Book reviews

“Mountains make their own weather.” I’ll never forget hearing that from the friend who introduced me to trip planing and accident analysis. It’s a sobering and important lesson for anyone who climbs above timberline across exposed terrain on backpacking and mountaineering trips. Written by Jeff Renner, Mountain Weather explains how …

I keep several map books in my car for the different states that I hike and backpack in, called Gazetteers. They’re published by a company called Delorme (recently acquired by Garmin) and contain detailed maps of each state including all of the paved and unpaved roads, seasonal roads, gated fire roads, …

Simple Fly Fishing: Techniques for Tenkara and Rod and Reel is a beautiful coffee table book full of gorgeous trout photos, exotic fly fishing locations and anecdotal stories about fly fishing with the world’s greatest fishing guides. The authors, Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia Inc, Craig Mathews, Mauro Mazzo, and …

Contrary to its title, Andrew Skurka’s backpacking book, The Ultimate Hiker’s Gear Guide is not really a book about gear per se, as much as it is about the skills and knowledge that very experienced backpackers develop for planning trips and deciding what gear is appropriate and safe enough to …

Becoming a skilled and confident hiker or backpacker is a lifelong endeavor that requires continuous learning and practice. While reading hiking books can’t give you the hands-on experience that only comes by getting your clothes dirty and boots wet, they are a useful guide to expand your horizons and help …

The Backpacking Chef’s backpacking and camping cookbook called Recipes for Adventure is chock full of healthy, hearty, and homemade backpacking recipes. I know this first-hand because I’ve made many of them, like this Ratatoille. But while the meals and snack recipes in Recipes for Adventure are excellent, the real value of …

If you’re thinking about thru-hiking or section hiking the Appalachian Trail, make sure you take a look at the latest A.T. Guide, written and compiled by David Miller (trail name AWOL). The Guide has town maps, GPS coordinates to trail heads, mail drop instructions, sections on town and trail etiquette, elevation …

The AMC’s White Mountain Guide, considered “The Bible” of White Mountains hiking and backpacking, is an indispensable tool in understanding the difficulty, length, elevation gain, and hazards of each of the 608 maintained hiking trails in the Whites, including detailed directions for finding trail heads. If you day hike or …

National Geographic has published a new, thirteen map Appalachian Trail Illustrated map set ($149.97) of waterproof paper maps that cover the length of the Appalachian Trail from Springer Mountain, Georgia to Maine’s Mt Katahdin. Available as a complete set or in separate 200-250 mile sections of trail ($14.95 each), they’re cleverly packaged in …

While fly fishing can be as simple as tying a general-purpose fly to your line and trying to hook a fish,  a lot of people geek out and tie different flies for different seasons and stages in the life-cycle of the insects that fish eat. ‘Matching the hatch’, as it’s …