Sierra South: 100 Back-Country Trips in California's Sierra

I enjoy all of the Winnett books because they are accurate, fun to read and reliable. This book has little chapters on over 100 trips in the Sierra range, and the descriptions of each trek are a total delight. So often these hiking books neglect to tell you how to reach the trailhead and oftentimes they don't provide detailed instructions. Winnett never makes this mistake. You will not need a separate map to locate any of the trailheads, his maps and written instructions are first-rate. In fact, there is even a nifty fold-out map sewn into the rear pocket so you can tote it along on any of your journeys. Equally interesting is that this book doesn't merely give elevation gains, difficulty ratings and desriptions of the trail conditions. These are vital to know, but Winnett also includes little bits of information of what kinds of wild flowers you will encounter, birds, wildlife and other little nuggets neglected in other guides.The book is supposed to be only for overnight backpacking trips, but there are many trails here that can be used for day hikes. These trips will be in the 10-16 mile range and any strong hiker can easily do these hikes in one day. If you do choose to go the multi-day backpacking route, Winnett describes water sources, camping sites and addresses whether bears or marmots might be a problem for you. Most importantly, he tells you where to find water and whether the water source is reliable throughout the whole year.I can't recommend this guide highly enough. Even if you're an armchair hiker, you'll derive many hours of vicarious joy from this guide.

My wife and I are a Volunteer Trail Crew in Los Padres National Forest, Ventana Wilderness. We maintain 12 miles of the Pine Ridge Trail, and spur trails, between Big Sur Ranger Station and Sykes Hot springs (with lots of help from friendly hikers). I also have a full time day job so my leisure time is very precious. I enjoy exploring new areas for backpacking and camping but I want others to do the legwork and report the best trails, so I rely on good trail books. Sierra South covers selected better trails in Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park and John Muir Wilderness. It meets most of my demands for identifying the better hikes to explore in aconvenient easy to use book. It provides good directions to the trailhead and good descriptions of the trails, camps and attractions along the way. It provides a description of how strenuous the hikes are and has a neat graph to show the gain and loss of altitude over the distance for each trail. It has a small "take out" folded map showing the trails and trailheads and it has a convenient table summarizing information on all the trails to help with your selection. It is small enough to carry on a backpacking trip. I use It and I recommend it for others.On the down side: Updates to trail information is provided on a page in the back of the book (easy to overlook/forget). The map does not have elevation contours (you still need to buy a contour map). The description of how to use the altitude gain and loss graph is located in the Maps chapter (hard to find) instead of in the Introduction chapter with the other information on how to use this book. There is no small single page map showing the general location of all the trails; therefore, you must take out and unfold the larger map each time you want to check a location. There is a companion book titled "Sierra North".

This is a wonderful guidebook with very helpful information about some of the best hikes in the southern Sierra. It's not just a good guidebook, but is also just plain fun to read. The pictures are nice as well. The included map is decent, but could use a little help.I really like how different paces for the hikes are given, leisurely, moderate, and strenuous. Also, information about what season the hike should be take, early, mid, and late. Also, all the topo maps needed for the hike is given. Introductions to various geographic areas is given as well.One thing I was really disappointed about, though. The description of the Mt. Whitney Trail from Whitney Portal to the summit is pretty poor. I thought they might describe more about the summit, this being the tallest mountain in the contiguous U.S., but maybe I'll have to wait until I get Secour's "High Sierra".