Customer Reviews

Hiking Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Parks, 3rd: A Guide to More Than 60 of the Area's Greatest Hiking Adventures (Regional Hiking Series)

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Hiking Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Parks, 3rd: A Guide to More Than 60 of the Area's Greatest Hiking Adventures (Regional Hiking Series)

We owned the "Revised" edition of this book, and misplaced or loaned it. When we started thinking about next year's hike, we searched high and low and realized we couldn't do it without this book! We went to the bookstore and purchased what we THOUGHT was the same book. WRONG! We purchased the 3RD EDITION, and it just was NOT the same! The index is about half as thorough. The real disappointment, though is that the elevation profile charts have been removed. They were invaluable in the revised edition. The 3rd edition has added some neat GPS compatible maps if that's important to you, but we'd gladly trade them for the Elevation profile charts.

We took the 3rd edition right back to the bookstore. Luckily, we were able to find a revised edition on Amazon Marketplace for half the price!

This edition is not what it used to be. Gone are the elevation profiles and maps that are easy to read and contained on a single page. Now you get maps that may be GPS enabled but they don't align across pages at all. Without the elevation profiles you don't have any idea of the hike, what gives?? If you can get your hands on an earlier edition do it and forget the new one.

I used this, along with Best Easy Day Hikes to plan a trip to Glacier. I wouldn't necessarily use it as the only reference guide, but it was a good start and was helpful for mileage and difficulty ratings for each trail. I also generally do quite a bit of research for my trips on the internet. This did come in handy one day we were trying to fill an afternoon with a shorter hike, though. It was good to have more detailed information about each trail to assist in that decision.

One thing to be warned about at Glacier - especially if you go early in the season (we went 1st week of July)- information from Rangers is not always accurate or up to date. We were told several trails were closed due to snow that we found out too late weren't. We missed one very good hike due to this. We also were told the Highline trail would only take us a couple of hours. When we got to Granite Park Chalet (4.5 hours later) we found out the trail generally takes at least 4 hours. You will want to add in time for picture taking and possible traffic jams (by mountain goats and such) and if you go early in the season, crossing of snow fields. We also found out that several people were advised not to hike the Highline when we did due to some dangerous snow fields (narrow trail covered in slick snow with a sure to be dead drop off if you should slip). I guess my suggestion would be to ask several people instead of relying on advice from just one. It is a beautiful park that everyone should see once - I would recommend the Highline, Swiftcurrent, and Hidden Lake trails.

Glacier National Park is for hikers. The drive-through approach along the historic and spectacular Going to the Sun Highway is wonderful and memorable (and can be done with the efficient shuttle system), but the real action is provided by getting into the backcountry. It is truly the "last best place"!

We have been visiting the Park every year since 1974, and this guide has become our trusted advisor for planning day hikes and overnight trips. During the summer, a copy is kept at our bedside in order to plan new ventures. Glacier can be a challenging park to hike with rapid weather changes and highly varied terrain. We view this guide as important to survival as gore tex, first aid, water bottles and broken-in footwear.

I do a lot of hiking in the national parks and rely on Falcon Guides for good trail information. I have the first edition of the Glacier/Waterton guide so I thought I would get the latest edition for a recent trip. I still like this edition, but I agree with some other reviewers that there are some disappointments. Gone are the elevation profiles (which give you a snapshot of the gain and loss for the hike). As also mentioned, now several trails are combined on one map (GPS-compatible). That actually proves useful when several trails are part of a larger trail system (e.g., the Grinnell Complex), but this can be confusing for other trails (not to mention a little harder to find the maps for individual trails).

The first edition didn't have an index, so having one here is a plus (even if, as someone else mentioned, it's not as good as the second edition's). The third edition also has a nice trail comparison (though it should have distances) indicating which trails have waterfalls, lakes, meadows, etc. This edition also has several more pages of general information than the first edition, and descriptions of two additional trails. Although most of the trail descriptions seem to be the same as the first edition, the pictures accompanying them are new (though still not that great because they are in black and white).

On the whole, I recommend this book if you don't have an earlier edition. If you have the first or second edition you can probably get by with them if you also check other sources for updated park information (such as the free shuttle on the Going-to-the-Sun Road).

After using Falcon's Yellowstone guidebook to successfully plan and hike a 75-mile route through Yellowstone last year, I assumed that this book would be equally useful for planning our upcoming Glacier backpacking trip. I was wrong. This book is oriented almost entirely to casual dayhikes plus a few overnighters. There is one small section in the back of the book relegated to "extended trips," with one or two paragraphs at most describing the longer treks that most backpackers are interested in. There is a complete lack of mileage data, elevation profiles, and detailed "trail beta" that I had hoped to find.

Don't use this book to plan a backpacking trip that's more than an overnight trip! C'mon Falcon, let's get some real useful data in here so it can be used to actually plan a trip longer than 2 days!

Worth buying, but the pictures aren't great. Also, much of the information is subject to weather so you might be better off just calling the visitor center/ranger station. Good book though if you already have trails in mind and just want some more information/maps.

very good from what i've seen so far. i would have liked to have the approximate time of the hike included.

I bought moon glacier and this book. I found that this book is useless because moon glacier covers a lot of good trails this book covers, and moon has other information. I think this book might be good for backcountry not for a day hike.

Simple trails and middle length trails are listed in moon glacier, and this book doesn't provide any other useful information about trails. The map is still not very clear. This book does list some very long trails, but usually you can search on internet to find this kind of information and even more specific.

I definitely would not recommend this book. Buy moon glacier instead!

Went went on several hikes listed in the book in a recent trip to Glacier. It is pretty informative, but there were a couple of shortcomings. The description for the location of trailheads could have been a little better and the description of some of the hikes we went on were a little vague. Overall, still a good book and would recommend to anyone wanting to hike in Glacier.