Hiking Glacier and Waterton Lakes National Parks: A Guide To The Parks' Greatest Hiking Adventures (Regional Hiking Series)

My comments are mainly regarding the new fourth edition versus the third, but let me first say that I certainly recommend having this guide. I like to hike in the national parks and I've come to rely on the Falcon guides. They break down the trails by general area in the park (Lake McDonald, Many Glacier, etc.) and provide an indication of the difficulty of the hike (easy, moderate, moderately strenuous, and strenuous for the Glacier guide), give you directions to the trailhead, and describe highlights of the trail. Although the book also contains small maps of the trails, except for very short trails one should have a more detailed trail map to actually take on the trails.I didn't notice major differences in terms of the information between the third and fourth editions, though that may just have been because of the particular trails I was interested in hiking for a recent trip, but I'm sure some info is new or updated.The biggest difference from the third edition is that the fourth edition uses a higher quality paper. That allows for color photographs and nicer maps. The material just looks much nicer, which might encourage you to hike more trails! Unfortunately, the higher quality paper is also heavier. I don't take the book on the trail with me, but if you do it will add a small amount of extra weight. I also liked to pencil in notes about a particular trail in the old edition. You can't do that with the better paper in the new edition, but ink might work.Overall, I certainly recommend this guide, but if you have the third edition it might be a closer call unless your copy is getting worn out.

My wife retired this year and wanted to plan a cross-country automobile trip; which neither of us had done since college. Our vacations had been airplane rides. The main destination was Glacier National Park.. We had not been there since backpacking our nine month old son; he's now 23. We still had the 1986 Ruhle Handbook but decided to update it with this Kindle book.The book has a number of nice features beginning with the "Short Strolls and Nature Walks" section that acknowledges that most visitors do not stray far from the car. The next section, "Trail Finder" lists best hikes by topic (waterfalls, lowland lakes, glacier views, alpine wildflowers, alpine lakes, panoramic views, and backpacks) and sorts by easy, moderate and strenuous.The body of the book contains details for 59 hikes in Glacier and Waterton parks. Each has a line graph showing elevation and distance and this information is also provided in the text for those who are X and Y axis challenged. Each also has a map of general topographic information.We hiked Crypt Lake and Rowe Lakes in Waterton and Highline, Garden Wall to Grinell overlook, Granite Park to Swiftcurrent, Sperry to Huckleberry Mt. Lookout, and Avalanche Lake. We found it to be accurate and useful. For example since the Avalanche Lake/Trail of Cedars is the most popular in the Park, we took a ranger led interpretive hike.

My daughter and I planned our first trip to Glacier National Park this past summer and we were to be gone for 8 days. Due to an unforeseen family emergency our trip had to be cancelled. However, I will say this book was so very useful to us in planning our days in the park. The trail information I have reason to believe is extremely accurate, the author provides plenty of safety discussion and warnings concerning bears in certain areas of the park that I feel was beneficial. I've spent quite a bit of time in Yellowstone National Park so am somewhat familiar with the park trail system. Plus I have several nearby friends who also looked through the book and could vouch for authenticity based on their experiences in Glacier in the past. This book is on the shelf for now, but when we look at rescheduling our trip to the park I will be quick to pull it down for an easy reference source. Also the photos were all breathtaking and for this camera buff they were inspiring as well.

This book, used in conjunction with the park maps, online websites, and advice from other hikers, is a valuable resource. Some of the hikes are labeled differently in the book like the Highline Trail (referenced in at least two places in the book but only once in the index and also labeled as The Garden Wall in one place) which made it hard to find in the book. But, otherwise the book came in handy deciding which hikes to try and which ones to pass on. The maps were good and the pictures were nice. We liked how the hikes were broken out by the mileage and points of interest as they are on the trail signs in the park. This helped us decide which side hikes to take and which ones to save for next time. We also liked how the book showed the elevation gains and losses which also helped us decide which hikes to do. I would definitely suggest this book to anyone planning to hike in Glacier National Park. No book is going to be perfect but this one was what we required. When used with other resources, it provided valuable information.

Took this on our first trip to Glacier and Waterton this summer and I'm very glad we had it! Hikes are grouped by area and numbered for quickly finding the right one. We did several day hikes and just one overnight backpack and this guide helped us determine what to do in each part of the parks. Good color pictures, elevation profiles and gain/loss, GPS coordinates, and trail descriptions as well as instructions for parking and general tips. Extremely helpful.The only thing I don't love about the book is the difficulty ratings it gives. Mostly accurate but we found the "moderately strenuous" hike to Lincoln Lake to be very hard and the trail was very overgrown and this was not mentioned in the two page description in the book, so parts of it need to be updated. But the logistical information is all current and correct as far as I experienced so next time I'll look onling (TripAdvisor, maybe?) for trail conditions

used this last fall was very helpful on deciding which hikes to go on

Contains great detail to help decide which hike is right for you - distance, degree of difficulty and sights along the way. This book stays in the backpack!

Excellent hiking guide, enables you to prepare your journey to comfort you.

Good book

Awesome book, great hiking information