Customer Reviews

Hiking the Bob Marshall Country (FalconGuide)

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

 

 

If you are planning a trip to the Bob Marshall you will do yourself a great favor by purchasing this book, then wrapping it in a zip-lock bag for your journey. The book provides a comprehensive overview of every trail in the Wilderness area. It gives a succinct synopsis of each trail by describing level of difficulty, frequency of maintenance, and elevation change. The book further describes the ecosystem that you are hiking thru and assists you in understanding the bio-diversity of each area. Perhaps most valuable, the book also provides a precsient review of the hazards of each seperate area--and methods of countering these hazards. These hazards include micro-organisms in the water and of course the ever-present grizzly and black Bears. Don't leave home without it!

Erik Molvar has written numerous hiking guides for Falcon; this one is probably his magnum opus. Comprehensive and thoroughly researched, it's replete with natural history notes as well as hike descriptions and directions to trailheads.

The sheer size of the Bob Marshall Complex presents a particular challenge to a would-be author of a hiking guide, namely, how to encompass its breadth without making every hike a hundred miles in length. Molvar's solution is to segregate particular sections of trail into hikes whose starting and ending points lie conveniently at or near the junctions of other trails, which he in turn describes in other hikes. You can thus piece them together to create trips of your own design. He also includes side trips (such as to summits in the interior) and numerous day hikes along the margins and boundaries of the Bob.

Appendices include segmented mileages of trunk trails that provide access to more remote portions of the wilderness (I appreciate the meticulous mileage notes throughout the book), and descriptions of several classic extended trips such as Spotted Bear to Benchmark and Benchmark to Holland Lake. Also covered are hikes in adjoining roadless areas (such as the Rocky Mountain Front and Jewel Basin) that lie outside the wilderness proper.

Molvar has seemingly tromped every mile of the places he describes. Buy this book and follow in his footsteps.

If you really want to know about trails in The Bob Marshall Wilderness area this is covers the most important trails. The hike descriptions and profiles are quite helpful in planning a trek. I have used this book a few times although it is a bit heavy to carry on the trail. Use it to plan and take a copy of the hikes needed to cover your trek.

This book is ok, and with some work you can put together a long backpack of your liking. But if it had an "overview" map showing the trail network for an region the task would be much easier. Right now only have little maps, you need to look at a number of these small maps to see different options for loops.

[ASIN:1560447982 Hiking Montana's Bob Marshall Wilderness] gives a lot of information, but does not help you with designing your hike unless you have a good Forest Service Map of the Bob Marshall Complex. The details of setting up hikes were left out on purpose so there would not be overuse of certain trails.

This book needs better locator maps for the trails. In order to map out a hike I was searching back and forth for the next trail section. It would be much easier to follow if each map had a locator map on the intro page to help you know where to look.

This a great guide book. I would have liked if it had a color pictures instead of black and white but that also helps it lower the cost of the text. He goes into great detail, which can be distracting if you are just wanting to see the big picture. Overall, great text!

I was definitely disappointed in this book as I had expected to have it provide more information on the Continental Divide Trail in the Bob Marshall wilderness. The trail descriptions were difficult to follow without a detailed map in hand to keep track of where you were. For some reason Mr. Molvar was reluctant to identify the trails as being a part of the Continental Divide Trail. I never found any trail he described that I knew for a fact was on the CDT that he so identified. Consquently the book was not of a great deal of value to me, as I had hoped to use it to plan a CDT hike.