Harvey Manning, 81; conservationist wrote popular hiking guides

Harvey Manning, 81, a tireless and irascible conservationist and author of numerous Pacific Northwest mountaineering and hiking guides, including the popular “100 Hikes” series, died Sunday in the Seattle suburb of Redmond.

Manning was undergoing treatment for colon cancer before his intestines failed over the weekend, and he died after being taken off life support at Group Health Eastside Hospital.

Manning possibly was best known for about two dozen titles in the “Footsore” and “100 Hikes” series -- including “100 Classic Hikes in Washington” -- during a 50-year collaboration with photographer Ira Spring.

“Harvey’s voice in those books is as the gadfly,” said Andrew Engelson, editor of Washington Trails magazine. “He was always poking at our conscience to write a letter or call a senator if you saw a trail in terrible condition.”

Together, Manning and Spring worked in support of the 1984 Washington Wilderness Act, which protected more than 1 million acres of wild land.

With the white beard and physique of a Santa Claus, Manning had anything but a ho-ho-ho personality. He angrily ended his relationship with Spring over a change in a book title.

Manning was born July 16, 1925, in Ballard, Wash., and developed his love of the outdoors as an Eagle Scout during World War II. An English literature major at the University of Washington, Manning started The Mountaineers Books publishing company and wrote its first book, “Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills,” a climbing text published in 1961, now in its seventh edition.