's very popular with mountain bikers. There's a whole system for mountain biking that you don't have to be part of as a hiker, by the way. Um, but one thing I will mention is that it is easier to find a place to stay in Whistler in the summer, because the capacity is really there for for ski season. So it's still not, you know, like a budget destination, exactly. But you can also stay in, like a vacation rental outside of Whistler but if you did want to stay in Whistler village, summer is a good time to do it.

Craig Romano:

And if you don't want to stay in Whistler village, you can stay in Squamish too. Now, which, yep, which another used to be. I remember the first time I was there 40 years ago, it was a scrappy mill town like and all that's gone now it's becoming a big mountain bike town. There's hotels to stay there. There's restaurants. Is there? It's only a half hour away from Whistler. It's gonna be a little cheaper close to Vancouver. So you have, you have alternatives there too, and also gives you some great access into Garibaldi Park as Garibaldi park as well. Yes,

Jennie Flaming:

absolutely. Okay, well, there's some more fantastic summer getaways for you, so get right on booking these. If you still want to do a neighbor visit for hiking this summer, see you next time. Excellent. If you're enjoying the podcast, we would love to have you leave us a rating or review wherever you're listening that will really help other people find us. And don't forget, there's a link to Craig's books and my email list in the show notes you

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Jennie Thwing Flaming

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Craig Romano

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