I find it hard to believe that six years have gone by since I started this site. Hiking Northwest was born n March 26, 2002. 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.

In the first years many visitors were on dial up connections. The average monitor was 17" and ran at a relatively low resolution. My photos were small. Now dial up is getting rarer and higher resolution monitors allow me to increase photo size. I began with an Olympus D-360L 1.3 megapixel camera with no optical zoom. I upgraded to a Canon S-45 with 4 megapixels and a 3x zoom. Quite an improvement. That camera wore out and I usually use a Canon A-610 with 5 megapixels and a 4x zoom. I picked up an Olympus E-510 DSLR this fall and though it's heavier it will be coming on some trips this year.

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 - 13
Total Reports      - 271

Features               - 26
Photos              - 6610

The Internet and this site have changed my hiking considerably. During most of the nearly 26 years I have been hiking regularly I hiked alone or with the Mountaineers. I had only a few friends who hiked. Now things are much different. Most of my trips are with others. Still, I need an occasional trip on my own. Between Hiking Northwest and Nwhikers.net I have met many others hopelessly afflicted with the hiking bug. Things have changed and it has been mostly for the better.

With luck I should have at least another 25 years on the trail. I can only imagine what this site will look like then. Thanks to all who have visited. I hope you hang around here for a long time.

Jim Kuresman - 3-26-08