Customer Reviews

Hiking New Mexico (Falcon Guide)

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

 

 

This is your typical Falcon book. It does give you a good overview of many popular (and a few obscure) hikes in the state -but with info and maps that sometimes are lacking. And of course, the size of NM and its numerous wilderness oppurtunities makes this or any hiking book attempting to cover the whole state rather ambitious. This is a general guide by neccessity.

If you know what area of NM you would like to concentrate your exploring in, I would recommend one of the area specific Falcon guides (Gila, Carlsbad, Aldo Leopold, etc) or a book by a different publisher instead of this overview. These other books offer a lot more detail and don't have to skip popular and obvious localized hikes for a lack of space.

I consider myself adept at reading maps and directions (what guy doesn't think that?) but I found some of the directions and maps in the book to be overly simplified or outdated. (As compared to "100 Hikes in New Mexico" - which is a better generalized guide). I particularly ran into this with the trails described in the White Mt. Wilderness. This also re-taught me that no guide book is no substitute for a good trail map if an extended backpacking trip is planned.

After these critiques of the book, I do have to say it is a strong general guide in many ways that will give you a decent overview of NM hiking oppurtunities. The author's descriptions of trail difficulties are accurate and reasonable and the elevation charts in Falcon guides are very helpful. Aside from the instance mentioned above - the general descriptions of the hikes and the directions to the trailheads tend to be accurate.

I found this book to be very useful.

I particularly liked the start of each hike information- This helps me to decide in a quick second whether I want to read the rest of the information and consider this hike or not. The information includes the level of difficulty, location, attractions, maps to get, and other important information. The maps were very useful in determining starting points and ending points for planning purposes.

I found that the level of difficulty was accurate. This is very important to me because I'm a non hiker to very easy type of hiker.

My only comment would be that many of the pictures didn't add to the text and could have been left out.

This was a good overview of available hikes in NM. We used it for several different hikes on a 1 week hiking trip near Santa Fe. There was only one hike that we found to be a little confusing in the description...leading us a small distance down an incorrect trail cut-off. But when we re-read the description after following the correct trail it seemed much clearer, so this could have been more our fault than the book. Definitely better than the many NM trip books I viewed in the bookstore prior to ordering this one!

This book is becoming outdated. Written 1998 and is therefore 10 years old. Needs to be updated ASAP!

This publication was my first purchase on the subject. Laurence Parent gives you a good detailed trail description. The maps though are poor. A problem with most Falcon Guides. For the casual day hiker this book will do, for the explorer, I would look for another book.