Yosemite National Park: A Complete Hikers Guide

This is a great book for a person going for the first time to yosemite. It help you decide hikes in your skill level for the time period you are visiting yosemite. It has a good desription on how to find the trail head.

Most hiking guides to Yosemite cover the main trailheads that are easily reached by road within the park. They offer numerous day hiking opportunities and generally include a smattering of local and natural history. This book, however, is not a typical hiking guide. The 83 routes described here are long treks covering many miles of backcountry. The average hike in this book exceeds 15 miles in length, and 5 are loops or one way treks that cover more than 50 miles. Taking the recommended side routes will add even more distance (and often elevation gain) to your trek. So, while this book does mention some of the shorter walks in the park (the Tuolomne Grove trail, for example) it is primarily written with backpackers and extremely fit dayhikers in mind. That said, however, almost everyone with an interest in natural history should get this book. Schaffer has done more original research into the geology of Yosemite than anyone else. His startling conclusion is that glaciers have had only minimal effect on the creation of the valley as we see it today. Instead "mass wasting" (more commonly called rockfall) along joints within the rock created most of the valley formations before the glaciers even arrived. Evidence for this claim is scattered throughout the park and almost every hike Schaffer describes treats readers to some of it. Indeed, many hikes are included precisely for their geological features. Schaffer does an excellent job explaining the significance of these to his readers. So even if you are not planning to hike the "Rancheria Mountain - Tiltill Valley Loop" (Trip 12) with its 24,080 feet of elevation gain and loss over 53 miles, you will still gain a greater appreciation for the history and development of this spectacular region. For this alone, the book is well worth the price.

This is still the best for selecting among the hundreds of miles of Yosemite trails: but for on the trail please carry (and know how to use!!) a detailed topo map and compass and for the techies go ahead and GPS but remember batteries die.The federal topo maps are works of art in their own right. If on the trail descriptions are a must either photo-copy the pages as others have suggested or pick up one of the smaller Wilderness Press guides that focus on topo maps worth of the area.A recent alternative to individual maps is the state CD from National Geographic / Trails Illustrated that gives you the entire state of california on your computer in zoomable, annotatable detail: then you print out what you need.In any case for keeping safe nothing beats the map and compass (altimeter is good in the Sierra also) though the books are great for armchair dreaming and making choices and every Wilderness Press product lets me hear the crunch of granite gravel under my boots like no others.

I have to disagree with the two previous reviewers. First, as someone with no previous knowledge of the park, I did not have too much difficulty using this book. The excellent topo map that is included helps to locate the trails in the book (in contrast to Falcon Guides, which to my disappointment, don't include topo maps). There is also a very nice table at the beginning that summarizes the different trails (organized by location in the park) - trail length, difficulty rating, whether it is "exceptionally scenic", how likely you would see other people on the trail, whether there is water/swimming/fishing, and number of days to travel route - very useful for planning a backpacking trip! Second, the details about the landmarks along the trail route proved to be useful for confirming whereabouts and distance travelled, especially when searching for potential campsite locations. I disagree with one of the reviewers about the detail - more is better than less, especially if you've lost the trail (which we did at one point - but thanks to the description of the flora and fauna, we knew that we were in the wrong place!). If you don't want to lug the book around, just photocopy the relevant pages and pack them in a ziploc. I've used this book successfully and without any major problems for a 5-day backpacking trip in one of the lesser traveled loops of Tuolumne Meadows - which by the way was certainly "exceptionally scenic" and a must-see for anyone going to Yosemite. The only complaint that my husband and I have is that the estimated trail lengths might sometimes be inaccurate by a mile or so, because occasionally the numbers differed from those on the trail signs.

A personal detailed account of Yosemite hiking trails that not only describes the beautiful scenery, but also informs you of how Yosemite evolved thousands of years ago. It pinpoints Yosemite's historical past right down to the flora and fona. Schaffer even included a distance and difficulty table of each of the trails and an enclosed trail map. This book will give any first time visitor a great idea of what Yosemite has to offer!