Customer Reviews

Hiking Colorado's Weminuche and South San Juan Wilderness Areas, 2nd (Regional Hiking Series)

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"Hiking Colorado's Weminuche and South San Juan Wilderness Areas" guidebook is both a revision and an expansion of the author's previous book "Hiking Colorado's Weminuche Wilderness," first published in 1999. This new 2005 guidebook now includes one of Colorado's least visited wildernesses, the South San Juan. A pristine place, just like the Weminuche Wilderness, the two wilderness areas almost connect at Wolf Creek Pass. The South San Juan wilderness is the site where the last known grizzly bear in Colorado was killed in 1979.

The guidebook has the latest trail information, a new trail map format, and now GPS readings at important way points. The guide contains 57 hikes; 35 hikes in Weminuche and 22 hikes in the South San Juan. The Weminuche section covers 662 miles of hikes and the South San Juan covers 224 miles of hikes, giving the user 886 miles of trail descriptions. The back of the book contains a trail finder guide to aid the user in selecting a hike.

This guidebook is without a doubt the best guidebook out there covering the Weminuche and South San Juan Wildernesses. I highly recommend this guide.

The 2nd edition hiking guide is an amazing book, showing both 2D trail maps and elevation guides. The descriptions tell what obstacles on the trail as well as previewing what sites to look for.

Great book for planning a backpacking trip. Directions to hikes are right on the mark with excellent details. Many good hikes - combine this with National Geographic Map #140 and you can put together a nice trip.

Highly Recommended.

This book is absolutely perfect for our purpose. We are just beginning to explore the Weminuche and San Juan area and find this book to provide all the information we need. Each hike has a thorough description of how to get to it, what to expect, specific things to look for, etc. Especially useful to us is the elevation profile provided to show the steepness of the climb and where in the hike to expect it. I am not a super experienced wilderness mountain man who spends his life backpacking around the continental divide, but for the average hiker / backpacker, I cannot imagine a more informational reference.

I used this book recently on my trip to San Juan Skyway and sampled 2 of the trails (Highland Mary Lakes and Red Lakes). In general, this book is excellent as it gives an overview of the trail as well as description of what you would expect from hiking on both of these trails. However, the description of the trails could be a little better, in the case for Highland Mary Lake trail (both the description for the start of the trail and the trail itself aren't very clear), and a few more photos along each route will help a lot with what to expect on the trails. This book is good for an overview but probably need a more detailed map for each of the trails.

The book is well organinzed, though an index would be helpful, and all descriptions are well and clearly written. It has good information on various trail hikes, but if you're looking for guidance reaching some of the higher mountains in Weminuche, this is not the right resource. It doesn't make an attempt to provide that information.