First off, the weather. This weekend forecasts call for relatively cool and showery weather, mixed with sun throughout much of the state. That means great flower, forest and dramatic cloudscape photos - and experiencing the true meaning of “rain” forests on the coast. Check the National Weather Service website to ensure you're prepared for whatever conditions you might encounter.

Next, where to stay. Camping can be tricky this time of year, though most campgrounds are opening in advance of the Memorial Day weekend. Your best bet will be to reserve a spot, and fortunately you still have time to do so. Check out our Camping Reservations Tips for links and more information.

Don't forget to stay safe. Snow is still the name of the game in the high country, and hikers can easily encounter slick and dangerous conditions on snowy slopes and from overhanging cornices. All of that snow has to go somewhere when it melts too. Rivers and creeks are running at their peak levels right now. Read WTA's Spring Hiking Tips to refresh what you need to bring in your pack and how to stay safe under these conditions.

Finally, where should you go? Here are some excellent choices for day-hikers and backpackers alike.

Columbia Gorge

Wildflowers still adorn the southern slopes of the Columbia River Gorge on the Washington side. Day hikers will enjoy the meadows and views of the relatively unknown Weldon Wagon Road in the White Salmon Valley. Or give Catherine Creek and Coyote Wall a go. This is the site of a new WTA trail work project that you can volunteer at on June 2. Want some elevation gain? Hamilton Mountain is sure to please.

Pacific Coast

If hearing the crash of ocean waves is more your style, head to the rugged Washington Coast. There are great backpack trips to Toleak Point and Shi Shi Beach. Be sure to get a wilderness permit from Olympic National Park for those. Day hikers will enjoy beach-walking at Browns Point near Kalaloch and Third Beach near La Push.

North Cascades

Highway 20 is open for the season, providing access to the wonders of the North Cascades. Driveway Butte near Washington Pass is an excellent early season hike, as evidenced by a trip report one day after the opening of North Cascades Highway this season. There's still snow at the top, but it is worth the effort. Another early favorite of backpackers is Thunder Creek, a long and gentle trail through old growth forest. Or how about East Bank Baker Lake with awesome views of Mount Baker and Shuksan? The road to this trail is closing at Shannon Creek from mid-June to mid-July, so get there now!

Central Cascades

Savvy Memorial Day hikers seek the sunnier southern and eastern slopes of the Central Cascades. There are many options in the Icicle Creek area near Leavenworth, including two ways to ascend Icicle Ridge: the gentle Icicle Ridge trail or the Fourth of July Creek butt-kicker. Alternatively, off of Blewett Pass, try out this week's Hike of the Week: Ingalls Creek. It features a raging creek, abundant wildflowers and plentiful campsites.

South Cascades

Most of Mount Rainier National Park is under snow, but not the Carbon River area. A new wilderness walk-in campground is open at Ipsut Creek, which provides ample opportunities to explore this lovely area. Try the trail up to Ranger Creek Falls and Green Lake, or say hello to a WTA Volunteer Vacation crew on the Wonderland Trail. One volcano down the chain, the South Coldwater Lake trail at Mount St. Helens is often one of the first places in the Monument to melt out.

Central Washington

Wildflowers are still going strong in the desert steppe country. Our trip reporters advise that the flower show continues near Quincy at Beezley Hills Preserve. Other good bets are Steamboat Rock State Park near Grand Coulee and Hardy Canyon, near Yakima.

Wow! That's 18 destinations to try out this weekend. We encourage you to get outside, take a hike, stay safe and come back and share your experience by writing a Trip Report.

The plan follows the recommendations of the Mount St. Helens Citizens Advisory Committee, a group tasked by Washington's Congressional Delegation with coming up with a vision for the future of the Monument. Throughout the process the National Parks Conservation Association advocated for a change in management that would have turned Mount St. Helen's into the newest National Park. But in the end the committee recommended that the Forest Service retain management of the mountain for now.

Besides adding options for camping and new trails, the new strategic plan aims to address other important recommendations in the Advisory Committee's final report including improved roads, better funding for education and interpretive activities, reinvestment in the Coldwater Visitor Center, and a continued commitment to scientific research.

Recognizing that volunteers and partnerships will be essential to meeting their goals, the Forest Service hosted a celebration last Friday at the newly renamed Science and Learning Center at Coldwater. Planned improvements to the site will provide overnight accommodations for volunteer groups, researchers and students. But according to a recent article in the Columbian, the facility will not be open to the general public, but rather for special events.

Hope to see you tonight!

All of the content you have depend upon is still there - the trip reports, the hiking guide, the trail work schedule and more. Only the package has been updated. Here is brief run-down of what we've done:

New colors, redesigned homepage and social media

The biggest changes are found on the homepage. We've emphasized bigger photos, the Signpost Blog and brought our Trip Reports and Trail Work schedule to front. The homepage is now a one-stop shop for the most relevant and dynamic information on the site. There is less text and more links to the wonderful world of hiking. We encourage you to explore the homepage, and we bet you'll find something you didn't know existed before.

Changes to inside pages are fairly minimal. You'll find new colors. Good-bye red; hello orange. You'll also find that the Signpost Blog encourages all sorts of fun social engagement with comments, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. We'll be running most of our freshest content through this section of the website, so it may be a good idea to bookmark the page.

We're mobile-friendly!

We've shared your pain when using our site with our phones, so we've done something about it. Text, images and other content should stack much more elegantly when the screen is narrowed.

Streamlined navigation

Oh, how the website has grown over the past five years! The old drop-down navigation grew as well, becoming a bit unwieldy. With the new design, we've brought it back to basics, specifically:

• Creating one place for browsing trip reports: We've operated two views of the trip reports, each carrying about half the audience. To eliminate the duplication, we've brought the best of the two worlds together. The new trip reports page displays the 100 freshest trip reports, with a larger photo, the location of the hike and the ability to expand the text and read the trip report without skipping to a new page.
• Simplifying the volunteer trail work section: You can now find the trail work schedule more easily, as well as self-select for further information about volunteer opportunities for youth and adults.
• Rearranging the youth information: You'll now find all of our youth stewardship opportunities under the Volunteer umbrella. Our Families Go Hiking information can now be located as Hiking with Kids under the Hiking Resources dropdown.

New way to log in

Look along the top navigation bar, and you'll find a prompt to login or create an account for writing trip reports and making comments. It will be easy to do so from any page.

Those are the major changes. We hope you like what you see, and we encourage you to explore the wta.org with new eyes. We also welcome your feedback. Post your thoughts on this blog. Rest assured, we will read them all and give them thoughtful consideration. Enjoy!

Washington's three national parks all require permits for backcountry camping, but they each have a different process. At Mount Rainier National Park, there is a lottery in March to handle the overwhelming interest. At North Cascades National Park it is first-come, first-served. And at Olympic National Park, most backcountry campsites do not require advanced reservations, but they are recommended or required for the following areas from May 1 through September 30.

• Ozette Coast (required)
• Royal Basin/Royal Lake (required)
• Grand and Badger Valleys (half of quota is available in advance)
• Lake Constance (required)
• Flapjack Lakes (half of quota is available in advance)
• Sol Duc/Seven Lakes/Mink Lake area (half of quota is available in advance)
• Hoh Lake/CB Flats (half of quota is available in advance)
• Hoh River Trail (reservations are available but not required)

To make a reservation, contact Olympic National Park's Wilderness Information Center at (360-565-3100). More information can be found on its website.

Whether you are backpacking to one of the these popular areas or not, it is wise to call ahead to determine where you can pick up your permit. All backcountry campers will need to carry one, and this permitting process varies across the park. Self-registration kiosks at Olympic National Park are located at trailheads where a reservation is not required for a particular destination. For example, because reservations are not required for Toleak Point, there is a self-permitting kiosk at that traihead; and because overnight permits are required for the Ozette Coast campsites, there is no self-permit kiosk there (it's not needed, because if you're over-nighting at Ozette, you will have picked up your permit at the ranger station).

If you're planning on a night-time arrival to camp at an park trailhead, you may call (360) 565-3100, and the park will place your permit in a box at the ranger station for you to to pick up on your way to the trailhead. And to avoid a long back-and-forth drive, the park has one exception for picking up a permit in-person: if you're going to Royal Basin or Upper Lena Lake, where permits are required and your driving route goes nowhere near a ranger station, a permit can be issued over the phone.

WTA expects to take home $48,000 for trails thanks to your generous donations during GiveBIG on May 2. Our grand total includes gifts from more than 300 hikers, a "stretch" match of $4,400 and a special $2,500 match from the Eleanor Trask Fund at The Seattle Foundation.

With 38,000 donations totaling $7.4 million for more than 1,200 local nonprofits, The Seattle Foundation's GiveBIG event turned into an amazing day of giving to make our region a better place to live, work and play.

According to the Foundation's preliminary results, WTA placed #6 in number of donations received and #21 in total amount received. This is an amazing testament to the value of the work we do every day to protect and maintain trails.

We've said it before, but it bears repeating: THANK YOU for giving big to WTA!

We'd especially like to thank the staff of The Seattle Foundation for their hard work on behalf of WTA and other participating nonprofits. We also hope you'll join us in thanking the GiveBIG sponsors who contributed to the $800,000 stretch matching pool, including: Microsoft, Boeing, the Bezos Family Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, the Seattle International Foundation and the Seattle Sounders.

Our May + June magazine reported that beginning this hiking season, North Cascades National Park (NCNP) was to begin the requirement of bear canister use for storing food during backcountry overnight trips to certain destinations within the Park.

Per Sage Boerke of the Marblemount Ranger Station at NCNP, this requirement has been put on hold for 2012, pending more studies and tests that might expand food storage choices, such as the aluminum-lined Ursack.

When backpackers pick up their permits, the permitting officer will advise if the desired destination is a high bear activity area, and will offer a bear canister to borrow (free of charge, but you need to supply credit card information - which will not be used if the canister is returned).  For those not confident in their food-hanging technique, bear canisters can be borrowed for free from NCNP, whose website includes a page with tips and advice about food storage  requirements in the backcountry (yes, proper food storage is a law!).

Good food storage habits lessen or eliminate the chances of a bear becoming conditioned to human food.

Spring hiking evokes images of delicate woodland trillium, gushing waterfalls and hikers trying to locate the most compelling destination that they can reach. It's a time of giddy anticipation as we eagerly make plans to visit our favorite trails.

With sunny skies and soaring temperatures over Mother's Day, hikers were out in force - many for their first hike of the year. Hikers posted more than 100 trip reports over a three-day time period. Some stuck to easy trails lined with spring wildflowers while others pushed the limits of spring conditions and encountered impassable roads, deep snow on the trail and fast-moving streams.

One thought I had as I hiked with my family this weekend: it is time to get our "trail brains" on again. After a long winter, it's easy to forget some of the basic items you need in your pack. About 30 minutes in on the Lime Kiln Trail, I realized I had forgotten my first aid kit. Whoops! Fortunately, we didn't need it - this time.

For other hikers, putting on their trail brain will mean using common sense when assessing trail conditions. It is all too easy to push too far this time of year. Danger from avalanches, snow cornices and stream crossings linger well into July, and conditions can change dramatically during the course of the day as warm weather melts snow.

WTA has put together some Spring Hiking Safety Tips that are important for even the most seasoned hiker to review - what to wear, what to have in your backpack, how to choose a hike, and how to handle the hazards of hiking in the spring.

With a little preparation, you'll be able to find your trail brain and have a great time hiking. And when you return from your hike, please write a Trip Report! Your fellow hikers will appreciate the update on the trail conditions.

I spent many years in Minneapolis, and learned to backpack on skis and snowshoes in the wintery Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). Evenings around the hissing Whisperlite were almost always graced with deep, throaty howls off in the distance. It wasn't uncommon to find the remains of kills on frozen lakes, and on the summer trips I took, scat was everywhere. That's what backpacking in a place populated by 2,500 wolves is like. Their presence permeated every moment, even when they couldn't be heard.

What should you expect when hiking with wolves? How do you prepare? My advice is to enjoy the experience. You are very, very unlikely to actually see a wolf; they usually avoid people at all costs. But do hang your provisions or use a bear-proof canister. Wolves usually won't try to scavenge your food, but we still have those big black bears.

If you want to increase your odds of hearing wolves, find someplace where the sound travels - a meadow, a peak, a big lake - and have dinner at sunset. Wolves often howl to herald sundown. Watch for tracks or sign. It's unlikely that you'll see any, and I can nearly guarantee that you'll never see an actual wolf. If you do, it'll be gone in a flicker of its bushy tail the moment it registers on your eyes. They know you're there, and they're extremely skittish of humans. It takes months of waiting before a wolf will become accustomed enough to a human to approach.

And remember this: the presence of wolves means that you're in wild country. You're somewhere big enough and intact enough to support a pack of apex predators. It's a rare thing. This summer, and in summers to come, savor it.

But...

Warm weather + clear skies + mountains + lots of snow = ripe conditions for avalanche activity.

Several bureaus are issuing warnings of moderate to severe avalanche potential in all areas of the Cascades for this coming weekend.

Before you choose your destination, check out the special, detailed forecasts for this weekend on the Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center's website.

Climbers aren't the only explorers who need to know avalanche conditions. Slides can travel great distances, so hikers who enjoy lower portions of our mountains can also be at risk. Avalanches and cornices know no boundaries, and the only law they follow is that of gravity. Exposed, south-facing slopes are especially prone to avalanche activity during this time of year.

A popular Mother's Day tradition, hordes of climbers make for the south side of Mount St. Helens to climb to the rim dressed in... well, dresses. The Gifford Pinchot National Forest has posted a warning that avalanche conditions on Mount St. Helens is "extreme." They are offering refunds for climbing permits for those wishing to avoid the current conditions.

Avalanches have already claimed several lives in Washington's Cascades this year.

Be safe. Be smart.

These routes give hikers more flexibility in route-planning. Cayuse Pass provides more access to Mount Rainier National Park, including the Ohanapecosh Campground. The opening of the North Cascades Highway makes it easier for many hikers to explore the Methow Valley, including ice cream cones in Winthrop and a stroll along the Chewuch River on the Se Teekh Wa trail. Car campgrounds will also be open in time for the Memorial Day weekend.

Snow removal crews on the North Cascades Highway have been worked hard since March 26 to cut through the snow, getting the highway open a full two weeks ahead of last year. Do note that this road is often closed a time or two after the initial opening due to avalanche danger, so check back on the WSDOT site until conditions are consistently stable.

Now grab the Gazetteer and Green Trails maps and start planning your hike over the mountains!