Within an hour or two of downtown Seattle’s Space Needle, you can be in desolate wilderness, hiking through evergreen forests with views of Puget Sound, Mount Rainier, and the Olympic range. The Seattle area is full of great hikes, but some of them are more well-known and crowded than others. How do you avoid hiking alongside hundreds of others on a busy weekend? You ask a guy who knows his way around the off-the-radar trails. We called up Craig Romano, author of more than 20 books on hiking in the greater Washington area—including the recent Urban Trails Seattle and Urban Trails East Side—to ask for his favorite, lesser known hikes within 75 miles of downtown. Here’s what he picked.