Best Easy Day Hikes Rocky Mountain National Park (Best Easy Day Hikes Series)

I bought this book for a recent trip to RMNP. It had been years since I had been out there and wanted to reacquaint myself with the area and what was available for easy hiking.Each (easy) hike in the park is described with the difficulty level, distance, time to hike it, and what the benefits are - such as vistas, wildlife viewing, etc. It was worth every penny since I felt very confident that I wasn't going to get myself in over my head on a hike and I appreciated getting to focus on what was important. On this trip, the vistas were what we were wishing to explore and the guide absolutely delivered. The volume itself is slim, so it's easy to tuck into your backpack and take along. You can do one hike, or you could cobble together several and make a day of it.The one thing that I did add was I wrote on the top of the page for each hike what the benefit was. We were staying near the Fall Creek Road entrance to the park so the book was well organized with regard to what was nearby and the information about the benefit of each was available but I had to flip back and forth between the hike description and the index where the hikes were sorted by category of what you would see. Would have been a nice addition to have that already done, but taking a few minutes to do that myself actually helped with analyzing the offerings and making our decisions.Indispensable for shorter/easier hikes in the park.

Sadly, I only had a day in Rocky Mountain National Park. And that from the less popular western side. But my theory has long been that you are best off doing several short hikes instead of one long one when you only have a day or two in a park. And that's where Falcon's popular 'Best Easy Day Hikes' series can be a real value. Using this book I was able to select a diverse range of hikes to allow me to escape my car and explore some of what this park offers. Did I really "see" Rocky Mountain? Nope. But I saw more (moose and elk in particular) than I would have from the road. And that was worth the purchase price on my kindle edition.Like most Falcon Guides in this series, 'Best easy Day Hikes, Rocky Mountain' features around 20 hikes, all under 8 miles with many that are 3 miles or less. You get a detailed route description, a nice sketch map, driving directions to the trail head, mileage, and a difficulty rating. You don't get pictures (besides the cover photo) or topography. But then the Best Easy Day Hikes series are fairly inexpensive for a reason. They are basically shortened versions of longer books in Falcon's 'Best Hikes' series. And if you have more than a few days, or live relatively nearby the park, then I'd recommend the latter. For my purposes however, this option was ideal. A good book at a good price that helped me explore a great location on a time budget.

I bought this guide to use for a family vacation in RMNP and it was fabulous! The guide is organized well, according to where in the park the trailheads are located. I liked that, because we were able to take advantage of the best hikes closest to where we stayed in Estes Park, and were able to plan to do several in one day when things were nearby. It also gave you all the helpful information you needed about each hike - length (round trip), parking situation, how to get to the trailhead, difficulty level, if you can get there by the shuttle, best times to do the hike, and a basic map of the trail with nearby landmarks like other trailheads, picnic spots, roads, etc.We had people in our group of all different hiking abilities, and this book was really enough for everyone. Some of us who weren't able to do long or very strenuous hikes were able to enjoy the easiest and best hikes (from .5 miles to 2.0 miles round trip) like the Bear Lake nature trail, Sprague Lake, Nymph Lake, and Alberta Falls. The more energetic folks in my group, on the other hand, took a few mornings to do more moderate hikes (what this book calls "moderately easy" felt more like "moderate" to me, but I guess I am still a beginner!) like Mills Lake, The Loch, and Gem Lake, which were challenging for us but very do-able and WELL worth the extra effort! Hiking is the absolute best way to see the true beauty of RMNP, so if you are thinking of taking a trip there, you absolutely MUST venture off Trail Ridge Road, get out of the car, and go for a walk. Trust me, there is something out there for everyone, even those looking for hikes with small children.

I got this to come up with a game plan for hiking with my family in RMNP this summer. We have a wide range of ages for the kids (14-6) so I wanted to plan to do hikes that would give us the most bang for the buck. This book was helpful in targeting waterfall, lake or mountain view type of hikes. It has good information about difficulty, crowded ones, and what to look for and expect on the hike. I thought it was helpful and I have been to the park probably 6 x in my life including a couple of back country trips. I saw this was sold in pretty much all of the gift shops in the park and many stores around the park and it was usually the one that was almost sold out compared to others. The only thing that was probably lost on me was a pretty heavy description of the types of wildflowers you would see on every trail in every season. I guess good info, just something that jumped out at me as something I haven't seen in other hiking guide books.

Although this had a nice compilation of hikes for RMNP there were 2 deficiencies. Many hiking books have a summary page with distance and elevation of each hike allowing an easy way to choose hikes of appropriate length and difficulty. In addition, a little more detail on the actual trail (steep, moderate, points of interest) would have been nice. With that being said I did use this guide to help choose appropriate hikes--all the details were available, I just had to go to each hike to find it.

Used this on our recent trip to Rocky Mountain national park. Hiked a lot of trails and this book was very informative and gave us a good idea of what to expect. We hiked with four kids so we needed a list of shorter kid friendly trails.

ロッキーマウンテン国立公園で回ろうと思ったトレイルが殆ど網羅されている上に、地図もわかりやすく、トレッキングには必携です。お勧めです。