Teton Trails: A Guide to the Trails of Grand Teton National Park

by Katy Duffy

Book Overview

A guide to over 200 miles of hiking and horseback trails for a wide range of ability levels throughout Grand Teton. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0931895359
• ISBN13: 9780931895357
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Grand Teton National History
• Length: 175 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

In my pack, but less useful for armchair planning

In comparison with Schneider's Falcon Guide or Stone's Day Hikes book, Duffy and Wile clearly sacrifice breadth for depth. They seem more deeply familiar with the park than the others, and show evidence of having been on many of the trails several times, in different seasons. The book is less user-friendly for armchair planning back home They combine all the trails in a single area on a single map. This has the advantage of letting you compare routes, but I'd really rather have a single map for each hike and compare routes on my topo. They often combine trails in a single description, or put distinct hikes as variants in the text of some other hike. This is useful information but more demanding for the reader looking for hikes. If you want pre-digested trail information, especially day hikes, go with Stone. This book is really most useful for multi-day trips in the backcountry. The best feature are the pen-and-ink drawings of scenery from particular locations. For example, p. 91 has a "View toward the Tetons from the Teton Crest Trail at the head of Death Canyon," identifying seven peaks and two other features. This book is also organized more around geology, landscape, habitat and wildlife, and includes checklists in the back for the animals that you might spot. I like reading this information while I'm on the trail. Because of this and the drawings, this is the guide that I am most likely to carry in my pack. It's not my first choice for planning a trip, however.

Good Guidebook for Days Hikes and Longer Treks

Looking for a morning hike, a day hike, or a longer trek involving back country Teton camping? This is the book to buy.The trail descriptions and maps are detailed and accurate. Both authors are intimately familiar with the Tetons and have had help from NPS staff. The labeled line drawings of various Teton scenery, penned by various National Park rangers, identify specific peaks, ridges, and passes from different vantage points.Teton Trails is readily available at many shops in the Tetons area, but I recommend buying a copy now and enjoying some vicarious hiking. Planning vacation hikes can be almost as much fun as the hikes themselves. It is wise to have backup hiking routes, as snow can shut-in some higher passes well into midsummer in years of heavy winter snowfall. Talk to the rangers when you first arrive at the Grand Tetons about your hiking plans.Duffy and Wile include a overview of the Grand Teton National Park, the hiking and camping guidelines, the geology, the varied habitats, and some discussion about bears. A final section, titled Flora and Fauna, provides checklists of key trees, shrubs, flowers, mammals, and birds.The authors recommend purchasing topographic maps covering your selected trails. It is a good idea and map reading and orienteering always add an enjoyable dimension to mountain hiking. It's amazing how difficult it can be to cross a few closely spaced contour lines.For those that have a long familiarity with the Tetons, this new publication replaces the earlier guidebook of the same title by Bryan Harry that was widely used in the 1960s thru the 1980s. For anyone interested in off trail hiking (especially the northern canyons in the park) or Teton mountaineering, I highly recommend A Climber's Guide to the Teton Range , third edition, by Leigh Ortenburger and Reynold Jackson.