Hiking Yellowstone National Park: A Guide To More Than 100 Great Hikes (Regional Hiking Series)

My comments are mainly regarding the new third edition versus the second, but let me first say that I certainly recommend having this guide. I like to hike in the national parks and I've come to rely on the Falcon guides. They break down the trails in a park on three basic levels (short, moderate, and long for the Yellowstone guide), give you directions to the trailhead, and describe highlights of the trail. Although the book also contains small maps of the trails, except for very short trails one should have a more detailed trail map to actually take on the trails.I didn't notice major differences in terms of the information between the second and third editions, though that may just have been because of the particular trails I was interested in hiking for a recent trip. The new edition does have about 50 additional pages, so some info is new or updated.The biggest difference from the second edition is that the third edition uses a higher quality paper. That allows for color photographs and nicer maps. The material just looks much nicer, which might encourage you to hike more trails! Unfortunately, the higher quality paper is also heavier. I don't take the book on the trail with me, but if you do it will add a small amount of extra weight. I also liked to pencil in notes about a particular trail in the old edition. You can't do that with the better paper in the new edition, but ink might work.One problem with the new edition concerns the small diagrams that show altitude rise and fall over the course of the trail. The diagrams are plotted on an x-y chart that shows the miles on the x-axis and altitude on the y-axis. Although the diagrams look much nicer in color on better paper, the mile indicators are missing. You can look to see how long a trail is and basically guess, but the old edition printed all the gridlines to make it much easier. (This problem does not exist in the newest edition of the Glacier/Waterton Falcon guide, so it may be specific to the Yellowstone guide.)Overall, I certainly recommend this guide, but if you have the second edition it might be a closer call unless your copy is getting worn out.

This book has reminded me how old I am. Have you ever driven your car by a paper map, not GPS? Do you prefer a newspaper to online news? Do you call more frequently than you text? If yes, you might be from the same generation as I am. And this time getting ready for our Yellowstone summer trip I have started it the old way, by purchasing the paper copy of the Falcon guide. It has arrived very quick and my first impression was "man, this is going to add a couple of pounds to my luggage". It's quite solid and heavy with 380 plus pages. The book content was somehow satisfying though. It covers all existing trails in the park with description, location coordinates and authors' opinions.After glancing through it I have put it aside and decided to check for other options. To my surprise I have discovered that Internet was bursting of info about hiking at Yellowstone. The online information was so vast and abundant that it dwarfed the Falcon guide immensely. I was able to download most of it for free as maps, PDFs, apps etc. I have squeezed tons of data into my Android devices. Now on my tablet I have clickable map of Yellowstone with all roads, trails and POIs, interactive encyclopedia of Yellowstone listing hundreds of locations and describing everything about the park, and even GPS-enabled guided tour which is supposed to tell me all about park attractions when I approach close to them. I have turned my phone into handheld GPS device with offline topo maps, compass, trail tracking and many more. I have paid way less for all these extremely handy and user-friendly widgets and apps compared with a price of the Falcon book. Most definitely I am bringing my phone and my tablet with me even though there is no cell coverage at Yellowstone park. The Falcon guide meanwhile is going to collect dust on a bookshelf like a relic of the pre-digital world. If you don't want to look like one, buy at least a Kindle copy, you might feel a little younger.

I haven't been back to Yellowstone since I bought this book but I'm inspired to try some of the hikes next year when I return. Verify the trailhead coordinates before you go. The first one I checked was a little off. I've found a couple other types of errors that the publisher isn't interested in correcting.Some of the hikes categorized as Moderate difficulty in this book are also in  Best Easy Day Hikes Yellowstone National Park (Best Easy Day Hikes Series)

Must have for hiking info when trekking thru the park! We have been to the park 5 separate times.For this latest trip I purchased this book as an aid.Fantastic,super honest and helpful hints etc. When we return to the park yet again,this book is coming with us! I also ordered the hiking book for the Grand Teton park from the same author and again it was a font of info. Both books were reasonably priced and we'll worth the purchase price. A must have for anyone interested in hiking in the national parks-easy to difficult hikes and everything in between. Love the books!

While each individual hike is well described and detailed, I would have preferred a more geographical rather than difficulty based arrangement of the hikes--putting hikes in the same general area together, then specifying how long it takes to walk them, would serve us better I think.Among the various books that attempt to tell us where to walk at Yellowstone, I do think this is one of the more engagingly written and better researched.

This book was recommended to me by someone who has traveled many times to the Yellowstone area. I am planning a trip there myself this summer, and I've been scouring the pages to find hikes that I am interested in taking. I love the attention to detail that this book provides...allowing me to see the difficulty of the trail, things that I may encounter along the way, the length of time to expect (they often even recommend the time of day to start the hike)and a little history of the surroundings. I will definitely keep this book handy as I choose my paths this summer!

Great book

used this on a few trips to Yellowstone to help pick near by hikes while we were camping and it was a very good source. Pictures of the trails are nice for helping you decide between one trail or another.

Bien que je ne l'ai pas encore testé sur le terrain, le guide est rempli d'infos utiles. Les cartes sont présentées à titre indicatif et il est préférable de se procurer cartes de NAGEO.

great guide