100 Best Denver Area & Front Range Day Hikes [ペーパーバック]

Follow the directions in this book and you will waste precious hiking time driving around looking for trailheads or, worse yet, you'll end up hiking around in vain. We're not bad with directions, either. I'm a former Army land navigation and orienteering instructor, so I knows how to read a map!

It took 6 hikes, but my boyfriend and I finally learned our lesson. We either had great difficulty finding the 6 hikes we selected from this book or ended up not finding them at all! The directions are terrible! For example, the directions given for the hike we went on last weekend -- Silver Dollar Lake -- are quite "off." The book instructs you to drive 1 mile past a campground to a road that will lead you the the trailhead. Well, guess what, that road is located more like .2 miles past the campground. We ended up finding another road that was about 1.1 miles past the campground and hiked up it, only to find that it was a dead-end with no trailhead in sight. Ridiculous.

Beware!

UPDATE: This book still sucks. We thought we've give it another try, after not using it for about a year. This time, we did find the trail, but were met by a sign that said, "No Dogs Permitted." The book did not mention this. We had to leave and seek out another trail because we had our dog with us. Of course, we stupidly tried another hike in the book, which we never did find. Thankfully, we happened across a completely unrelated trail and did enjoy our hike. Don't buy this book. It's not accurate.

A guide book needs clear directions. I followed four of their hikes and got mixed up one way or the other on all four. We headed to one place with a dog, but were met with a 'no pets' policy not mentioned in the book. Or distances were omitted or inaccurate. I hope the authors hear of my complaint - don't just write a book for its shelf appeal.

I decided to make this a summer of hiking in my own backyard, and I agree, I had trouble finding many of the hikes because of things like Lee Hill Rd instead of the streetsign, Lee Hill Drive, little things like that can throw you off, I took my own computer maps with me before most hikes. Also, you will see 4 miles out and back, then realize the trailmap at the trail head will tell you that a route is 3.7 miles one way. You must read their descriptions to see what they are calling the half-way point. On the other hand, they had many great hikes listed, many features very accurately described. Prepare yourself with your own map first, and you will save many headaches.