Best Easy Day Hikes Yosemite (Paperback)

~ Suzanne Swedo (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Yosemite National Park boasts some of the country’s most remarkable and diverse wild lands. Rolling slope woodlands, jagged mountain crests, giant sequoias, glacier-carved valleys, twisting spyres, and booming waterfalls are all nestled in this dynamic landscape. Best Easy Day Hikes Yosemite samples over 20 of the most scenic and least physically challenging trails within the park. The hikes described here are scattered throughout the entire park, leading you to uncongested trails and some of the park’s best kept secrets. Each spectacular hike in Best Easy Day Hikes Yosemite is accessible by paved road and none is difficult to find. This indispensable guide provides accurate hike descriptions, easy-to-follow maps, and concise trail information for the author’s favorite trails. With hikes varying from half-hour strolls to full-day adventures, Best Easy Day Hikes Yosemite has something for everyone.

From the Back Cover

Yosemite National Park boasts some of the country¦s most remarkable and diverse wild lands. Rolling slope woodlands, jagged mountain crests, giant sequoias, glacier-carved valleys, twisting spyres, and booming waterfalls are all nestled in this dynamic landscape. <i><b>Best Easy Day Hikes Yosemite</b></i> samples over 20 of the most scenic and least physically challenging trails within the park. The hikes described here are scattered throughout the entire park, leading you to uncongested trails and some of the park¦s best kept secrets. Each spectacular hike in <b><i>Best Easy Day Hikes Yosemite</i></b> is accessible by paved road and none is difficult to find. This indispensable guide provides accurate hike descriptions, easy-to-follow maps, and concise trail information for the author¦s favorite trails. With hikes varying from half-hour strolls to full-day adventures, <b><i>Best Easy Day Hikes Yosemite</b></i> has something for everyone.

Product Details

• Paperback: 112 pages
• Publisher: Falcon; 1st edition (February 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560447273
• ISBN-13: 978-1560447276
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #746,694 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book for beginning hikers, September 30, 2003

By	Candace Scott (Lake Arrowhead, CA, USA) - See all my reviews

For all the novice hikers out there, this is your book! This is a fine guide if you have never hiked before in a National Park, or if you merely dabble occasionally in the sport. The maps are excellent, as are the trail descriptions, elevation gains and driving directions to the trail heads. Most of these hikes can easily be completed by even the most unfit hiker, children, or eldery people.

However, this is *not* the guide to purchase if you are a serious hiker. I was bemused to see that this book doesn't even contain the quintessential Yosemite hike, Half Dome. Nor does it contain the second-best hike in the park, the Four-and-a-half-mile-trail. In fact, none of the hikes profiled in this Guide are lengthier than a few miles and none would be considered even semi-strenuous. Heed this advice if you're a serious hiker and consult a different guide. But if you're just a casual weekend athlete, or have children in tow, this is a well-written and adequate book for your needs.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book for east to moderate day hikes., September 17, 2004

By	S. Roth "A reader from California" - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is indeed a good, quick overview for easy to moderate day hikes in Yosemite. If you are not familiar with the park, it is an excellent quick study on where to spend your time hiking. A few notes of caution: the distances listed can be misleading because the figures are generally for one-way in only, so you will need to double them to get the total distance of the hike in and out. Also, there are some errors in elevation gain. The Happy Isles to Vernal Falls hike (a beautiful one indeed), for example, is listed as a 400 foot elevation gain, but in fact, the hike is a 1,000 foot gain for the 1.6 miles up (and up is the word) trail. Lastly, the book could do a better job of explaining that many waterfalls and some smaller lakes (like Mirror Lake) are likely to be pretty dry by the fall.

If you are a dedicated, serious hiker who wants to scamper well over a dozen miles in a day, climbing 4,800 feet up to the top of Half Dome, then no, this is not your book. For most visitors, it will be a good guide.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Take your laptop with you, June 25, 2003

By	Coach Jeff "jplanck" (Huntington Beach, CA) - See all my reviews

This is a very useful book. BUY THE PRINT EDITION. The digital version does not allow you to print out the hikes you may want to take - making the digital version completely useless unless you intend on taking your laptop along on the hike. While I can understand that the authors don't want you to print out the book and sell it, by not allowing printing of the hikes you'd like to take you must either memorize the details or buy another book so you don't go off track (or trail as the case may be). Buy the book, preferrably at the park. Yes I know the trails are well marked and all you really need is the information for the trail head, but it would have been really nice to take the 2 or 3 pages of the information along (without the whole book) - which would have made this book really useful instead of a novelty for ebook geeks. I don't like reading books on the computer anyway.