Spring-Manning legacies will live on, but their guides are now collectors' items

Helen Cherullo, publisher of The Mountaineers Books, confirms that the Spring-Manning "100 Hikes" trail guides, which had grown into a six-volume series, are now collectors' items.

With the deaths of photographer Ira Spring (2003) and conservationist-author Harvey Manning (last November), Cherullo says "100 Hikes" titles, like Manning's "Footsore" series of decades ago, will progressively go out of print over the next three years, replaced by a series of day-hiking guides. In 2009, a backpacking guide will follow.

"For years their books have been fundamental to The Mountaineers' reason for being," Cherullo said. "The passing of Ira and Harvey marks the end of an era in many ways."

The Spring-Manning guides to the Olympics/South Cascades (100 hikes), the Alpine Lakes (also 100) and Snoqualmie Pass (55 hikes) are already out of print.

Next spring "50 Hikes in Mount Rainier National Park" and the 100-hike North Cascades guide will vanish. The duo's Glacier Peak Wilderness guide will be the last to go, in 2009. They will be replaced by additions to The Mountaineers' new day hiking series.

"The '100 Hikes' books have so much of Harvey and Ira's personalities in them," Cherullo said. "We didn't want to hire a bunch of freelancers to prepare updates and then cobble together two writing styles. We want to be sensitive to their legacy."

Cherullo also wants to mirror trends she sees in participation patterns that suggest a dwindling zeal for backpacking — an activity that involves a time commitment, specialized gear and the potential for urbanite separation anxiety from their remotes, PlayStations and lattes.

She adds another key factor: "Young people are not getting out and getting engaged with hiking the way their parents did. That's one of the biggest challenges ahead for trails."