100 Classic Hikes in New England

by Jeffrey Romano published by The Mountain Books ISBN 978-1-59485-100-1 (ppb) $21.95 US (jacket price)

Review by Arnie P

This book was provided by The Mountain Books for the purpose of this review.

I feel special being able to review a book about my favorite pastime written by a life long resident of New England, which is what I am also.  I started my outdoor adventures shortly after turning 2 by wandering off through the woods to a local lake with my dog Rudy.  That was almost 70 years ago and I am still hiking (wandering) mostly in the forest of New England.

At first glace this book has a lot of nice features.  The size is convenient to carry in the car and be readily available.  The book is well organized.  The back of the book has an appendix, index, short biography of the author, and short history of the publisher The Mountain Book a non profit organization founded in 1906.  The table of contents at the start of the book has the 100 trails divided into 7 groups.  The groups progress from southern New England and end up in Maine  All the information I would need to quickly find an interesting hike to do when someone calls and says “I’d like to do a 4 hour hike” .

The 3 pages used for this section are packed with important data to quickly find an interesting hike to do.  They are in spreadsheet format in sections grouped by length of hike in time.  The groupings are half day hikes, day hikes, long day hikes, short backpacks, and extended backpacks.  Of the 100 hikes featured only 7 are listed as backpacks.  The columns help us quickly identify important items to most hikers, such as name and number  of hike, level of difficulty, when trail is open, and key features of the trail.  Following this is a map showing trail locations by number, major roads, cities and towns.

Both are brief and what we need to know about hiking safely in New England.  The introduction also provides a realistic view of the diversity in terms of climate, the mix of mountains, oceans, lakes, rivers and everything in between.  This section covers not only what to take with you, but why you are taking it.  Hiking safety is well covered and so important to successful hiking.

The contents of this section is over 90% of the book.  Each trail has a map and at least one picture.  The pictures are beautiful and are very impressive.  Each trail description starts with a section on how to arrive at the starting point of the hike.  The hidden gem of this book is each hike has information on hikes adjacent to the described hike.  In a way each hike is a gateway to more hikes.  Check back in about a month when I will writing more on the details of some of the hikes that I have experienced

update 5-21-2010

I am reminded of a saying I heard on the trail: “A bad day on the trail is always better then the best day at work”. Hiking has been my favorite outdoor activity all my life. I have always struggled with determining the difficulty of a hike. To put it another way, how well am I prepared to do a particular hike. After years of hiking and reading about hikes I still don’t have an answer. The reason is there are too many variables including the weather on a particular day and my physical condition that day. One of the first things I did with this book, was to take an inventory of the hikes I remember doing over the years. I have hiked at least 22 of the 100 hikes. I think since I hike a lot, I did find the difficulties of the hikes were a bit conservative for me, but as I get older these ratings are becoming more in line with my abilities.

The hikes are grouped into 7 geographical areas. I remember hiking in 5 of the 7 areas. The ones I don’t remember hiking in are Southeastern New England and Northern Maine. However, as I started reading the Southern New England section, I remembered going to a Rhode Island beach when I was 3 or 4 years old. Someday I will go back and visit. The descriptions were good enough to trigger my memory .

In the Monadnock-Metacomet section, I have hiked 2 of the selections. I hiked Mount Watatic in the winter and the views were as good as described. I will be doing some backpacking along the Wapack Trail and the Misstate Trail. Mount Monadnock is the other trail I hiked various times and on most of the different trails.

In the Berkshires-Taconics, Green Mountain State, Maine Coast, and Northern Maine sections, I have hiked only Mount Greylock and Mount Cadillac from the book. I have done some hiking in Vermont and along the the coast of southern Maine, but not the hikes mentioned in the book. This book has renewed my interest in doing some of these beautiful hikes. Some day I hope to do the Long Trail which my son hiked while he was in the scouts. This book has information I will use when I visit these areas in the future.

Based on my experience of having hiked extensively 16 of the 21 hikes listed for the White Mountains, I found the information very useful and accurate. The book introduces a mountain in such a way that once you have done the book hike, you will probably want to do more of the trails shown but not described.

In summary, I love the organization of the book. I can quickly find a location, length of hike, and a level of difficulty. The pictures as well as the descriptions are fantastic. The maps provide a good overview. A great book for all levels of hikers.  I wish to thank The Mountain Books and 4alloutdoors.org for the opportunity to test this book.