Customer Reviews

Moon Handbooks: Canadian Rockies (1st Ed.)

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This is, without doubt, the best 'travel' book written for those travelling through the Canadian Rockies.

I lived in the Canadian Rockies for 2 ½ years and now when friends and fellow travellers ask me for advice about the Canadian Rockies (i.e. What to see...what to miss, Where to stay...and what roads to take for better wildlife viewing, etc) I always tell them about this book (and one other - The Canadian Rockies SuperGuide by Graeme Pole).

The main reason this book leaves others like it (lonely planet, Frommer's, The Rough Guide, etc) way behind is because 'Even locals will learn something'. (Get yourself to the top of the Jakeroy Glacier trail and you'll get an understanding of how well this author knows the Rockies).

While most travel guides tell you about the mainstream tourists destinations, this book continues past those to inform the reader about the lesser-known (and in many cases...Better) areas of the Rockies. The benefit of this extra information is the reader will be able to explore the Rockies...and find their very own, special part of the Rockies...away from the 4 million per year tourist herds.

This is a 'travel guide' full of information on what to see, places to stay, places to eat, and much more - if that's what your after - you wont find better. ('ALBERTA and the NORTHWEST TERRITORIES handbook' and 'BRITISH COLUMBIA Handbook', by the same author, are also the best choices for your money).

(The Canadian Rockies SuperGuide - by Graeme Pole, is a great book for in-depth information about tourist sites, and certainly gets my recommendation, but covers nothing close to the range of information you will find here).

This book was invaluable for our Spring 2001 trip through the Canadian Rockies. The book is obviously written with the aim of appealing to a wide range of travelers, and does so well. My wife and I have very different interests, but found that each evening we would sit down and study the next day's itinerary almost solely using this book--her searching out museums and a picking a spot to eat dinner and me looking for outdoor activities. As a retired historian, I was also pleased to see comprehensive coverage of the history of the region, along with dozens of interesting tidbits that helped make the trip more enjoyable. It was too early in the season for us to do much hiking, but the trails we did follow all came from this book and another, Canadian Rockies Trail Guide. I highly recommend this book to anyone traveling north through the Rockies region of our Canadian neighbors.

Moon Travel's "Canadian Rockies Handbook" is packed with the practical information needed to plan a great vacation in the Canadian Rockies. In a well-organized format, the handbook covers how to get there, what to see and do, where to stay, and a nice slice of commentary on the various towns and other sites of interest. The discussion about accomodations includes a decent range of prices and facilities. The focus is on the area in and around Banff and Jasper National Parks, a stunningly beautiful area with endless opportunities for outdoor recreation, sight-seeing, and relaxation. The handbook includes maps and diagram that are sufficiently detailed to enable to visitors to get to the main points of interest. The handbook also provides information on popular hikes, golfing, and white water rafting, among other activities.
This handbook is highly recommended to anyone planning a vacation in the Canadian Rockies, even if they have visited the Rockies before. This handbook provides enough detail in a compact format that it may inform regular visitors on wonders they may have missed on prior trips.

I would augment it with another guidebook to balance reviews and recommendations. Moon Handbooks are great for the traveler on a "middle class" budget and will guide you to the "must sees" without the extra confusing fluff that other guidebooks include.

Not really a review, but a definite This Is a Great Book. I'd never heard of Moon Handbooks, but purchased this guide through Amazon and found it helped immensely on recent trip to Canada. Everything was included and the detailed recommendations covered everything from hiking to where to eat. If you're heading to the Canadian Rockies, buying this book is money well spent.

This handbook is a compact source of much useful information. It includes maps, descriptions, and information about just about every place you would want to visit in the area. The detailed town maps show the locations of the motels and several restaurants. I found the evaluations of the three motels we stayed at to be on the mark. The restaurant descriptions were especially useful and led us to several great places we would not have eaten at otherwise. The evaluations of how hard the hikes are seemed accurate, but the book does not provide much information about which ones are really worth the effort. The Canadian Rockies may well be the best documented tourist destination anywhere, but this book would be a good choice for anyone planning to visit for the first time.

I'm impressed. The author really knows Canada's Rocky Mountains and it shows. Not only does he write about the region in a knowledgeable manner, but it's obvious through his writing that he has been on the hiking trails he discusses and eaten at the restaurants he recommends. It was the seeminly insignificant things in this guide that caught our attention and made our vacation more enjoyable - which side of a hotel to request a room that catches the evening sun, a comment on the bathrooms at a particular restaurant (that truly were memorable), tips on cutting the cost of our car rental, hints on taking better pictures in the mountains, and tips on how to escape the crowds. As a comparison, the other guidebook we had with us had all the basic information, but was very bland - with reviews of all the obvious touristy restaurants, no real direction as to which were the best hikes, etc.

If you are traveling to Canada's Rockies I would definitely recommend the Moon book over the others.

We spent a week in the Canadian Rockies, using this book as our guide. The book gives excellent recommendations for accomodations and activities - we did not go wrong following them. It gives more information that is beyond the basic, "usual", details. It also includes descriptions of many hikes, from 1-hour hikes to full-day hikes, as well as description of road-accessible sites for the non-hikers.

Best and most useful information for trip. Well written and concise. Much better and more useful than Frommer.

I've had this book lying around for five years at least, without putting it to the "proof". The accommodations listings are out of date in terms of prices (I've checked) but still useful for finding quality lodges. The restaurant listings... well, I can't tell until I go there, but I suspect they're as dated by now as those in any five-year-old guide book.
But the core of this "handbook' is the information about trailheads and short hikes around the lakes, and that information is clear and enticing. Author Andrew Hempstead knows well what distinguishes one trail from another, and thus what helps in making choices.
This book plus some good maps should be all I need for a couple of weeks of bliss.