Hiking Northwest was born n March 26, 2002. It's hard to believe that eight years have passed by. I began with absolutely no knowledge of HTML and no clue what I wanted the site to look like. I had a new Olympus 1.3 megapixel camera and a big box of thousands of prints taken over 20 years of hiking. My goal was to put down reports and photos of all the places I hiked, skied, or snowshoed to. For the most part I am pleased with the result. The site has had one make over and I must admit it is not as pretty as many other hiking sites. I do think it makes up for that with a wealth of reports and photos.

When I started hiking I took a Minolta XG-1 slr. I have thousands of photos from those trips that I am just now scanning into digital form. I hope to have time to add some much older trip reports in the future. After a while I stopped taking the camera on a trip I had been on numerous times before. With the advent of the Internet and this site my interest in recording my trips gained new life. Instead of a roll of 24 or 36 photos on a trip I now take three or four times as many. In these eight years the photo count has increased rapidly to where I now have over 10,000 photos on my site. Tens of thousands more are archived but not on the site.

My cameras have evolved with technology. From a 1.3 megapixel camera with no optical zoom in the first year I have moved up to my current choices. I have a heavier Olympus E-510 dslr and a much lighter Panasonic FZ28. With a zoom range of 27 mm (35 mm equivalent) to 486 mm it provides nice wide angle and telephoto. These newer cameras will not last as long as my metal XG-1 but do well for my needs.

As computer monitors have grown so have my photos. From 600 pixel width in the early years my photos have grown to 800 pixels. The thumbnails have grown too. I have had the pleasure of hiking with dozens of new friends over these eight years. I still enjoy occasional solo trips but have had lots of company the past few years. After nearly 28 years on the trail most trips are repeats though it may be decades between visits. I aim for 10 new trips per year but the last few years have been even better. Twenty two new trips last year and twenty one in 2008. I have hiked over 100 new trails since starting this site.

An inventory of reports shows how the site has grown.

Trip Reports 2001 - 02
Trip Reports 2002 - 39
Trip Reports 2003 - 49
Trip Reports 2004 - 42
Trip Reports 2005 - 34
Trip Reports 2006 - 49
Trip Reports 2007 - 43
Trip Reports 2008 - 56
Trip Reports 2009 - 54
Trip Reports 2010 - 13
Total Reports      - 271

Features               - 27
Photos           - 10,085

When I started there were few sites with trip reports. Now many folks have started blogs or used photo sites to record trips. A number of other sites have stopped updating as the authors have moved on to other interests. For better or worse hiking is my passion and this site will continue to grow for many years to come. The site is approaching 94,000 visits so there must be a few of you out there who visit more than once. Goals for the next few years are to add older reports with old photos and to start dabbling in some video from trips. I hope the site is even better in the future. Thanks to all who have dropped by and found something to enjoy around here.

Jim Kuresman - 3-26-10