Customer Reviews

Hiking Michigan (America's Best Day Hiking)

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Hiking Michigan is a great source to discover all sides of Michigan's outdoors. From Detroit's Urban Waterfront Trail, to the Shiawassee Wildlife Refuge, to remote State Parks on Lake Huron's shoreline, to beautiful and wild inland lakes and waterfalls in the Upper Peninsula, there is much to explore in this great State.

We started off doing the very first area in this book, Drummond Island, and did both described hikes. By the end, I was contemplating chucking the book into the bushes.

At first glance, the book seems like a wealth of information - and it is; very well written geographical descriptions and loads of interesting information about the hiking areas. However, it quickly became apparent that the route descriptions were poor at best and dangerous at worst. The problem seems to lie in two issues. The main issue is that there is no set standard of detail; sometimes the route information will be incredibly detailed ("descend over rocks on a ledge, and enter a meadow briefly..." while there is absolutely never - and I mean never - a mention of direction. "Turn left" and "turn right" instructions abound, while savvy hikers know that this sort of subjective direction can be frustratingly ineffective when not combined with compass notation. One misstep, one misinterpreted junction, can result in hours of wandering around when a simple "turn north" would have worked. The second issue is that the "maps" included are nothing more than dotted lines with very, very little in terms of salient landmarks - no roads, lakes, hills, or other major geographical or artifactual landmarks are included except the occasional square marked "parking" and such.

Perhaps it was just us. It's possible that some people would have no problem using this sort of direction. However, we're experienced hikers; we've backpacked 5-day trips in backcountry Grand Canyon and Sierra Nevadas; we've orienteered through the eastern mountains of Arizona. There are better route descriptions available.

To top it off, the book is huge. Who wants to carry this around?