ALONGSIDE THE LONELY PLANET GUIDE, THE WAY TO GO...

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	• Hiking Yellowstone National Park, 2nd (Hiking Guide Series) Bill Schneider Falcon, 2003 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 9 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Very Few Mid-Range Hikes

I generally like Schneider's guides, and appear to be in the minority here, but I did not love this one. It is a surprisingly thick book with lots of trails; unfortunately most of them are either short tourist strolls or long, multi-day back country excursions. We had difficulty finding hikes that called out to us in the 12-16 mile range (usually not a problem for us - most guides leave us wishing we had 2 weeks to do all the long day hikes we are interested in) and ended up going with ranger recommendations when we got there. If you have 5-10 days for a backcountry trek, this is definitely the book for you. But if you are looking for long day hikes you may want to look elsewhere.

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Best all-around guide to Yellowstone's trails

This guide lists 109 trails, organized by region and sorted into short, medium, and long hikes. Like other Falcon guides, it provides maps of each trail and valuable information about elevations and steepness. The information is clearly organized, and summarized at the head of each trail listing.

Like other Falcon guides it has a chart listing best flat terrain day hike, best wildlife viewing, most strenuous, best scenery, and so on. The information here is good for those hikes I've taken. Bill Schneider writes well and does a good job describing the hikes so that you can decide which ones are best for you. If you consult just one book on the trails of Yellowstone, this is the one to use.

I'm not fond of the regional organization of the book, which sorts hikes into Northwest, Northeast, Southwest and Southeast. Reasonable as that sounds, it's not really how the park is organized spatially. The Belcher area, for example, is a region unto itself that has to be accessed from outside the park in Idaho. Yet this book lumps it together with the trails around Old Faithful. The Southeast trails include those on the South Entrance road, which is really much closer to Old Faithful, as well as trails around Lake and Fishing Bridge, which are closer to Canyon. This means that if you're staying at Old Faithful or Canyon and looking for day hikes nearby, you have to flip back and forth between two (or even three) sections. (See the Lonely Planet Guide for a more successful organizational scheme.)

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ALONGSIDE THE LONELY PLANET GUIDE, THE WAY TO GO...

I found this guide indespensible in planning (and executing) my family's trip to Yellowstone. As has been noted, there is a quirky regional grouping problem with this guide (it groups the trails geographically rather than by how they are accessed). Yet this book is far better than any of the others I investigated (Orville Bach's is a distant second still worth investing in).

The Lonely Planet guide to the Yellowstone region really goes hand in hand with this one. The Lonely Planet gives a good overview with some regional coloring. This guide really lets you know what you're up against trail-wise.

One thing that humored me greatly in our jorney across country were the varying uses of "easy, moderate, and strenuous" in the different parks between my house and Yellowstone. A free tip: An "easy" trail in Yellowstone is substantially more difficult than any "strenuous" trail at Mount Rushmore.

Yellowstone is a place of haunting beauty. It was probably inadvisable for me to go at such a young age (I am in my twenties)--I will spend years longing to go back.

Get this guide. Go to Yellowstone. Explore the trails, not just the boardwalks.

You'll never regret it.

There is no place on Earth that I give a higher recommendation (with the possible exception of the Tetons).

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The Best Yellowstone Hiking Book

In preparation for a family vacation in Yellowstone I sampled 4 different hiking books, and this was by far the best. It had the best descriptions, maps, photos, and readability. I liked the way the author categorizes hikes by special interest: fishing, wildlife viewing, etc. It also provides good information on backcountry campsites if you're looking to backpack. There is no index, which is annoying, but otherwise it's a key buy.

Great resource

This book breaks things down for easy use trail planning, including extra excursions and were to camp on both overnight an longer trips . It even gives you info on each camp site. complaint: sometimes the maps are not next to trail you are reading about but next to another trail in the area. All of the campsites on my topo map are not in the book map although they are described in the back.

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reviews: page 1, 2

This thoroughly revised and updated guide features 109 hikes in Yellowstone National Park. Readers will find detailed maps, field-checked information on all of the trails, elevation charts, difficulty ratings, and ratings and information on backcountry camping. Hiking tips and information on avoiding confrontations with bears round out this classic guidebook.

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