Customer Reviews

Hiking Shenandoah National Park

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

 

 

NOTICE READERS OF THESE REVIEWS:
seems the reviews for the 1998 edition is the same reviews for the 3rd edition (Jan'06), I'm sure there's been updates and corrections in the past 8 years. (different ISBN numbers)
more comments added 9-27-2006:
I'm beginning to appreciate this book the more I use it.
Table of contents lists all the hikes in order of MilePost on Skyline Dr.
Each Hike # has the Milepost at starting Trailhead, difficulty, traffic,
and other useful info. Then a description of the hike, a graph chart of
the Topo vertical change, and signicant 'encounters' broken down to .01
of a mile. and of course a "Trail Map"
But wait there's more: Dont overlook the APPENDIX in the back,
where each hike is categorized by difficulty (Easy, Moderate, Strenuous)
and by type (Views and Waterfalls). SO, in my case, instead of reading
every single hike in order, I jumped to the Appendix and planned
all my Waterfalls hikes.
Aug'06
I have the 3rd edition, and it helps fill-in the gaps to the waterfalls books of virgina I bought. I like hiking to waterfalls, and this book adds more hiking details, than the waterfalls books.
Any one interested in hiking trails in SNP, can also access the National park service web page and choose Shenandoah and they have trail "maps".

This book offers literally dozens of hikes throughout the Shenandoah National Park. We bought it -- at Shenandoah -- for that exact reason. We had gone out casually hiking on our own, without guides, and wanted book so that we could plan hikes better, and hike to some of the falls in the park.

Our first foray into the Shenandoah with the book as our guide was to Rose River Falls, pp. 86. This is a 4 mile, moderate hike, in a loop. Essentially, you drive to mile 49, park, cross the street, and walk a mile or so, and there the loop is for you to hike.

Or so the book says. It turns out that this is not the case at all. It describes a sharp right at a blue blaze. The first blue blaze, which is on your right, is also a right turn. It is not the correct right turn. In fact, it takes you to Shenandoah's Dark Falls, which are very popular. However, they also constitute -- only the trip up, mind you, which is where this inaccuracy deposits you -- a 'strenuous' hike. We hike one weekend a month, sometimes 3 weekends a month. We live in the area.

Our second foray, again using the book, was this time much better prepared. I brought with us a pedometer and a compass. We calibrated them before leaving, and set out on our hike. This time was for the Hawksbill Summit (pp. 84). Drive to mile 46, park, walk 100 yards, make a left at the white slashes, and proceed along the AT through the loop.

This did not happen. As it turns out, we hiked a full thousand feet (that is, 333 yards), and did not see a single white blaze. Nor a single white slash. We walked back down the path, and had a look. We had not, I am sad to say, missed anything. There are no slashes within a thousand feet of the road. There is no fork to the left, to the right, or anything. As it turns out, this time, we were presented with a sign from the park service. The turn on to the Hawksbill trail is .4 miles from the road. That's twice what we walked, 2,000 feet. Somehow the author of the book managed to confuse "100 yards" and "700 yards".

This is simply inexcusable. Hikers can get (and do get, as it turns out) lost due to this horrendously inaccurate information. I'm not sure what the other reviewers were hiking, but our luck (0 for 2) has been abysmal. We're getting another guide, and we're not going to trust that one without a GPS.

Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.

Two stars given because it does include almost every trail in the park -- you'll just have to get another book if you want to hike them.

I've had very good luck with the older edition of this book. In fact, I bought it a while ago. I've enjoyed it enough that I wanted to review it and Amazon.com seemed like a good place.

Thus far I've been on five of the hikes, the shortest being about six miles with most in the nine to ten mile range. I've hiked almost forty miles in the last six weeks with no problems.

It might be a bit elementary for an experienced hiker, though. The topographic profiles are very, very general, so if that bothers you, then it might not be the book for you. The maps are obviously simplified, if it shows one switchback, then you might encounter eight on the actual trail. More exact information can be found in the text.

Hey, if you're a serious hiker, then you're going to have a "real" map, anyway. Although, I will admit to leaving with this book as my only guide. Zero trouble. I always stick to the path, never improvise, check the book often, follow signs, and use common sense.

There are plenty of overly complicated, wordy hiking books out there with overly busy maps that many day hikers find intimidating. A relative was showing me two such books this weekend. The maps were very detailed, but hard to read. Route summaries were pages and pages. For those reasons, she's never used any of them.

I'm not looking to plan my own route or backpack the AT. I want to have a good time, go at a moderate pace, and follow the hike as described. I want to know where the trails are, the route, the landmarks, and the general lay of the land. This book gives it to me. It's easy to read, easy to understand and laid out very logically.

I bought this book with my girlfriend about two years ago and we've done three hikes in the book... all of them of the 'strenuous' variety ranging from 7.5 to 10.0 mile hikes. This past weekend we did the Cedar Run/Whiteoak Canyon hike... nine waterfalls (it seemed like more) and what a wonderful hike it was.

The book is very well organized. It has all of the pertinent information about what to expect on the hike and gives highlights of things that you'll come across (and the approximate mile marker that you can expect to find them). The information includes, Skyline Dr mile marker to find the trail head, length of hike, difficulty of hike, vertical elevation, a map of the hike that includes some geographical information, a vertical elevation map that includes the mileage markers, a short mileage marker summary of the hike, and a descriptive page that takes you through every step of the hike.

Now, the only thing I've found wrong with this book is that some of the names of the trails aren't as advertised. For instance, this weekend on the Whiteoak Canyon Trail, at First Falls it told us to cross a foot bridge and continue on the Whiteoak Fire Rd, but the cement post did not advertise the Whiteoak Fire Rd. Using the trail map provided in the book and a sense of direction, we found the road, but still weren't sure if we were on the right trail, since we did find a marker for the road until we made the turn back to the trail head (about 1.7 miles of hiking).

We experienced similar problems on the other hikes we did, but that was the worst of it. With all of the information provided in the book, even if the written directions are a little fuzzy, the maps and additional information will keep you on the right track.

If you don't make this your main book for hiking SNP, I would definitely have it handy to plan trips and recommend it to anyone who likes to hike.

I bought this book on a spotaneous day trip to SNP. I had planned to hike one of the few trails I knew about in the area and stopped at a wayside to look throught the books to get more info on the trail or even consider an alternative. I discovered this book in the store and was suprised to know that there are so many good trails in the park. I think most people are only aware of the most popular trails and this guides has many alternatives. So far I have tried 2 of the trails listed and the descriptions and maps were excellent and accurate. Most importantly this book has informed me of many new trails within 2 hours of where of live that I had not been aware of. The descriptions of the trails provide me with great information to decide which ones I want to try. I expect that this guide will be very useful for many years to come.

I have been day-hiking in Shenandoah NP for 4 years now, and I find this guide indispensable.

I find one of previous reviewers' comments odd - this book provides very detailed TOPO maps plus elevation profiles for each hike, what more can one ask for? Also, what can one possibly want from "illustrations"? Sure, the pictures are not that great, but this is a hiking guide! You should actually use it on the trails ... unless one is an "armchair hiker".

I know a book like this cannot cover every trail in the park, but some omissions I find hard to dismiss. For example, it has Mary's Rock, Buck Hollow and Hazel Falls trails (all on one map no less), but it omitted Meadow Spring trail, which starts from the same place as Buck Hollow and Hazel Falls trails, cuts to the AT, then leads to Mary's Rock summit. It is shorter and less steep than Mary's Rock trail in the book (which starts from Panorama). In my opinion this is one of the most delightful trails in the park, along the way you can see burnt tree trunks, apparently from previous forest fires and a ruin of a fireplace and chimney, most certainly remnants of the mountain men's dwellings, not to mention it also leads to the same breath-taking view of Mary's Rock. It being only 1.3 miles long and returns to the same place where the other two trails start leaves ample time for one to pick one of those to complete a day's hike. This trail is not found in the Best Easy Day Hikes either, while the other Mary's Rock trail appears in both books, this is just one of the omissions hard to dismiss.

Overall though, I like this book and would highly recommend it to those who want to go out and hike the park.

I liked the organization of this book, and I really liked the way they organized the hikes in the appendix, listing them by difficulty, time to hike, with children etc.

That said, the actual descriptions were ok, and the maps and illustrations were very poor.

I would not recommend this book at all. There are better books on this topic for a few bucks more.

I generally like the Falcon guides and this one, while not their strongest effort, is not bad. It covers the Park from top to bottom and offers the usual Falcon blend of easy to read but over-simplified maps, helpful elevation gain graphs and informative trail directions. But, because this is Shenandoah National Park, I cannot help but compare the 'one size fits all' format of the Falcon guide to the best hiking guide ever written: Henry Heatwole's Guide to Skyline Drive and Shenandoah National Park (Bulletin / Shenandoah Natural History Association). Heatwole's book is out of date -- the resources needed to keep publishing updated versions simply weren't there after he passed away. But it was never meant to be a way to make a lot of money. Heatwole simply loved the Park and its trails and he poured that love into each page (he did each map, for instance, by hand). After using Heatwole for years, the Falcon guide is like synthetic crabmeat. It's ok, but it sure isn't crab. So here is the good news. Heatwole's guide has been so missed that volunteers, working with the Park Service, have issued an updated virtual version on the web: [...]

You might want to try that first, then come back here if you're still hungry.

This book is a great companion for anyone hiking in Shenandoah. Each hike gives a very accurate description of the trail along with the degree of difficulty and elevation changes.