Customer Reviews

Best Hikes with Children in Colorado

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

 

 

I've lived in Colorado for over 20 years and have rarely taken advantage of the natural beauty. Now with four children, I'm anxious to show them our "backyard" and use the opportunity to teach them about nature, responsibility as well as getting exercise.

Since I am not very experienced, I looked for some resource to recommend trails for hikes with children ages newborn to 7 years. I settled on this book after seeing trails I was familiar with and agreeing with the descriptions.

I find it helpful that the author points out interesting features to help educate your family. For instance, on one trail, there is descriptions of a water pipeline to place your hands on and feel the water rushing through, abandoned cabins, train tracks and so forth that can make hiking interesting and with something to look forward too.

The icons for each trail are also helpful for quick trail difficulty, seasons and trail features. Some trails are marked for handicapped (which is useful for strollers too).

The maps are helpful for planning and evaluating the trails. However, I would recommend getting a proper topographical map for actual hiking. The book is thick stock and is not easy to keep open if you are constantly using it for reference when hiking.

I plan to use this book often this summer to find local locations to take me children hiking.

We just got back from Colorado with our 3 boys ages 12, 9,and 6 years. This book was indispensible for all of our hikes. It did a great job of providing us with difficulty, length, and locations of the various trailheads. Moreover, it was super in providing fun information regarding points of interest along the hike -- made the hikes more fun for all of us. I highly recommend this book for anyone traveling to Colorado -- great even if you don't have kids!!!

I am so glad we purchased this book. There are lots of great hikes that we never would have found otherwise. While we love living here in Colorado, we love it even more because of all of the beautiful areas we have discovered as a result of using this book. Our whole family (our kids are quite young) has enjoyed every hike we have been on. The book is very detailed, easy to use and easy to read.

My husband and I received this book as a gift when our daughter was primarily "hiking" in a backpack-carrier. Now our daughter is four and we have a second little one riding in the carrier. We have really enjoyed the hikes in this book. We've stuck with the easy ones (rated with a single boot) so far, but we've found the information in the book to be mostly accurate and helpful. Some of the entries are a little out of date. For example, I was at the Matthews Winters park today and found out that the loop described in the book is now a mountain bikes only trail, but I don't think it's reasonable or realistic to rely entirely on one guidebook for all the information about a hike. As far as abilities go, kids' abilities vary a lot (even from day to day!) and we've used this book to successfully pick trails with turn-around points that give us the option of taking it easy when we need to. We think this book is excellent. If there is a new edition out before we move on the the triple-boot hikes we will definitely get it, but if not we'll probably be happy to keep using this edition.

I got this actually for not just my daughter, but for my husband, too! We love it. The only thing keeping me from giving it 5 stars is that it needs more maps. Maps to the parking sites, instead of just written directions, which aren't always crystal clear (although these are good, I just can't read in the car without getting a headache). And the hike ratings are a bit useless - I wanted to follow an "easy" rated hike to get everyone started, but we couldn't find that particular trailhead (there were about five or six labeled trails near the parking, so that was no big deal), but we ended up on one rated "medium" (with a square) and it was really easy. My daughter is just six, so maybe those ratings were for 3-4 yr. olds? Either way, it doesn't say.

But those are my only gripes. It's a great get out and see Colorado book for kids and parents, and I love the "essentials" list!

We recently moved to Colorado and wanted to find things to do in the area. This was a great resource to give us the inside information to several places to hike with children. Book notes the skill level and what type of path will be encountered.

Good book for parents and grandparents. Trail ratings are a good place to start, but age can make big differences. You don't want to be carrying your youngest down from Lower Mohawk lake. Teaching points aren't bad, but sometimes could be pumped up with more details.