Colorado Summit Hikes for Everyone (Colorado Mountain Club Classics) [Paperback]

Dave Muller (Author), Colorado Mountain Club (Author), Will Gadd (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2003 | Series: Colorado Mountain Club Classics

From world-renowned Rocky Mountain National Park in the north to the magnificent San Juans in the southwest, from the famed peaks above Aspen to the remote tops of the Sangre de Cristos, no other state offers so many summits to reach or such spectacular alpine hiking as Colorado. Here you'll find everything you need to enjoy the best summit hikes that the state has to offer: accurate access and route descriptions, must-have color maps and elevation profiles, equipment checklists, safety tips and a full-featured index. Dozens of informative side-bars, on everything from history and nature to tilts un photography and "fun facts," add to an enjoyable hiking experience. One of the great pleasures of reaching a summit is, of course, the great views to be enjoyed. That is why we include Great View, an easy-to-use system that identifies all the peaks within view, from your summit. Color-coded symbols make it quick to find the, hike that's right for you, including difficulty ratings at all levels, and special hikes for wildlife viewing, for families or persons with disabilities, or for people with dogs.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dave Muller has been living and hiking in Colorado for over thirty years. He is has written a weekly hiking and backcountry skiing column for the Denver Post for fourteen years. The Colorado Mountain Club, located in Golden, Colorado, leads over 3,000 outings a year and its Guide to the Colorado Mountains is the best-selling Colorado book of all time.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Colorado Mountain Club Press; Revised edition (October 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0972441336
• ISBN-13: 978-0972441339
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,203,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Have for Those Who Enjoy Summits, July 19, 2009

By 

Eric Kassan (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Colorado Summit Hikes for Everyone (Colorado Mountain Club Classics) (Paperback)

This is a great book of summit hikes ranging in difficulty from fairly trivial (less than a mile round trip, with only a few hundred feet of elevation gain) to very demanding (14 or more miles round trip with over 5,000 feet of elevation gain). I particularly found it useful when I had some time, but not enough for a very challenging hike, and wanted a summit. The map showing where all the hikes are located allows one to easy find one nearby at an appropriate difficulty (which is also a measure of time required).

Among the book's other positive features are good trailhead directions, clear maps, accurate hike descriptions, interesting other tidbits of local history, elevation profiles (a graph showing how much elevation is gained at what distance on the hike), "peak finders" (circles showing what peaks are in which direction when one is standing at the summit), and a decent photo from each hike.

The book could use improvement in a few of areas - adding topographic detail to the maps, updating trailhead information, and removing the misleading estimated times (maybe they were the author's best times, but are very unrealistic for the "everyone" to whom the book is marketed). At least one trailhead where the book said "a regular car can make it this far" I would strongly disagree, unless the driver didn't mind risking damaging it by bottoming it and potentially backsliding. At another trailhead I had to make my way around a chain saying the area was closed. Another minor annoyance was the fact that the maps used the interstate symbol to represent US routes - while US 40 runs through Colorado, I-40 runs quite a bit further south.

Overall, this book has tons of great information (even if some is out of date) that it makes easily accessible. I know it will accompany me on all my future trips to Colorado.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not helpful - rather misleading, August 13, 2007

By 

Detlef H. Palm (Bronxville, New York United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Colorado Summit Hikes for Everyone (Colorado Mountain Club Classics) (Paperback)

We bought is because it dawned on us that not all mountains we may want climb are Fourteeners. The format of the book is very practical - two pages with a map - rather a sketch that you expect to see on the back of an envelope. Muller is much into bushwacking - but for this purpose descriptions can be highly inaccurate and misleading (to add to the list of other reviewer: Hike 7: the mountain was bought by a mining company and hiking was not allowed). To add insult, Muller - who describes himself as an middle aged man with average fitness levels - adds hiking times ("57 minutes up, 33 minutes down") that can be expected from Reinhold Messner at his peak performance, or triathlon gold medalists, and which makes you feel like a pouch potato. His selection of mountains is also very much slanted to the front range. While the book gives some good ideas, rely on other data - including excellent other maps - to complete your pre-hike research.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Outdated , poor choices of location and more bad things, August 2, 2007

By 

Paolo E. Sullam - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Colorado Summit Hikes for Everyone (Colorado Mountain Club Classics) (Paperback)

Here a few examples:

Trail 75 : you can't park where the book says (PRIVATE PROPERTY - NO TRASPASSING) , there is no alternative parking , just a few miles away there is Mount Parnassus (ignored by the book)

In several maps the wrong color is used (maroon and green are reversed)

Trail 72 : the road to the trailhead is VERY DANGEROUS for normal car ( the book says "a regular car can make it" WRONG!)

Trail 70: poor description , better come down via AUDUBON

etc etc etc