Customer Reviews

Hiking Nevada

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

 

 

First, I have to say I'm a huge fan of the Falcon series, and have about two dozen of their books (conservatively!) that I have used with much success in Montana, Colorado, California, Oregon, Idaho, Arizona and Utah. Usually I would give all of the falcon books four or five stars, as they are some of the best hiking companions on the market.

However, this one looks and feels like a pirated Falcon book. Its thin size is the first indication that something may be amiss - it's a very slim book of about 190 pages.

Let me start with trailheads - you're on your own. Well, OK, there are usually some generalized ones that have (what I assume are) mostly correct directions, but distances are omitted, and without investing in a DeLorme mondo-book of Nevada, the odds of getting lost are much higher than they should be.

Next, the book boasts 80 trails - hey, that's pretty good for the Silver state, right, which is (sadly) not usually thought of as a good backpacking destination. However, there really are only a handful of actual hike sites - most are clustered in State parks and feature numerous, small hikes. The exception is the 67 mile Toiyabe crest trail, which, despite its length, gives you exactly four mountains to serve as landmarks for the distance.

Additionally, the pictures and trail descriptions are horribly uninspiring (often blurry and overdeveloped in the pictures, and sadly lacking depth in description). My only real conclusion is that Bruce Grubbs wrote this book to fill a gap in the Falcon Guides with the implicit goal of discouraging any and all backpacking in the state. It certainly did a good job of that - as I could not find any trails that I could put my faith in in this book on a recent trip to Vegas, I skipped the state entirely and hit Zion and Bryce Canyons (which Falcon has an excellent guidebook for).

I used this book in the Las Vegas area in January. It was not very useful. The information given was marginal and years out of date.