Hiking the Big Sur Country: The Ventana Wilderness

by Jeffrey P. Schaffer

Think of Big Sur and you most likely conjure images of sea-swept cliffs and expansive ocean views, the hideout of Beat poets and dropouts. To the east, however, is a surprisingly bountiful landscape... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0899970834
• ISBN13: 9780899970837
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Wilderness Press
• Length: 166 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Big help for Big Sur hikers

I bought this for my son and his wife who live in Colorado and when they come out here always have to take in the Big Sur area. There are few pictures, but if you google Big Sur Bike Rides you will find great photos taken by bikers.

Great but needs updating

Having made about thirty different trips into the Ventana wilderness over the last several years using this great guide book, I've come to appreciate the authors maps. Regular topographic maps from the USGS do not show many trails in the Ventana or inaccuratly shown. The author has plotted the trails in detail onto USGS topos (shrunk to book size which means you must look closely, but you can still discern every contour clearly). The trail descriptions are as detailed and informative as one can expect for a book this old. Fires, El Nino's and withdrawal of funds for trail maintenance inevitably change the accuracy of Schaeffers descriptions. Nevertheless there are still many useful descriptions and comments. If you are serious about exploring this rugged widerness, the book would be well worth it for its maps alone.

Quite good, but now inaccurate in places

Big Sur has some wonderful hiking trails, and this book provides very good, detailed descriptions of most of them. Because it was published several years ago, however, and some of the trails have been damaged in storms over the past few years, some of its information is now inaccurate, even with the several-page addendum at the back of the book. For example, the trail to Mount Manuel is "closed" -- though I understand that people still occasionally hike it. Also, during a recent visit, we were unable to cross the Big Sur River in order to hike the spectacular-looking Panorama and Hidden Trails in Andrew Molera State Park. There was no bridge and no place to ford without considerable risk of mishap, a state of affairs the book doesn't seem to consider. Of course, these inaccuracies are the fault of Mother Nature rather than of the author, and any hiker who isn't prepared for less-than-ideal trail conditions probably shouldn't be hiking in the first place. Nevertheless, to be really useful to hikers, the book should be updated yet again. I share another reviewer's frustration with the topo maps near the back of the book. They're a bit hard to use because many of the trails, even the shorter trails, run onto several pages, making it necessary to flip back and forth between pages. The topos also have tiny print, undoubtedly a consequence of having to scale them down to the book's size. There must be a way to include more hiker-friendly maps -- even hand-drawn, trail-specific maps of the kind found in the Lonely Planet guides, while not providing much topographic detail, would help hikers get more of the "big picture" of a trail's length and proximity to roads and other trails.All in all a good guide to a delightful region.

This book details the trails of the Ventana Wilderness.

I never knew that such a place existed as the Ventana Wilderness.....and I lived nearby in Gilroy for nearly 20 years! Put simply, I plan to hike the trails that this book introduces.

accurate and informative

I thought that this book was very useful. With accurate descriptions and topo maps, the best(almost only) guidebook you can get on the area.