50 Hikes in Eastern Pennsylvania: From the Mason-Dixon Line to the Poconos and North Mountain

My wife and I got a copy of this book when we moved to Philadelphia a few years back. Being new to the area, we had all of our weekends to ourselves and spent a great deal of time getting to know our new local forested areas. This book played a key role in doing so. Over the last few years, we have hiked 23 (probably more) of the 50 hikes and have enjoyed them all. Some are clearly more remarkable than others (it's hard to beat The Pinnacle and The Pulpit) but there just weren't any groaners that we have encountered. Every hike delivers what outdoor enthusiasts crave to some extent. We have been using the book to take our own notes over the years and have noticed a few things about the book that, if there were a second printing, we would like to see included. The first is a change to miles rather than kilometers. Maybe it's the American in me, but I tend to think in miles. At the very least maybe both should be included. It got a little old dividing by 1.6 all the time when calculating how far we needed to go until the next turn in the trail. The next inclusion we would like to see is a little more information on trail conditions. We've essentially broken the hikes we've been on into "boots" or "shoes." For example, you would either need to be a glutton for foot pain or have some amazing tendon strength in your feet if you were to tiptoe across the rocky traverse of Peters Mountain (now one of our favorite hikes!). Stiff boots is a must for this one. Such a warning would be really nice to see. The author does actually warn the reader about the necessity for boots on this hike, but it seemed incidental. We'd like to see this more obviously stated. Also, difficulty level isn't really stated. There's a distance to time ratio that you can apply your own reasoning to, so there's at least a little to go by. Next, some of the trail directions do not make mention of which trails are blazed, so a direction may be to take a left 2.3 kilometers (grrr!) down the trail onto the unmarked x-country ski trail, when really all you need to do is to follow the white blazes. Getting back to praise for the book, the maps are easy to use, the directions are 97% useful (one or two were a little misleading, but nothing catastrophic) and the information included about each hike is very interesting. Include is such information as historical notes about the area, notes on wildlife oddities and even local places to camp. The trail notes are also very accurate and useful. After you get a hang of the author's narrative style, you can almost see the trail before you hike it just by his brief description. Oh, one last complaint. The picture on the cover is of New Jersey (from the PA side of the Delaware Water Gap). Come on!!! = )

Not a bad book for hikes to eastern PA. The one thing I would have liked to have seen was some sort of rating scale for the hikes listed in terms of photographic opportunities or "must see" places.