Customer Reviews

Pennsylvania Hiking Trails: Keystone Trails Association

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As an amateur hiker in Pennsylvania I found this book extremely helpful. I was unaware of all the marvelous hiking trails in our state. If you are not from PA then this is also the book for you. Informative, colorfully written with a great picture section. I hope everyone will purchase this book and come to PA to discover our many beautiful hiking trails.

This book is a good catalog of hiking trails in Pennsylvania. It is NOT a book of trails with step-by-step hiking directions (for example "take a left at the intersection of the red and blue trails).

This book describes hundreds of hiking areas, breaking the state into 9 geographic regions. The description for most hiking areas opens with a few interesting facts or history, followed by an overall description of the type of terrain, trails (sometimes a brief list of a few of the trails), and ends with specific driving instructions to get you there. The vast majority of trails do NOT have accompanying maps or trail sketches, so do not rely on this guide alone if you are a beginner. If you like exploring, take your compass or GPS and enjoy!

I liked the book because due to its brief descriptions it contains many more trails than the more detailed books, and I discovered some areas I didn't know existed. It's a great source of hiking ideas.

Though it seemed like a good book from the title and description, I am sad to say that after 2 years of owning this book, it still looks brand new from lack of use.

The book has a listing of a lot of trails and a short description of each of them (often less than half a page per trail) but minimal and purely factual. By that I mean that it states facts and statistics about the trail -- It will say "15.8 miles" but it will not say "moderately difficult hike with a beautiful view at sunset".

There are few maps and even fewer pictures. No topographic profiles or difficulty levels.

The descriptions of the trails are so short that you'd really need another source of information to use any of the trails. Often the book will direct you to that source -- cites web pages, gives phone numbers to county park offices, makes multiple references to "50 Hikes in Western Pennsylvania" (another book), etc. -- It gives you the sources that you need, but without them it doesn't stand well alone.

It is a listing of trails, and a pretty complete one -- but as such, I still found it a useless book. Was very disappointed.