Customer Reviews

Foghorn Outdoors: Easy Biking in Northern California

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This is a useful book for any cyclist, but especially for people who want a nice easy ride. It covers scenic routes in Northern California including in the Tahoe, SF Bay, Foothills, Mt. Shasta area and several others. Each ride is given a brief description, a difficulty rating, distance, approximate time to complete and a rating of the steepness. There are pictures and maps here and there, but there could be more. If you enjoy scenic bike rides that are relatively short, you will get a lot of use out of this book. However, many of the areas have changed rapidly over the last few years and you may find the rides somewhat different than what you expected. I know it's difficult to keep up with progress in California, but I think the author tends to be overly optimistic and doesn't mention some of the hassles in various areas caused by building, new growth, etc. If you don't live in CA, this might be a problem if you are planning a vacation around various biking tours.

We have both from this author - guides for finding easy biking and hiking trails. 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!

Tom Stienstra has written many excellent outdoor guidebooks, and my favorite is "California Camping" which I use all the time. It's fantastic! But just so you know, he didn't write the book, "Easy Biking in Northern California," though I wish he did because his writing style is one-of-a-kind, and his books are always award winners.