Backpacking Pennsylvania: 37 Great Hikes

This is a very useful guide for people interested in backpacking in PA. I don't use this book as my sole guide for hiking individual trails -- the book does not include topo maps or anything like that, so you'll want to get a map as part of your planning process. I think that this book is intended more as an aid in planning a trip than as a trail guide, although it is pretty accurate in its mile-by-mile descriptions of the trails I've hiked so far.

The book is organized geographically, which is useful. Unfortunately, there is no index of trails by park area, so it makes it a bit annoying if you want to look for a trail in a specific state park or forest area -- you have to look through each trail's entry and see if anything goes through the place you're interested in. (This is bad for me because I hike with my dog, and I can only set up camp with him in a state forest, not a state park.) A lot of the information you will want to know is summarized in bullet points at the front of each chapter (trail length, difficulty, trail condition, availability of water, etc.), which is nice because you don't have to read through a whole entry to figure out that a trail is too easy or hard for what you want.

All in all, this book is a great asset in planning a backpacking trip and useful enough as a trail guide to be worth carrying around on shorter trips. It has information on trails that you aren't likely to find in many other books; however, if you're planning on hiking a more established trail, or in an area that's got a lot of trails, you might be able to find a more specific/detailed guide.

I used this book to guide me through my first 2-day hiking trail in PA. It was useful for the fact that I do't know much about Pennsylvania trails. It gives you a breakdown of the whole state, telling you everything about what you see on each trail down to the kind of plantlife you can expect to see. There's also helpful ratings about each trail so you can pick one that is suitable for your level of experience. Each description of the trails also have a rough sketch of what the trail is like...marking campgrounds and bodies of water. However, the trail description on the one that I chose said that there would be a park office where we could get a topographic map of the park. I might have missed it, but we never encountered such an office. I highly recommend just using this as a guide and buying your own topographic map on your destination.
Other than that, I am planning to buy his guides on some other states. It was very helpful.

I did not know that PA had so many trails that can be day hiked or for weeks on end. This is a good place to start if you want to see if you can handle it before trying to hike th AT all the way.

Backpacking Pennsylvania does exactly the job the title leads you to believe it will do. 37 major trails are described and made accessible to the the Pennsylvania Backpacker.

Each trail narrative is preceded by a chart summarizing 13 "want-to-know" items for the trail: its length, approximate time needed for the trip, a difficulty rating, typical terrain and trail conditions, blazes, water supply, area vegetation, trail highlights, maintaining organizations, sources of maps/guides/contact information, and trailhead directions.

The trails are divided into seven geographical regions, with a map for each region showing the counties and general layouts and locations of the trails there. For each of the 37 trails, another map shows the local roads, towns, creeks, parks, and potential campsites and vistas. The narratives are sufficiently detailed that backpacker armed with this book would be able to save the purchase of many individual trail guides and maps, though these would offer more in-depth information on the history, geology, or other particulars.

This book is a great guide for planning backpacking ventures of appropirate duration, difficulty, and location in the Keystone state. I most recently backpacked the Bucktail Path and found Jeff's summary to be quite on-target. It should be in every Pennsylvania backpacker's library.

Jeff Mitchell's dusty boots had already covered new ground when he wrote "Hiking the Endless Mountains" - the first hiking book to explore the beautiful forests and creeks of Pennsylvania's Endless Mountains. Written by the Pennsylvania native, "Backpacking Pennsylvania, 37 Great Hikes" has now established Mitchell's books as the most current and definitive guide series for hiking and backpacking throughout Pennsylvania. In "Backpacking Pennsylvania", Jeff travels beyond the Allegheny Plateaus to provide concise and well-written trail descriptions. Just enough information is provided for each trail system and Mitchell leaves it to the reader to put his book down and to just start hiking!

Jeff Mitchell's Preface in "Backpacking Pennsylvania" is a righteous testamony to those special places which are rapidly disappearing in the 21st Century. "By respectfully visiting and experiencing these places, we can appreciate and protect them" and "Backpacking reintroduces people not only to nature, but also to each other".