Customer Reviews

Waterfall Lover's Guide Northern California: More Than 300 Waterfalls from the North Coast to the Southern Sierra

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This guide is now my gateway to weekend hikes. What's great about it is that it points to waterfalls close to my home in Berkeley, CA. I had no idea there were so many waterfals within 50 miles of where I live. Already, this book has led me to Brooks Falls in San Pedro Park, Castle Rock Falls in Castle Rock Park and several falls in Big Basin Park. The directions are easy to follow. Actually, I've been in these parks before and missed the falls. Duh! I can't wait to use it this summer when I head up to the Sierras. The lists of highest, most beautiful, etc., falls in the back are good, too. I'm going to take the authors' advice and do a Sonora waterfall road trip, too.

This is an excellent guide to the astonishing number and variety of waterfalls in northern California. For those of you living in this region of the country, you truly have an embarrassment of riches right at your doorstep.

The authors traveled over 8,000 miles, crisscrossing California from the northern coast to the Bay area to Yosemite, visiting each waterfall personally. A huge amount of work went into creating this book, and it shows. Each waterfall is categorized by type, difficulty and access, then given a rating for quality, from "uninspiring" to "exceptional." There are maps, descriptions, history and photos galore. An especially useful section is the appendix of "fun lists," including Most Beautiful Waterfalls (Burney Falls, Alamere Falls, Vernal Falls, for example), Best Waterfalls to Visit with Kids and Best Unknown or Remote Waterfalls.

If this book doesn't inspire you to get off your duff and into the woods, nothing will!

I personally own this book and find it very informative. The pictures are amazing. I should know, one of my photos is in this book and I have personally met the authors. They did an excellent job of describing our waterfall and how to get to it. Although if you find it on your own, you will be tresspassing, but the authors explain that as well as how to contact us for a tour. (My husband and I run tours through the Sutter Buttes)
I am an avid lover of waterfalls and a photographer. One of my favorite things to photograph is waterfalls, so I plan on using this guide in the future and will pass along the information to my photography professor for new places to have photo workshops because he is always looking. If you are interested in hiking, biking, camping, etc. you will want to buy this book. I am even going to purchase several to have them available to our hikers. Most of our hikers are always looking for new places to explore and this book is full of them and well written.

Please note that this is not so much a trail guide as a massive catalogue of every darn waterfall in existence in Northern California. Each entry has a map, a paragraph about the area with another paragraph or two describing how to reach the trailhead and/or the fall itself if there's some fork in the trail you should be aware of, and perhaps an elevation profile. So forget about engrossing, passionate retellings of a wonderful nature experience; this is very much fact-driven, but it's written in a way that is easy to read. And -- thank you, thank you, thank you!! -- the directions are accurate!! I can't tell you how many times I've ended up spending hours backtracking just because some author couldn't tell his left from his right!

The layout is very clean and professional with plenty of maps and elevation profiles. I personally don't care so much about classifying the falls by shape and all that, but hey, some people are hardcore waterfall lovers and I guess offering extras like charts and top-so-and-so lists at the back of the book is just gravy for those readers. More power to them. The pictures are black-and-white. Some are great (Burney falls), others stink (Green Point Ridge Falls). But again, you don't buy this book for pictures, you buy it for the information.

I'm in Ashland, Oregon, just above the CA/OR border, so I've only visited falls in the Siskiyou/Lassen/Modoc area (plus a couple along hiway 199 in the NW corner of CA) so I can't speak for Yosemite, Kings Canyon and the southern areas. But from what I've seen, this is by far the most comprehensive guide to N. California waterfalls you'll ever get your hands on.

PS. If you make it up to this area, make sure to check out Mossbrae Falls in Dunsmuir -- it's something you won't believe until you see it with your own eyes!

I bought this book to see if there were any local waterfalls I didn't know about. I was a little shocked at the description for Chamber Creek Falls. It is described reasonably graded trail that continues to Chambers Peak. In reality it is a steep trail (18% grade). The trail most definately does not continue to the (trail-less) Chambers Peak.

The description for the beautiful Coal Canyon Falls gives a GPS coordinate that will lead you right across the private land it asks you not to cross.

It appears the authors made a lot of phone calls and are quite personable, but didn't to the field work to verify all the information they were given.

I like to take weekend trips to waterfalls across NorCal at least once a month, hitting maybe two or three falls in a weekend. While not a hardcore "waterfall hunter" I have several CA waterfall books and just like moderate hikes (3-5 miles) with a beautiful waterfall as the "reward" for me and my daughter. I like this book in that it has every single fall from Fresno on up in it. I mean, really, every single fall, including a whole bunch of new ones I had never heard of before.

The downside is that some of the photos aren't that great. One of the falls - Webber Falls - up by Truckee looked like it was going to be this tiny trickle but it was really great and I got some awesome pictures! In fairness, the authors did say "low flow" in the pic caption and rated it four stars, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. The important thing is that every fall has a short but accurate description of how to reach the trailhead and tells you how to find the waterfall. I've only been to about a dozen so far but every one has been dead-on, plus I learned some interesting tidbits about local history. The story on Markleeville is just too funny! :-)

Anyway, bottom line: this is a great catalog of NorCal waterfalls. You won't get the kind of in-depth trail walkthroughs you'll get with some other books but it is by far the most extensive one on the market.

When you are out hiking, it is nice to have some type of destination to look forward to. The Danielsson's book is an excellent resource for hikers intersted in the more hidden destinations in Northern California. I found the quick reference guide in the beginning to be easy to read and helpful in planning trips. I also appreciated the detailed directions for locating trail heads and the rating system.

Well researched - well written - very useful. I will get another copy for the shelf, and keep this one for the pack. Would like to get the color versions of the pictures for a screensaver!

After reading the last several reviews from obvious friends of the author, it's time to tell the truth. After reading this book, I personally believe it has no value to waterfall lovers at all. In reality, it looks like [...] It appears that the authors have combed through Ann Marie Brown's California Waterfalls and just taken information from her book. The write ups are poor - at best. They tell you nothing about how to get there, the trails, if there are any junctions to worry about or other must have info. How can anyone say the pictures are amazing? They are the poorest black and white you can find! And almost none of them were taken by themselves, which causes me to question if they ever really went to any of these waterfalls. Hands down, if you think this is a 5 star book, you've never opened an outdoor hiking guide before. This is more of a so-so reference guide to where waterfalls can be found, not a guide about how to get to them. A major letdown. It's sad they these authors felt to the need to use other books to write their, or so it seems.

I purchased this book from Amazon with a ton of excitement having visited a ton of waterfalls. What a letdown. I cant believe the Mountaineer Press would print this book. Being a waterfall lover, I've had Ann Marie Brown's book and Chris Shaffer's book for several years now and find them to be great tools to find waterfalls. Basically, this book is a copy cat. The authors show no sign of actually visiting many of these waterfalls. In fact, their are no directions to many, few photos and the photos that are in the book were borrowed from other hikers. It seems that the authors picked up Brown and Shaffer's guides and used them to write a book on their own. The write ups are small, info is thin, photos are horrible and pretty much every waterfall is already written about in other books. Someone dropped the ball big time letting this book get printed. What a dissapointment.