Day Hiking Kings Canyon

"Day hiking Kings Canyon" may well be the best book on day hikes(1 to 10 miles one way) in Kings Canyon national park and in the wilderness areas surrounding the park. It covers 50 trails in 5 areas: cedar grove, monarch wilderness, grant grove, redwood mountain, and jennie lakes wilderness. Each of the five sections starts with a brief (2-3 pages) introduction about the history, climate, and specific features of the area. The description of the hikes are concise (1-3 pages each), and yet very detailed. There is an individual topographic map for each trail, half-a-page to a whole page in size, which is located either at the beginning or at the end of description of each trail. Besides the total length of the trail, estimated hiking distance, elevation gain, and relative difficulty, the author provides detailed description of what to expect on each mile of the trail, suggests on which parts of the trail it may get hot in summer, where one can expect mosquitos, where the vews are beautiful, and even where one can find swimming holes on the river. Frequently, alternative return routes are suggested to make hikes more interesting. Finally, parts of the trail where the hikers should exercise caution due to slippery rocks or other hazards are indicated. I studied this book side by side with two others, Frommer's "Yosemite and Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Parks", by Don and Barbara Laine, and "50 best short hikes in Sequoia/Kings Canyon" by John Krist. The first one is a pocket guide, contains much fewer hikes, and the descriptions are about a paragraph each. It is a very decent guide for the visitors arriving for a day by car, but does not help much on the trail. The second one is similar to "Day hiking Kings Canyon" in the way how the hikes are described, but the descriptions are shorter, maps are less acurate, and they are located at the very end of the book, so you have to flip pages from the middle to the end of the book to follow the guidelines. I found it very inconvenient. Hence, of these three books, my book of choice is definitely "Day hiking Kings Canyon". The only two drawbacks are that it does not have ratings of the trails in terms of their scenery, so it takes some reading to decide what to choose, and that it has very few photographs. It also could be squeezed in a smaller format (by using smaller fonts) to make it lighter and easier to carry in a backpack. Other than that, this book is an excellent source of information for any hiker.

our family has been going to KingsCanyon and Sequoia for over a hundred years now, and I wish I had found this book sooner. I have been on a lot of the trails and learned a few. Very easy to understand, an easy read and informative in area history. I am going to give a copy to all my family for Xmas.I'm at the mirror. * randella*