Hiking Yosemite National Park: A Guide To 59 Of The Park's Greatest Hiking Adventures (Regional Hiking Series)

I got a great vacay from such resources assisting the planning.

I'm amazed that I did not get around to this book by Suzanne Swedo sooner. I loved her guide to the Golden Trout Wilderness, also published by Falcon Press, and have used her "Best Easy Day Hikes, Yosemite" booklet to plan several trips to the park in the past. But I never got around to looking at her larger volume, Hiking Yosemite, until this third edition. I suspected, correctly, that it was not as comprehensive as Jeffrey Schaffer's  Yosemite: A Complete Hiker's Guide . But while it is not truly comprehensive, the selection of hikes Swedo offers in this book are worth looking at. This is, as the title suggests, "the Park's Greatest Adventures."Printed on glossy paper with nice color photos, decent sketch maps, and detailed hiking directions, this book offers a great selection of trails. Some of the hikes are relatively short (ex. Tuolumne Grove, 2.5 miles) while others are multi day backpack excursions, such as the north rim hike. Hikes are organized by geographical location, for the most part, with hikes starting on the valley floor, off Glacier Point Drive, and along Tioga Pass road. Swedo also dedicates a full chapter to the High Sierra camps, describing both the grand loop tour, and directions to each individual camp from the best trail head. Each hike includes a point by point mileage report and a short synopsis of the hike at the beginning of the description. An elevation profile rounds out hike descriptions. Long on human and natural history, this book is as fun to read as it is to use on the trail.It's easy to see why this book is now in its third edition. Swedo has written a classic. I was pleased to see that this book was not simply an expanded version of her contribution to the 'Best Easy Day Hikes' series. While there is some overlap between the two books, each contains unique trails and is written for a different audience, something that Falcon authors do not always do. I've personally hiked roughly half of the routes she describes and have enjoyed every one. I'm also intrigued enough by some of her backpacking routes to try some new hikes on my next visit to the park. On the whole, this book fully merits 5 stars. I'm sorry I did not read it sooner.

At the time we visited the park, June 2013, all the trails were accurate and open. The author does an accurate job of describing each trail, at least the 10 or so we chose to do while we were there. We only did day hikes, no backpacking. I would recommend reading the entire few page summary of each trail, and re-reading it prior to doing a trail. The text for each trail comes with good descriptions of landmarks, as well as tips for seeing wildlife.The book itself is a little heavy, so at first we didn't carry it with us. We regretted that once as we got mixed up with trail markers and would've liked to have had the book to reference. If backpacking, you may want to make photocopies of the few trails you are doing. On another backpacking note, the pages are glossy and probably do not catch a spark very well.The difficulty assessments in the book were a little underestimated in my wife's and my opinion. We are in reasonable shape and from the relatively flat Midwest, so perhaps to a hearty Pacific-coast native they are perfectly accurate.The assessments of each trails popularity and best time of year to view also seemed accurate to the times we were there.

Probably this review is more about the style of Falcon Guides Series, than for this particular book. I bought this book after I had bought another one "Hiking Sequoia and Kings Canyon" by Laurel Scheidt and loved it. This book by Suzanne Swedo is equally useful and helpful. I really liked how each hike description is organized, including useful information (GPS location, parking tips, narrative about the trails itself, small but sufficiently detailed map, elevation profile of the trail (I loved it) and mile markers for landmarks.Please keep in minds that these books are mostly for day hikers and given hiking time is quite realistic. So, if you are a back-packer (I am not), then here are not that many multi-days trips for you in this book.

A nice book I bought before heading to Yosemite. I'm only a day hiker, I don't backpack in, therefore many trails weren't for me, but handy enough to refer to when looking for some trails which are less congested that the usuals. I probably wouldn't purchase this book if I had it to do over. Since I live halfway across the country from Yosemite, it will likely gather dust until next time we head west. I feel like there are better guides online if your put enough research into it.

The book led us on some great hikes and allowed us to find some rare secluded spaces within the park's boundaries. The descriptions of the trails were very useful and trail head finding was made easy by the book.

We used this book to select hikes in Yosemite National Park. We did not take the book with us on the hikes. It is too heavy for that purpose.

Great book, very accurate with all their comments and recommendations. Really helps plan your vacation to accurately understand each trail.

Great book