5 comments about The Chuting Gallery.

1. Even after skiing most of North Superior on my face, I'm still glad this guide showed me the way. Prudence inspring (with many tales of disaster) this book makes great reading even if you never get it together enough to point your skis down a 60 degree slope.



2. Even after skiing most of the North Face of Superior on my face, I'm still glad to have read this excellent guide. Filled with enough references to inspire caution in even the most hardcore skiers, this is the ultimate conversation piece, even if you never make it off the groomers at Alta.



3. ...and just when I thought I was becoming a good skier, I read Andrew's book and realized the depth of technical skill he posses. The Chuting Gallery is an excellant tool to be used by accomplished ski mountaineers to test the grade of their steel. As a guide book, for me, it tells me where not to go.....



4. Buy this book, that guy owes a lot of people serious money



5. This book rocks. The author is so friendly - if you go to his website ([...])- he'll send you a signed copy!

No comments about Trailing The Pioneers: A Guide to Utah's Emigrant Trails, 1846-1850.

4 comments about Canyoneering 2 (Canyoneering).

1. The guide is a good one. I have hiked the Long and Gravel Canyon area for over 20 years with friends and family. It can be amazingly fun but also amazingly dangerous country. My main feeling about guide books like the one Steve has written is negative, however. I am used to hiking in areas with only a topo map and a compass, as this provides much more of a wilderness experience. Hikes with a guide book destroy this aspect. Also, the land is very delicate in these riparian areas, and cannot tolerate large influxes of hikers without destruction of the resource. As guide books like this proliferate, the influx of hikers will more certainly destroy the wilderness experience as well as the physical viability of the resource much more surely than mining or cattle ranching could ever do. This in view of the fact that hikers seek out the best part of a limited resource and tend to overuse it. Mr. Allen makes a point of his love for the canyon country and yet ironically may be responsible for more degredation of the resource than almost anyone else because of the publication of books like this. I am not anti-hiker. In fact I am a member of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. But please, Mr. Allen, let us hikers "roam free", and leave us some unspoiled territory!!



2. The last review on this book felt that Allens book would cause the public to swarm the remote Utah regions and spoil this PUBLIC land for him. While he contends that the land is fragile and that anyone else besides him will destroy it, Allen emphasis time and again in his books the Low-impact camping tecniques essential to this land. This book describes in detail many fablous and beautiful hikes. Some of the most beautiful and marvelous scenery in the world is located in the bad, no-man lands of Utah. These series of books instruct help and guide readers through these wonders. We should be thankful there is a guide so that we aren't ruining the land by rescuing inexperianced hikers that didn't know what they were getting into. These guides are a must for anyone interested in exploration and enjoying the wonder of nature first hand. They correctly and accuratly depict water sources, milage and countless other invaulable things. Thankyou Steve Allen for all of the hard work and the sacrifice that you made to bring us these books. And to the previous reader, I am so very sorry that you feel the lands are to be used by you and only you. Get over yourself.

   Sincerley, Justin Rammell




3. This is an excellent book for the more hardcore backpackers out there. The loops described are a lot of fun, and provide access to spectacular views plus a chance to explore true wilderness. As for bringing too many people... after going on several of the hikes, I must admit we were hard pressed to find footprints less than a year or two old along the tracks, if any at all. Enjoy!



4. This book has a lot of good information in it.
   
   The two problems with the book are that with the exception of the hike, Escalante South, the rest of the loops cross well-used roads. What is the point of carrying a pack for a week while crossing well-used roads, especially if the author fails to explain that nearly all points on the loop can easily be reached by dayhikes?
   
   A second dislike is that the author also takes you some less interesting sections of some canyons in expense of some of the really great sections of the same canyon or nearby ones.
   
   If you want to use this book to it's fullest potential, make sure to get off the paint-by-numbers route and explore some on your own. Make sure to go over the maps and realize that the areas in the book don't usually get that far from the roads.

1 comments about Rock Climbing Desert Rock III: Moab to Colorado National Monument.

1. Finally, a virtual bible of guidebooks for this infinate land of valleys and cliffs. Eric does a great job with this series. So much info for one book. Countless hours and hours went into these books. This series is one of a Kind!

3 comments about The Colorado River Through Glen Canyon: Before Lake Powell.

1. Through carefully chosen photographs and comments of people who experienced Glen Canyon before it was inundated by Lake Powell, Inskip presents a moving portrait of sinuous sandstone channels, lush microclimates, and the favorite beaches we will never again view.



2. Glen Canyon before Lake Powell is at once a beautiful and tragic book. It consists of a collection of photographs--mostly color--of the landscape now hidden beneath the eerie turquoise waters of Lake Powell, a vast man-made reservoir on the Colorado River near the Utah-Arizona border. Editor Eleanor Inskip has skillfully paired each photograph with quotations from those who knew Glen Canyon before the water began to rise on that fateful day in January 1963. Explorers, river runners, popular writers, archaeologists, historians, and environmentalists all find a voice in this extraordinary collection, but the work's greatest strength is nevertheless its images.

   The book is neither strident nor moralizing in tone. Instead, a sense of quiet grief pervades. The photographs speak for themselves, as do the observations so eloquently captured in the accompanying quotations. In the end, the questions raised are unspoken but obvious: Who are we to decide the fate of an organism so alive and so vital as a river? What have we lost in our relentless quest for the "good life?" And can it in fact be a "good life" with the waters of the Colorado stilled? Inskip respects her readers enough to let them judge for themselves.

   Admirers of Eliot Porter's famous The Place No One Knew, now out of print, will find this to be an appropriate companion volume. Very highly recommended.




3. I have been working for years now on my own book about the controversy surrounding Lake Powell and Glen Canyon, and out of all the things I've read and seen, and all the people I've talked with, nothing has made the case for Glen Canyon more clearly than this book right here. If you are familiar with Lake Powell, then you know might that Gregory Butte is a tall island in the middle of Lake Powell's Last Chance Bay. But, open this amazing book and you'll see that Gregory Butte was merely a single, amazing spire surrounded by miles and miles of twisting slickrock canyons and mesas all racing and swelling toward the butte in their center. Never before was I so aware of just how much is now underwater. It's almost unbelievable. This book is beautiful, but it is also depressing and enraging for the sad truths it reveals. It will show you one of the most gorgeous places you've ever seen, and then tell you that place no longer exists, and that you can never go there. I discovered this book in the stacks at UNM, and sat on the floor for hours until I had studied every page of it. I wouldn't argue with someone that gave it five stars, but I'm giving it four solely because the book's text left a little something to be desired. Some of the quotes are quotes that have been repeated in every book ever written about Glen Canyon, and many are from a certain female folksinger that I just find annoying.
   That aside, this is an amazing book. True, it idealizes Glen Canyon as a place of untouched nature--when it also had Boy Scouts that killed snakes for fun, beaches strewn with unburied human waste, and mines that indiscriminately dumped radioactive piles of uranium tailings right by the river--but there WAS still an awful lot to wax poetic about. Get this book, get this book, get this book. If you are at all interested in this subject, get this book. Buy it no matter what the cost.

No comments about Cedar Mesa Hikes: SE Utah.

No comments about Climbing and Exploring Utah's Mt. Timpanogos : Also Featuring - History of Provo & American Fork Canyons, Sundance, Heber Creeper, Timp Hike, Timp Cave, ... Deaths & Rocky Mountain Goats & Geology.

3 comments about Historical Guide to Utah Ghost Towns.

1. Stephen L. Carr's book is the funabental source for information on Utah's Ghost Towns. Carr has taken a very practical approach, county by county and given background to the town's orrigin, how to visit the town, and what to expect once you arrive. Our family has used it for years as we venture around the state of Utah and attempt to visit Utah's historical past. This book is a must for understanding Ghost Towns in Utah.



2. A great book to get started with. This was my first book and one of the staples of my collection. Great history on the towns and great instructions to get there. If you are serious about ghost town hunting... get this book.



3. Stephen Carr's Utah's Ghost Town book is excellent to help you understand the history of the past ghost towns and to see what you might find at the towns. Reading the background information is full worth the book's value.

   The problem we found was that the book was published in 1972. In order to use the book, you need to consult other maps due to new highways and streets and other things changing. Also, many of the ghost towns have denegrated or disappeared within 30 years. It seems that Hollywood liked all the ghost towns available, but after visiting many of the ghost towns, I don't think Hollywood would ever set foot in them again after the great movie sets they can make today.

   Book Example: "Grafton is one of the most pictursque ghost towns that Hollywood used for many movies."

   What We Found Out: There are only four structures left in Grafton with one locked up on private property. The church has been completely refurbished so it looks brand new and another structure is about to fall down and is off-limits to people.

No comments about Salt Lake City Then and Now (Then & Now Thunder Bay).

No comments about Fishing Utah, 2nd: An Angler's Guide to More than 170 Prime Fishing Spots (Fishing Series).