Customer Reviews

Afoot and Afield: Denver/Boulder and Colorado's Front Range: A Comprehensive Hiking Guide

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have a bookcase full of books on hiking in Colorado. But when I'm looking to choose a hike, this is the first book I grab out of my stuffed bookcase. Why? It has a lot of variety to it: nearby hikes and hikes a bit of a drive away; challenging hikes and easy hikes; popular hikes and those off the beaten trail a bit. The descriptions are perfect. You know what to expect before you get there (so you can select hikes that fit your companions' abilities) and the directions are easy to understand and follow. This is the best hiking book I've ever owned. That's why I've bought it as a gift for others. I highly recommend it.

an excellent, nearly thorough guide to hiking in Fort Collins, Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, southern Wyoming, and various points west. Apt is a superb writer and clearly a lover of nature rather than someone out to prove his ultra-fitness or mountaineering expertise -- a large number of the hikes are very modest outings suitable for young children or the elderly.

Just one major criticism: some strange inclusions and exclusions for a book with Denver/Boulder in the title. A number of hikes in Steamboat Springs and Wyoming are included, for instance -- both are a very sizable drive from anywhere on the Colorado front range except perhaps Fort Collins. Yet some truly awesome and popular hikes much closer to Denver/Boulder are excluded: 4th of July trailhead hikes west of Boulder are an especially glaring omission, as some of the most spectacular hiking in the country originates there. (Perhaps Apt wants to keep that increasingly popular area as much of a secret as possible.) Another strange omission, given Apt's somewhat Fort Collins-centric approach, are any of the trails in the main part of State Forest west of Fort Collins: anything north of route 14.

Fans of Alan Apt's "Snowshoe Routes - Colorado's Front Range" will be anxious to see his latest accounting of the best outdoors adventures that Colorado has to offer. The book contains all of the great hikes in Colorado and many enticing but lesser-known ones as well. The author is a stickler for detail and provides comprehensive information and coherent maps for every described trail. If you could only have one Colorado hiking book, it would be hard to find a better one.

I loved this book. The Afoot and Afield series is a great series, and this is one of the best books in the series. The author is obviously somebody who has spent many, many hours "afoot in the field," and this book is like having a happy, knowledgeable, easy to be with hiking companion. Well worth the price. Well worth picking up and keeping for many, many hours of hiking pleasure. I hike a lot, and this book has added depth and feeling and expertise to my outings. I really liked it. Appreciate its details and overviews. I can highly recommend it.

Most of the hikes listed are not in the Denver area. Very few county "open space" hikes, for example. So this is not the book to buy if you are looking for good hikes close in to Denver. There is a good selection of Boulder area hikes.

If you're a hiker/walker/trekker/explorer and just love to be in the great outdoors, you'll love this book on Colorado trails.

I've been an outdoor guide for the past thirty years and have led people on trips in more than 30 areas around the world. It's important for me to have a trail guide that's accurate, concise and informative. Alan Apt's book is all of that and more. If you've always wanted to explore some of Colorado's many outstanding outdoor areas, you'll want this book for your library!

Alan Apt's latest trail guide makes a good armchair companion during the winter months. Being an avid hiker but over 70 years old, I'm sometimes asked to take other senior citizens on hikes and Apt's trail descriptions have already given me a half dozen new destinations. Clear writing, excellent details and a little touch of humor now and then make this a favorite of mine for evening browsing and wishing.

I would have given this book a 5 star review if the author bothered to include an overall map for each of the sections. Great descriptions of trails, good general info, but what a pain in the neck to use for someone who has no idea how much of a driving distance it is between various trailheads for routes described here.

So, as we are planning a week long camping trip, planning to split the time between 2 campgrounds, each of those with convenient access to moderate to challenging routes, I have to stare at the trail map, try to figure out the nearest road on the map, locate it in google earth, pin it, then go back to the book, get the next interesting route 'nearby', repeat and so on. We want to do lots of hiking and little driving - especially considering the recommendation to leave very early and turn around by 11.30. Thank god the campground book has a general map - overlaying that one over my google earth creation is relatively simple.

Bottom line - if you live in Colorado, you should have no problem using this book. But if you are coming from elsewhere, get ready for lots of map research - more than necessary!

Afoot & Afield is a great find for a transplant to CO. The descriptions of the trails and the maps are right on. This book is just as accurate as the trail guides but out by the AMC in New England The difficulty of the trails and length of time to take the hikes were very accurate a great feature. I have come out of the woods well after dark because of some misinformation.
A stranger in a strange land.

This book gives very good descriptions of hikes and parks which we found useful. One very big gripe though. We drove from the Nashville area to Colorado for one of those big trip-of-a-lifetime trips, pulled the camper and wrangled the dog all the way out there. Did our homework and planned the trip to a tee. It all came off great until we got to Roxborough State Park, right outside of Littleton, which this book describes as allowing dogs on leash. When we tried to enter the park, they turned us away because we have a dog. When we asked if we could enter and keep him in the truck, the answer was a big no. They said they had heard of this book and contacted the publisher, but it's still not corrected. They said the park has always had this rule.

That's a big error for a travel book, especially one that describes destinations where travelers will tend to travel long distances to visit, and plan entire days (those precious few vacation days 1200 miles from home!) according to its guidance.

Author and publisher deserve a black eye for this not being corrected yet. How many other errors are in this book? This is the only one we found, and this is the only park to which we referred in this particular book. Unfortunately I will not have the confidence to use this book in the future without doing thorough fact-checking, but I'd rather just buy another book.