Rocky Mountain National Park

Describes hikes of all levels throughout the park from easy to difficult, enough for a week or more of adventure. Good maps and a useful rating system of difficulty. Highly recommended!

We are planning our first hiking trip to the Rocky Mountain National Park and every hike I have considered is in this book with detailed information about hiking distance, elevation at destination and good descriptions including flora you might encounter on the trail. There are even pictures of frequently sighted flowers and animals. I love Mallitz's formula for difficulty ratings. Now I can use this formula on other hikes in other areas. I bought another book at the same time ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, THE COMPLETE HIKING GUIDE by Lisa Foster and haven't found it as useful although it contains a wealth of information.

We just recently returned from our first trip to RMNP (6 days) and used this guide as a basis for finding many wonderful hikes. Since we were unfamiliar with the park, it was nice to read through and pick out hikes in different areas of the park that sounded interesting, and then also get input from the Park Rangers. The hikes that were recommended by the rangers were also the ones in this book, so we felt like we were getting a nice sampling of the park. In general I found the author's descriptions of the hikes to be accurate in terms of difficulty and sights to be seen. The author uses a mathematic formula based on distance, elevation gained, to determine difficulty. In general this seemed to work well except for one hike (The Crater) which we felt was off... It stated "easy" for this 2 mile round trip hike, but due to the steep grade, it felt quite strenuous for the 75% of the hike up. As a side note- I'd still recommend the hike- beautiful views at the top!

I bought this book and another one (lots thicker and heavier) in late July before going to RMNP. I took this one on the trail with me b/c it was smaller and lighter but just as thorough. It is broken into sections, based upon the region of the Park. Within each section there are listed day hikes along with color photos for each. The descriptions are accurate and very helpful. It seems that the author must have just hiked them same trails right before I did! I'll take it along next time I go to RMNP.

I used this book to plan four days of day hikes for our trip to Rocky Mountain National Park during the summer of 2016. It greatly helped me in choosing hikes that interested us, and we ended up having a great time. It especially came in handy for describing less popular hikes that weren't as clearly marked in the park, like the Chapin/Chiquita/Ypsilon hike. If you're planning on doing any of the more difficult day hikes, I'd recommend purchasing the Nat Geo topographic map at the same time. The map subsections in the book are sufficient for describing the location of the hikes, but aren't as useful as looking at a full map of the park while planning.

Our four day hikes throughout the Rocky Mountain National Park this August relied heavily on this guide. We have one elementary school age child, so we wanted to be prepared yet also enjoy the more "off the beaten path" park trails. We found Malitz summary of the difficulty of the hike, the landscape, and helpful tips (e.g. arrive early to the trailheads for a parking space) to be accurate. We used 4 suggested hikes from the guide, and we enjoyed them all. Thank you, J. Malitz for making our first hiking trip to RMNP a great experience!

Dayhiker's Guide does its job well, describing most of the available day hikes in RMNP in sufficient detail to allow one to make decisions. Since many of the hikes were ones we had taken, I could compare the description to my own experience, and it was quite close (except that the author probably did not have to get used to the altitude like us Flatlanders!) Author also included nice descriptions of why one would WANT to do a particular hike, the views, the options to continue, etc. The maps are not adequate, but the guide is keyed to the National Geographic map, which one should have anyway. I loved the formula for rating how difficult a hike would be, a combination of gain in altitude plus distance. The only addition I would like to see would be an incline depiction like one sees in the pocket guides. It's nice to know that there's a flat place in the middle, followed by a short steep bit, then a little downhill to the lake, etc.

Very detailed with explanations of the trail and what you will see along the way. Love has it is organized by sections of the park. Get the map too. Will be helpful in planning your trip.