HikeArizona.COM

Hey, I'm planning on revamping the hiking and nature sections at my bookstore. What are some of your favorite hiking/camping/climbing guides and general books on nature and the outdoors? Any favorite survival guides? I really like Jack Carlson's Superstitions and Superstitions East trail guides. I'm also a huge Ed Abbey and Charles Bowden fan. Thanks for any input.

"Where the Wild Things Were" by Charles Stolzenburg. It's an eye-opening book, and I won't belabor the points I've already made here. Awesome work.

The Marauders :whistle:

Anything by Sigurd Olson or Aldo Leopold. I can take John Muir only in small doses. John McPhee is always fun to read on the trail, especially his geology series. I've enjoyed a lot of polar exploration histories, the most recent being two by Jennifer Niven on Vilhjalmur Stefansson's disastrous 1913 and 1921 expeditions. I also like to read local histories on the trail.

I'm kind of partial to a few EXCELLENT books (I may be biased towards friends, members and books that mention HAZ )
50 Hikes in Arizona
60 Hikes Within 60 Miles: Phoenix
Day and Overnight Hikes
Superstition Wilderness Trails East
Canyoneering Arizona
Hiking Ruins Seldom Seen
The Marauders
Plants of Arizona

You gotta have Exploring Arizona's Wild Areas by Scott S. Warren, because it is the only one I have found that covers the many Western Arizona wilderness areas.

This turned out to be a long list, below, but the book above is THE guidebook for W. AZ. You did say guidebooks.

Colin Fletcher: All but especially River, The Man Who Walked Through Time and The Thousand Mile Summer.

Chuck Bowden is awesome. Abbey goes without saying.

Michael Ghiglieri, Canyon, Death in Grand Canyon, First Through Grand Canyon, etc.

Anne Zwinger: Down Canyon, Run River Run, Wind in the Rock.

Bruce Berger: There Was a River, The Telling Distance: Conversations with the American Desert

Katie Lee: All My Rivers Are Gone

Teal: Breaking into the Current: Boatwomen of the Grand Canyon

Levingood: Tucson hiking guide, Women of the Grand Canyon, Hiker's Guide to the Santa Rita Mtns.(Out of print??)

Sadler: There's this River: Grand Canyon Boatmen Stories

Kolb: Through The Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico

Stanton, Robert: Down the Colorado, and Colorado River Controversies

Roberts: In Search of the Old Ones, and Sandstone Spine

Peacock, Doug (the real Hayduke): Grizzly Years

Bowers, Janice Emily: The Mountains Next Door (about the Rincons) and Fear Falls Away

Other authors are Craig Childs, Gary Paul Nabhan, Barry Lopez, Wallace Stegner, John Annerino

These are just a prime few. Gotta love the laptop, I can take it to my book cases!

The sorrowful thing is how quickly books go out of print. The good thing is that you can usually find them on Amazon. Take Bruce Berger, for example. His writing is exquisite. I don't know that his books are still in print. They are collections of essays. And he went on a river trip down the Glen with Katie Lee and the real Seldom Seen Smith on what was said to be the last trip before the dam. (There was a River.)

If you are on my facebook page, take a look and see where I posted a photo of Seldom Seen, taken a day or two ago by an acquaintance of mine who happened to meet him. Here, maybe I can post the photo:

I'd also recommend The Very Hard Way and Sunk Without A Sound.

I have read the latter, not the former.

There is also Buzz Holmstrom's The Doing of the Thing, although it is a biography, I would have to google to find author. And also Harvey Butcharts biography. There are several Abbey biographies as well.

I really love to talk up Robert B. Stanton when I'm in the Canyon and run into river guides. They talk up Powell,and I say, "Read Stanton!" Stanton's book, Down the Colorado is my very favorite Grand Canyon river running book, without exception. It is about the 1889 expedition to survey to build a railroad, paralleling the river and below the rim. The story is so beautifully written, Stanton is obviously smitten by the Canyon's beauty, and it is rife with terrible tragedy. Way better than Powell's lies. Read it!

Oh, and don't forget Romance of the Colorado by Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, one of those on the second Powell expedition, who Powell never mentions, since in his journal of the first expedition he included occurances from the second and never mentions having done it twice. Dellenbaugh was only 17 at the time. It's a really great read.

I really do not like Powell, can you tell? He may have been brave, but he was mean-spirited, didn't pay his boatmen, lied about what happened at Separation Rapids, etc., lied about a lot of things. I believe he was complicit in the murders of his three men, I do believe he knew they were not killed by the Indians, but by settlers, and I believe he knew all along exactly who those settlers were. I believe he kept that hidden because he needed those very settlers (Jacob Hamblin, et al) to cooperate with him later on as he returned to the area to do a great many ethnologies of the local tribes. He did not care about those 3 men, he only cared about his own agenda. The truth of this is hidden away in letters in the Mormon Library in Salt Lake City, but they will not release the information. A researcher from U of A saw the letters one time, went back the next day and was told he could not look at that material any more. You can read about some of it in Ghiglieri's book, First Through Grand Canyon. Several of the boatmen kept secret diaries.

Okay, here are the ones I can think of off the top of my head:

Crossing Arizona by Chris Townsend- a Scotsman hikes the Arizona Trail

I also like to read mountaineering books- anything by David Roberts (for example) On the Ridge Between Life & Death

The classic Annapurna by Maurice Herzog, or anything about climbing the Eiger's north face, like The Eiger Obsession by John Harlin

Malusa's Into Thick Air: Biking into the Bellybutton of Six Continents

I second Elizabeth's suggestion of Gary Paul Nabhan, especially Coming Home to Eat

Hey, Sirena, awesome, you put some I hadn't heard of. OK! Those are going on my book list! When I don't buy used books at Bookman's I get them via ILL, inter-library loan, which is available at my little rural library, and is nation-wide. It's free, too.

OK, now my book list has grown...thanks Elizabeth and everyone.

Stanton was an interesting character. He was a perpetual dreamer and promoter. Crazy railroad ideas, crazy mining ideas. The Colorado was filled with strange folks back then.

Stanton makes the railroad sound so logical. It was to run along the Esplanade, as I recall. He compares the steepness of the Canyon to the steepness of the Rockies, where railroads had already been built.

However, although the railroad survey was the reason for both of Stanton's Colorado River running expeditions, his writing is really good. His descriptions are great, his appreciation of beauty, etc. And the tragedies of the deaths and injuries on the expedition are also described in detail. All in all, one of the best adventure stories ever.

If you have ever been to Vasey's Paradise, River Mile 32, (or hiked down South Canyon to get to it, as I have) you will have visited Stanton's Cave, where the party rested and stored some goods after one of the tragedies.

azbackpackr wrote:If you are on my facebook page, take a look and see where I posted a photo of Seldom Seen, taken a day or two ago by an acquaintance of mine who happened to meet him.

Oh, wow! The real Seldom Seen in the flesh. I wonder if he'd like the tshirt I bought a while back? It says "All we need here, God, is one little pre-cision earthquake"


Also, thanks for all the great books, everyone!

Where'd you get the shirt?

I want one!

I found it here: http://www.iliadbooks.com/zencart/index ... cts_id=159 15 bucks.

However, I am annoyed it is only in L and XL. Just because I can put a large t-shirt on and wear it like a DRESS doesn't mean I like that style! Pet peeve of mine.

Ken Sanders Books in Utah has a whole line of R. Crumb illustrated Monkey Wrench Gang shirts - http://kensanders.com/inventory_mwg.php