Lassen Volcanic national park & vicinity [Paperback]

Jeffrey P. Schaffer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1986

Although primarily a comprehensive trail guide to Lassen Park, this book also contains a road log keyed to the roadside markers that signal interesting features within the park, information on the natural history of the area, as well as information on campgrounds, resorts and more. Covers Lassen Park, Caribou and Thousand Lakes wildernesses, Hat Creek Valley and McArthur-Burney Falls State Park. Includes a topographic map that shows the Park and vicinity on one side, and the adjacent wilderness areas on the other.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This comprehensive guide to the trails and roads of the Mt. Lassen area is tailored to a variety of outdoor recreationists--hikers and horse packers, skiers and snowshoers, botanists and bird watchers, sightseers and rock hounds, anglers and hunters. Included is a foldout topographic map.

Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Wilderness Pr; 2nd edition (May 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0899970591
• ISBN-13: 978-0899970592
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,019,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice guide - more than just trails, too, September 2, 2002

By 

Andrew Leonard "Andy L" (Bellevue, WA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Lassen Volcanic national park & vicinity (Paperback)

This book is an encyclopedic guide to the Lassen Volcanic National Park area, including Lassen itself, the Caribou and Thousand Lakes Wildernesses, Hat Creek Valley, and McArthur-Burney Falls State Park.

While the book covers its main focus - hiking trails - more than adequately, it also includes more than one hundred pages about the natural history of the area, road logs for driving in the National Park, descriptions of nature trails, and a decent, removable map of the area. Although the main text is somewhat dated (1981), a helpful six-page update from 1999 is included. All this information does make the book a little bulky for hiking or backpacking, so photocopy the pages you'll need before you hit the trail. (And remember that big guidebooks with lots of information are better than those that don't have enough!)

The only criticism I have to offer is that Schaffer tends to ramble off-track in some of his trail descriptions, but this is a minor complaint. All in all, a good, comprehensive guidebook to the area.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best value in hiking books, September 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Lassen Volcanic national park & vicinity (Paperback)

The Lassen book is great with good trail descriptons. I recomend Schaffer's books to any one who enjoys hikeing. Most of his books come with a map.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What a disappointment, July 11, 2003

By 

John (Redding, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lassen Volcanic national park & vicinity (Paperback)

I can't believe others are reviewing this book so highly. It is an OK natural-history guide, with a decent general overview of the area. But don't try to get anywhere with this book or look for specific information. For example, although it has individual chapters for each region (e.g. Caribou wilderness, Thousand Lakes, etc.), they don't contain any information on geology, fishing, zoology, etc. Instead, these topics are lumped into their own general chapters in the front of the book. With the notable exception of the wildflowers section, these chapters seem somewhat topical and weak. In the case of fishing, the "chapter" is one page. Likewise with resorts and campgrounds, which are lumped into a three-page list in a separate chapter, rather than discussed by region.

Although it contains one nice topo for the entire Lassen area, the 1:62500 scale and lack of detailed maps for any of the sections makes finding trailheads or following trails nearly impossible. I guess it's just not clear what this book is trying to be -- if it is a natural-history guide, as the back cover proclaims, why so much space describing trails(half the book or more)? If it is a trail guide, why no decent maps to make it usable?