60 Hikes within 60 Miles: Sacramento (60 Hikes - Menasha Ridge)

Description

Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-04-12
Summary: "Worth It!"

For one new to the area this book has been extremely helpful. Great collection of short to long and easy to difficult hikes. It's made discovering the Sacramento area much easier and scenic!

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-09-13
Summary: "60 miles?"

Overall, I found the book to be well written and have done several of the hikes so far without any disappointment. The one major flaw is the misleading title. Many of the hikes are well over 60 miles away (a few are even over 90 miles away). I was hoping to find some really cool hikes much closer. Prepare to be driving quite a bit if you do many of these hikes and live in Sacramento.

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-09-03
Summary: "Great Hikes"

I love to layout and information this book provides. at each hike, there is a list of essential info; Length, difficulty, scenery, water required, trail traffic, surface, time, facilities, and usually lets you know if dogs are allowed (I found one of the four hikes that I went on out of this book that did allow dogs, but was not mentioned in the book).

I found that of the four hikes I've done so far in this book, the information was mostly correct, but I would personally like to see less "cakewalk" rated hikes and more challenging options. One of the hikes I went on the instructions lacked a few key info like the fact that the road we were supposed to stay on for 2.5 miles turned in several places, and was not well marked. I always supplement with instructions online before I go anywhere, so it wasn't really a problem.

I also have the SF version of the 60 hikes series, and really like that one as well.

Rating: 2 / 5
Date: 2008-08-25
Summary: "More things wrong than right"

I've only done 2 hikes out of this book but the directions and descriptions were all waaay off. Elevations were wrong, directions to the trailhead were off, difficulty rating was meaningless and the total distances were off by over 20%. One of the trails looked as if it had been abandoned years before (and was actually somewhat dangerous) but there were two others in the same area that weren't even mentioned. The publishing date of 2008 led me to believe that the book was up to date...it isn't. Overall a tremendous disappointment. This book won't be coming with us anymore.

Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2008-07-04
Summary: "An Ok Guide. Needs improvement"

This book is fairly well put together and written decently. We live in Sacramento and we even met the author at a recent REI event. However, we've been on about 12 of the hikes in the book and almost all of them have been problematic to find. I believe the author may be more of a GPS guy than we are so we find his instructions to be vague and sometime confusing. Ultimately we find the hike. Additionally, his rating levels for rating the hike difficulty are off. An easy hike (which I would assume I could take my grandmother on) is really not so easy and has some hills. Good thing granny didn't come. Make sure you pay close attention to his levels and realize that even an easy hike can be quite challenging if you're not in shape or older. Lastly, the author make some notations to dog friendly hikes. So far of the 12 hikes we've been on, only 2 allowed dogs and the author is not really clear on the subject. Sometimes he states it out right "no dogs allowed" and other times he doesn't mention it or states they are allowed. We learned from one long drive with the doggie that getting to a hike that does not allow dogs, and not being fairly warned in the book, is no fun for us or the doggie.

I will say that this book has gotten us to explore more of the area than we ever would have and for that we're grateful. However, there is another Sacramento area hiking book and after looking at it in the bookstore, I wish I had bought it instead. I think perhaps the author was rushed to publish and didn't get a chance to finish the important details that matter to a hiker like me.