Best Easy Day Hikes Great Smoky Mountains National Park (Best Easy Day Hikes Series) Paperback – March 16, 2010

This guidebook is a short, efficient survey of day-hikes in the Great Smoky Mountains. We used it extensively in planning our trip (two middle-aged parents, two teens) and found that it was a fairly good way of identifying day hikes that might prove interesting. Beyond this, however, it falls well short of the standard for trail guides. In fact, it isn't really a trail guide in the sense of AMC White Mountains or other trail guides you might be familiar with. Description of each trail is very perfunctory, with almost no detail on geology or biology. Gross distances and intermediate waypoints are listed, but that's about it. Most surprising and most disappointing is a complete lack of any information about climb and descent. The trail descriptions don't even include a basic listing of elevation gain/loss, let alone the trail profile that would be the standard now for a good guide book. The author's vague and subjective descriptions of difficulty are all you have to go on. This was no problem for our family (even though we're not athletes by any stretch)-- with a little stamina and hiking experience you can easily complete even the trip the author calls "not easy but included because some will do it as a daytrip." But there are no helpful details and in places, the writing is sufficiently vague that you can't tell whether a given spur trip is out-and-back or can be completed as a loop. In another case, the description of the trailhead was so vague and incomplete we couldn't even find the trail without consulting web blogs via a smart phone.

This was the most useful hiking guide we found for a short trip to GSMNP and the surrounding area. There are textual descriptions of several trails within the park, including textual descriptions of how to find the trailhead and some information about what the hike will be like as you are on it. For some of the trails it would be useful to have a hiking map: I was unable to find a good one online before the trip and we weren't there long enough to ask around for a store that might carry them. Within the park however the trails, once you find them, are marked well and there are enough people on them that you have a pretty good idea of where you are for a short partial day trek in good weather.

Not a bad book and decent to use for general planning for day hikes. However i highly recommend buying a large general park map when planning your itinerary. (Ranger station sells them for $1 but i dont know how to get it ahead of time). The book classifies items into four park quadrants, but that doesnt mean each quadrant has the same park entrance. For that information necessary to plan a trip w multiple hikes on the same day, a map w the trails was necessary.My favorites:- Laurel falls: go past the waterfall about 0.5-1 mile to see the old grove- Grotto falls: go past the waterfall quite a ways to Bushy mountain to see an awesome view- auto trails not in this book: roaring fork, Newfoundland gap. Get the guides from the ranger station

The book was very helpful in finding and navigating trails. Specifically, we did 4 hikes/excursions from this book (all near Gatlinburg) and the info was very accurate and helpful. Until you go there and get a feel of the park & access to it, it is hard to imagine. The Grapeyard Trail is surrounded by rhododendrum so the trail often feels like you are walking through a cave of them. I can only imagine how beautiful it must be in the springtime. I'd love to go back.

Bought this just prior to a vacation to the park and area. It proved very helpful in selecting a few hikes able to be managed by my family, who don't climb mountains on a day to day basis.The hikes we selected were well described, and the directions worked well to get us there without issue.The book is one thing, but the area has a great natural beauty... away from the tourist traps. A great area to visit and lots of fun for all.

Nice little read, but a little more detail, such as a more accurate map, and descriptions of parts of the trails would be helpful. A 2.7mile hike on a trail is nice, but 2 more miles of hiking to get to the trailhead changes things a little.

One of the best Smoky Mountain hiking resources. This has been a great resource for us while hiking the Smokys. It has a good description of what to expect on the trail as well as directions to the trail heads which many times are more difficult than staying on the trails. This has great elevation charts to let you know how difficult the climbs will be. This is one of my go-to hiking books.

I bought several guide books for my recent trip to GSMNP but this one was the one we used the most and it is small enough to take with you on the hikes. It has mapes of the trails which helped a lot as this park is sorley lacking in the map department unless you can find the topo map at the visitor center store, the map the park gives out is usless and could be dangerous in my openion. Get the topo map and use this guide for best results.

Foi útil nos passeios pelas montanhas.Poderia ter mais fotos para poder escolher melhor as trilhas.O livro é um pouco rigoroso no critério de dificuldade das trilhas.