Harvey Manning, author, dies at 81
REDMOND, Wash. – Harvey Manning, a tireless and irascible conservationist and author of numerous Pacific Northwest mountaineering and hiking guides, including the popular “100 Hikes” series, is dead at 81.
Manning was undergoing treatment for colon cancer before his intestines failed over the weekend, and he died Sunday after being taken off life support at Group Health Eastside Hospital in this suburb east of Lake Washington, friends and relatives told the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other newspapers.
“He was the spokesman for the environmental movement and its driving force,” said Jim Whittaker, of Port Townsend, the first American to reach the top of Mount Everest.
“I feel like one of the great cedars of the North Cascades has fallen,” said Rick McGuire, a longtime friend and former president of the Alpine Lakes Protection Society. “It’s hard to sum up a man like Harvey. He was a force of nature.”
Manning was perhaps 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. “He was always poking at our conscience to write a letter or call a senator if you saw a trail in terrible condition.”
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.
“He was loud, and he was obnoxious,” said one of his daughters, Claudia Manning, of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. “You either loved him or you couldn’t stand him.”
Manning, a Seattle native whose father sold timber saws and other logging equipment for lumber mills, developed his love of the outdoors as an Eagle Scout during World War II and passed it on to his four children, said Penelope Manning, another daughter.
“My first words were, ‘Go mountains,’ ” she said.
An English literature major at the University of Washington, Manning started The Mountaineers Books and wrote its first book, “Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills,” a climbing text that is now in its seventh edition.
Another of his books, “Washington Wilderness: The Unfinished Work,” was instrumental in winning congressional approval of the Washington State Wilderness Act of 1984, including the addition of six wilderness areas in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, said Helen Cherullo, publisher of The Mountaineers Books.
His book on the Alpine Lakes helped win wilderness status for that area.
Other survivors include Betty Manning, his wife of nearly 60 years; and children Rebecca Oliver, of Portland; and Harvey Paul Manning, of Peterborough, Ontario.