Hiking the Escalante

Hiking the Escalante Wilderness can get very confusing even if you are proficient at the use of USGS topo maps. Hence, whenever I have gone I have taken this book. He devoted a lot of time to not only giving you a much-needed guidebook, but also to giving you a lot of history, biology, botany, and even deals with hundreds of side canyons/routes... But some of the information might be outdated (e.g. the pools in Death Hollow) and his descriptions that seem clear can be vague (how to safely scale the last 50 yards to Phipps arch); there are other, wrong, places that look exactly as he describes the correct place (e.g, finding the mail route west and out of Death Hollow - there is a bend lower in the creek that looks the same, but is not the route). He also relies heavily upon his odometer readings to find trailheads and all car odometers don't jive with his readings.

Having hiked the Escalante canyons a lot before reading this book, I found upon reading it that the book seemed to match my memory of places fairly exactly. That doesn't mean a lot, so I took it with me on a few of the more backcountry trips and found it so extremely accurate and useful that I am now using it as the primary information source for some trips to areas that are new to me in the Escalante region. I'd definitely recommend this book.

The Escalante is a vast area of great charms. This is a nice hiking guide to some of the more accessible areas of the Escalante. These hikes are not for the faint of heart - they require good backcountry skills. What makes the book truly great is Rudi's natural history background. Extensive drawings and text add richness to our visits to the red rock country of the Escalante. 43 hikes listed, drawings, maps and many b & w photographs.

I not only enjoyed reading this book, but found it extremely useful in planning my first trip to the Grand Staircase region. It gave me an accurate idea what to expect from each trail.