Willamette Valley missing as Area in Find a Hike

Post comments or questions about the Field Guide
Post Reply
User avatar
at2010
Posts: 4
Joined: February 14th, 2013, 11:34 am

Willamette Valley missing as Area in Find a Hike

Post by at2010 » February 14th, 2013, 11:53 am

Hello & Thanks for the great field guide!

In using your Find a Hike! page I could not find Willamette Valley in either the Area drop down list nor under the Options. But Willamette Valley is used as a category in a number of hikes.
http://www.portlandhikersfieldguide.org ... tte_Valley

I suspect this is not the only region missing from the Areas list. "Santiam Forest" is another category/area I have seen. Would there be a way to correct this list or add another column/list pulldown for Categories? I am a web page developer and would be happy to help, if requested.

Have a hiking day!

AT2010 (Appalachian Trail 2010)

User avatar
Peder
Posts: 3401
Joined: May 28th, 2008, 10:02 pm
Location: Lake Oswego

Re: Willamette Valley missing as Area in Find a Hike

Post by Peder » February 14th, 2013, 3:59 pm

Welcome AT2010! I think that you have a point... The map also has a "Portland & Valley" grouping, but that actually only includes one hike outside the greater Portland area (the Baskett Slough Hike at the very bottom of the page and btw, a great place to see wildlife).
Some people are really fit at eighty; thankfully I still have many years to get into shape…

User avatar
retired jerry
Posts: 14398
Joined: May 28th, 2008, 10:03 pm

Re: Willamette Valley missing as Area in Find a Hike

Post by retired jerry » February 14th, 2013, 4:06 pm

Wow! Appalacian Trail! Nice!

Willamette Valley - that would be in "Portland and Valley"

Santiam Forest - maybe in "Mount Hood" or "Central Oregon" which don't make a lot of sense

Maybe "Portland and Valley" should be broken up into "Portland" and "Willamette Valley"

Maybe there should be an area added between "Mt Hood" and "Central Oregon"

I think you can see from the map approximately which area a particular location would be

There are always somewhat arbitrary decisions that can go either way

Hikes shouldn't refer to a non-existant area though. There must be some tool to extract any references to "Willamette Valley".

User avatar
CampinCarl
Posts: 573
Joined: June 17th, 2011, 7:41 am
Location: Salem

Re: Willamette Valley missing as Area in Find a Hike

Post by CampinCarl » February 15th, 2013, 8:15 am

Yeah, give Salem some love :lol:

I find this tricky in every field guide website or guidebook series... it seems the focus is on hikes near "densely populated area x" and then everything else falls outside that area, which makes sense from a marketing perspective (this website is called Portland Hikers, after all). Either that or it's best hikes in Oregon, PNW, etc., which gets too broad. For example, I would love a book in the 60 hikes within 60 miles series for Salem but I don't think the market is big enough :) For now I just file away hikes as "close" and "far enough of a drive that I really need a day/multiple days" categories. The other thing I do is mark the places that aren't mentioned in the guidebooks as potential "solitude" hikes.

User avatar
bobcat
Posts: 2764
Joined: August 1st, 2011, 7:51 am
Location: SW Portland

Re: Willamette Valley missing as Area in Find a Hike

Post by bobcat » February 17th, 2013, 4:29 pm

Yes, there's really only one hike listed for the Valley proper (Baskett Slough). I work on the Field Guide and hope to add some more, but it's my free time, so it will take time . . .

Other than the hike above, what's assigned the Willamette Valley category are really foothill hikes (Silver Falls S.P. and Santiam S.F.).

There's a link near the bottom of the Field Guide page: "Show all categories"; this shows all the categories and from this you can link to a page with all the hikes listed under that category. Unfortunately, since a recent upgrade, the "Show all categories" link is not working (not sure why). You'd have to go to a hike in the area, find the categories list at the bottom of the page, and then link to a page with all the hikes in that category.

EDIT: Here are the links to the pages, in case you haven't found them:

Willamette Valley
Santiam State Forest

Post Reply