Foreward
No animal has gone extinct in the Selkirk Mountains in 10,000 years. Grizzlies, lynx, bald eagles, transient wolves, even the exceedingly rare woodland caribou: They’re all still there in mountains that rise Alps-like into thickly timbered slopes, high meadows, pebble-bed-clear streams, glacially striated rock faces and cliff amphitheaters around snowmelt cold lakes. And there are groves of ancient cedar and larch, even valleys into which rubber tires and metal bulldozer tracks have never rolled.

On a few of the trails during the busiest summer weekends, you might pass fellow hikers now and then, but on most routes you’re likely to go all day, or even days, without encountering anyone. If you haven’t seen them yet, these are the mountains you’ve been looking for. Here, what you see out your tent flap or while pausing to catch your breath on a ridge top lives up to the paradise you’ve been imagining since you can remember. If you already know the Selkirks, you know they are a place that makes you glad you also are a living animal; that makes you feel you’ve discovered paradise. You know they are a natural habitat where that other rare species, your human heart, can find what it too needs to keep from going extinct.

Amazingly, this wild country is just minutes outside the cities of Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, and literally at the edge of town from Sandpoint to Bonners Ferry, Priest River to Newport to Metaline Falls, along with several other small communities. You can steal away here to hike for an hour in your sneakers, or you can head out for a full-pack expedition lasting weeks.

Whatever the ambition or frequency of your visits, though, this book is an essential companion. It is the definitive guide to the area, clearly describing trails, terrain, points of interest and trailhead approach roads. It even lists suitability for mountain bikes and horses, and availability of water. But more importantly, in this book long-time hiking junkie Dennis Nicholls guides you into the spirit of this place with beautiful essays on the Selkirks, hiking and mountain life in general, with a sense of humor and good cheer in his trail advice and with a voice throughout that expresses the same exuberance and love that brought him, and now you, here.