Customer Reviews

Easy Hiking in Northern California, 1996-97: 100 Places You Can Hike This Weekend

5 star:		(4)
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I bought this book after our daughter was born, to serve as a guide to the great outdoors. The book delivered on its promise, we went on two or three hikes in Yosemite valley with our 3 year old daughter. The descriptions in the book helped us pick the hikes and the directions to the trailhead were very helpful. I have also tried several hikes in the San Franciso bay area and always found the directions to reach the trailhead very helpful.

Have you ever wanted to explore an isolated beach, or walk among towering redwoods, or experience a close encounter with wild tule elk? These things are within the realm of just about any fit person, and with far less effort than one might imagine. Ann Marie Brown's 'Easy Hiking in Northern California' is just that; a guide to fabulous wilderness experiences with minimal effort.

This book has a lot to recommend it. Ms. Brown divides Northern California into 8 separate sections and describes numerous hikes in each area. In addition to local history and natural features, Brown also provides careful directions to each trailhead and a detailed description of the route. Lots of black and white photographs accentuate the text and give the reader an idea of what to expect. An "options" heading describes how readers can further explore the trailhead area.

I just love this approach to hiking. The vast majority of trails in this guide are one to three miles long. If you want more of a workout, you can usually combine two or more of the 111 trips listed in a day. On a recent visit to Point Reyes National Seashore, I planned my day around this book. I have no regrets. My vacation was wonderful and this book will be my first resource on other trips to Northern California.

Me and my family love to hike and evey weekend we are always trying out new places. When trying out new trails we had no idea what to expect. But now with this book we are able to find great trails with beautiful backdrops, and have a good idea of whats instore for us. We always have a good idea where we are going for the weekend and we know what to expect. I hope this book will help you as much as it has helped me and my family.

We love to hike and found this book to be fun and easy to read. The directions to the hikes are very precise and clear. We just bought the book and have already gone on three of the hikes.

We have both guides for finding easy biking and hiking trails, from this same author. My guy has a bad back, so we have to plan ahead to make sure we don't over-stress his back when we're on an outing - and these guidebooks are great - the trails are rated according to distance between trailheads (and from parking to trailhead), trail terrain (e.g. paved vs dirt), and changes in elevation -- all the important factors for us to consider whether a given trail is right for us on any given day. Kudos to the author (our only request is that the author keep going with this great idea and rate similar trails throughout the whole country, and heck, why not the whole planet?). thanks!