Customer Reviews

Technical Slot Canyon Guide to the Colorado Plateau

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

 

 

This book opens up in a clear and descriptive fashion many of the difficult and technical canyons in the colorado plateau. These canyons as described are an underappreciated yet fabulous landscape and I believe represent the very best example of exiting wilderness sport combined with incomparable beauty in the United States. Very helpful when planning trips or deciding which canyon to visit. Of course, as far as technique is concerned, I agree with other readers that his suggestion to use a geological pick hammer to get out of potholes is more than a bit excessive and needlessly destructive. Much better to use small bathooks in existing cracks, do shoulder stands, pack tosses, or to chip small barely noticeable notches with a bolt kit for bathooks if absolutely required. Canyoneering is becoming more popular and I believe Michael should use his considerable influence in this small sport to preserve the fragile areas available and encourage respect for the resource.

This book has tons of beta on some of the best canyons around Utah. It gives accurate descriptions on where the canyons are and how to access them. One downside is the lack of GPS coords.

The Colorado Plateau is in my backyard and Michael Kelsey's books have helped me unlock the mysteries of the beautiful canyon country within.
If you're a technical canyoneer, no other book comes close to this one in guiding you to the best slot canyons on the Colorado Plateau.
Most 'sour grapes' type of reviews of this book are from folks who've been loathe to reveal what they thought were there personal secrets. Humbug!
I say, "Welcome!" and enjoy...

I'm grateful that Kelsey made a concerted effort to include some of the more technical hikes over the past 10 years, opening up some of the great canyons on the Colordao Plateau. I've been a user of the evolving editions of his technical guide over the years and have found them to be superb. The call for "boycotts" from others are absolutely ridiculous and are based on anything but the content of the book ... this book judged on content alone is well beyond anything out there. It doesn't take Harvard prose or an environmental bent to open the door to the most challenging canyons on the Colordao Plateau. Kelsey is the original and has more time in these canyons than anyone out there and it shows in his books ... don't let others fool you including those who try to cross sell you "specialized" canyoneering equipment or offer their "expert" guide services, Kelsey is the Father of Colorado Plateau Hiking and truly a living legend. If you can read a map, have a sense of adventure and want to take it to the next level, this book is the one. If you want Boy Scout trips and environmental lectures, go elsewhere where an MIT education might make a difference. Kelsey has dedicated his life to hiking the Colorado Plateau and this newest edition is permeated with his passion for the canyons. All other writers have used Kelsey's books when they started out and have essentially ridden his "coat tails" to success ..... seriously guys, you owe your profession to Kelsey and yet you call for a "boycott" of his books???? - sounds like sour grapes and a self serving "cheap shot." Don't be fooled, take it from an experienced canyoneer, Kelsey is and always will be the King of Hiking on the Colordao Plateau.

The guide does point out some outstandingly beautiful places and provides the basic information to see them and get out alive. The canyoneering community is growing but I'm not sure there are any books out that can replicate what this one provides.

Kelsey needs to put away his pride and hire an editor. His writeups are far more confusing than they need to be with important information scattered throughout and entire paragraphs dedicated to unimportant trivia. Each section needs to be read and absorbed in its entirety which isn't a big deal while planning a trip but makes it difficult to parse while actually in the field.

I realize Kelsey is superhuman but his timescales reflect this. Casual canyoneers would do well to double his estimated times.

I also realize that Kelsey has been doing this for far longer than those newfangled GPS's have been around but it would be nice to include some coordinates. I'm not as good at navigating as Kelsey is so having some UTM coords would have saved my group quite a bit of time.

If you're canyoneering in the Colorado Plateau you really have no choice but to buy this book. The places it takes you are worth going, just try not to use this guide as a sole source of information.

There's a lot of information in this book. Unfortunately, in this book the author promotes the use of techniques that permanently scar the very canyons he claims to want to protect. How absolutely absurd is it to chop a big hole into pristine sandstone instead of using natural anchors that are just a foot or so away! I personally would recommend boycotting this book. But since that won't happen (there really IS a lot of information in this book), I hope readers will be more careful than Mr. Kelsey's new book when it comes to the environment.

Michael Kelsey starting writing guide books while Steve Allen and Tom Jones, to name a few, were in diapers. Many of these so called guide book authors have criticized Kelsey's books while riding on his coat tails. Kelsey's books are the gold standard for canyoning in the Colorado Plateau. He has done way more hikes and is way tougher, smarter, and better than all of the ivy league tree huger authors that are not even from the area who are constantly broin it up. Think about it.

The information we found on the internet for E Fork Leprechaun was much better than the information found in this book. After we completed the E Fork, we re-read the hike description in this book and decided it would have been difficult to even find the canyon had we been using only the book's hike description. We'll use this book for supplemental information, but I would certainly not trust it as a sole source of information going into a canyon. I'm accustomed to good guidebooks which tell you all you need to know to navigate and be as safe as possible on a hike. I expect to be able to photocopy the book pages, get a TOPO and then have enough information to do the hike. After the E Fork, I would not do that with this book, I would gather more information before entering a canyon.

On the bright side, the book is interesting and I enjoyed looking through it. Just don't trust your life to the information contained in it.

Kelsey has expanded his first book with a ton of additional canyons to be explored. As always, the initial part is informative of gear to bring, strategies for dealing with difficult obstacles (for example, keeper potholes), etc.

But, the text is really compressed and is generally not edited well. In a lot of cases, multiple canyons lumped into the same description, which is a little annoying.

Moreover, Kelsey doesn't use the current ACA rating system, but has developed his own system that is only sort of coherent. Also, many canyons haven't been updated since the last printing. Heaps and Imlay are still stated in the book as the most challenging canyons. Many of the canyons in the book are at least as challenging.

The most irritating thing about the book is Kelsey's refusal to use the common names of the canyons accepted in the Canyoneering community. The result may be some unfortunate souls finding themselves in a Sandtrax-type canyon because it had a different name in the book.

All the complaints aside, however, this is really the biggest and only repository to find descriptions of all these canyons lumped together. For that, we should be thanking (cursing for the added traffic??) Kelsey.

The book was in great shape and I received it when I expected. Good experience with this seller.