|
I had the previous (original?) iteration of this book, and it was very useful. This has even more information, including a handy difficulty rating system (although one was wrong). If you plan on doing any hiking in/around RMNP, this is the one to get.
A nice, easy to read book with descriptions of some of the more popular hikes in the park. Descriptions are thorough enough to follow and enjoy major trails. Not recommended for the hardcore explorer; for this I recommend The Complete RMNP Hiking Guide by Lisa Foster. Malitz's book is pleasant and the trail descriptions are of moderate length, though it only covers a fraction of the hikes in the park.
I've lived less than an hour away from Estes Park for over 40 years and hike in RMNP quite a lot...
This book covers a FEW destinations in RMNP and completely ignores many wonderful day hikes.
Some of the route descriptions are actually TOO detailed for my taste (pages long in some cases) and I'd like to see more maps.
I do like the format of the book, I just wish it had more information.
I prefer Lisa Foster's Rocky Mountain National Park - The Complete Hiking Guide. Her book covers EVERY one of the 440 destinations in RMNP - and she has been to EVERY one of them. She knows what she's talking about and her book is EXCELLENT! I've been to about one hundred of the destinations, so I know that her book is accurate. As I said though, her book covers EVERYTHING in the park - short hikes and very long hikes. It's probably more information than most people need.
We are planning our first hiking trip to the Rocky Mountain National Park and every hike I have considered is in this book with detailed information about hiking distance, elevation at destination and good descriptions including flora you might encounter on the trail. There are even pictures of frequently sighted flowers and animals. I love Mallitz's formula for difficulty ratings. Now I can use this formula on other hikes in other areas. I bought another book at the same time ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, THE COMPLETE HIKING GUIDE by Lisa Foster and haven't found it as useful although it contains a wealth of information.
A great guide! Very good photos of each area. Includes topo maps of each trail. Very informative.
Anyone visiting RMNP, doing any substantial hiking at all, will be well served by this product. There are some defects, however: as is the case with so many of the Trails Illustrated maps, the contours have been obscured with a wash that impresses upon the user that the terrain is marked by terrific relief, seemingly superfluous for those accustomed to reading contour maps. Also, there are not many benchmarks, and contour labels can be hard to find, but, with some effort, you'll discover your location and elevation on this map. It's a two-sided thing ,with the two halves, north and south, upside down to each other, so it flips effortlessly while you fight wind, sweat, sunglasses etc. Most of the space is taken up with actual map, rather than the advice on trails that Nat'l Geo likes to hand out. Still, there's some stuff to read on bighorn sheep and marmots, if you like to read out in such places.
It's pretty much to the scale appropriate for those who hike the well-maintained trails of RMNP; however, if you want to go OFF-trail, I'd recommend the appropriate USGS topos or some direct derivative of them. All the more so if you're climbing (although an intrepid fellow I met on the Boulder Field underneath Long's Peak said he hadn't used a map for twenty years; and, come to think of it, Major JW Powell didn't have a map, either).
| |
