Hiking North Carolina, 2nd: A Guide to Nearly 500 of North Carolina’s Greatest Hiking Trails

5 Responses to “Hiking North Carolina, 2nd: A Guide to Nearly 500 of North Carolina’s Greatest Hiking Trails”

1. Marina Kushner says:

   May 20, 2010 at 8:35 pm

   Any traveler to North Carolina will be able to use this helpful guide to the state. It’s full of information on copious trails, including educational ones perfect for the family tree.
   Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
2. James Cox says:

   May 20, 2010 at 8:54 pm

   All of Randy Johnson’s books are very informative. The maps and driving directions are brilliant and also the trail descriptions.
   
   Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
3. R. Sharpley says:

   May 20, 2010 at 9:29 pm

   This is an brilliant resource and preparation guide. I have nothing to add to the earlier reviews, most of which are 5 stars.

   The lack of GPS coordinates of the trailheads is the one glaring deficiency and the reliance on another map resource is no substitute. The copy edit staff should have done their homework and inserted this information, since it could be done from their desks. It appears as a replacement for that they place their efforts into misleading publicity -

   “Detailed trail descriptions, and GPS-compatible trail maps”

   Nevertheless, I have since bought extra copies for gifts.
   Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
4. Robert M. Branch says:

   May 20, 2010 at 11:53 pm

   Mr. Johnson’s “Hiking North Carolina” is a guide for hikers by a lifelong hiker in the North Carolina High Country. North Carolina has hundreds of miles of hiking trail, and Randy has hiked most of them himself. The one risk of writing a guide about something you like so much, is to ruin the sense of adventure by including too much information. On the additional hand, I have been hiking long enough to remember guides that would allow you to barely find the trailhead, much less give you excellent information about the trail and what you will encounter. There is a fine balance between a guide that tells too much, like the Appalachian Trail guides, and a guide that says too small, like some I see in well loved magazines. I judge that Mr. Johnson’s guide strikes a excellent balance between the two; telling you what you need to know while preserving the sense of adventure in the experience. It’s the adventure that draws us into the woods after all. I recommend this guide for anyone who is interested in hiking in the state. His maps are reasonably detailed and well drawn, and his trail descriptions are enough to get you where you want to go lacking spoiling the fun of discovery. It is an brilliant work and well worth including in your outdoor library.

   Robert Branch
   
   Burnsville, NC
   Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
5. Noel C. Fenton says:

   May 21, 2010 at 1:53 am

   This was a excellent book for a all-purpose description of several trails in North Carolina, but didn’t give many details. I reflect I was looking for something that would give me enough information to pick one trail out of them all to visit, but the brief descriptions didn’t give me enough to go on. If you already know which trail you want to trek and it is one of the trails covered in the book, you’re pretty well set. You will, but, need another map to know exactly how to get to that particular trail…the book has a map with a all-purpose location but no point driving information.
   Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5