Product Description

Backcountry Adventures Southern California provides 2,983 miles of routes that travel through the beautiful mountainous regions of Big Sur, across the arid Mojave Desert, and straight into the heart of the aptly named Death Valley. Trail history comes alive through accounts of Spanish missionaries, eager prospectors looking to cash in during California's gold rush, and legends of lost mines. Like the other guides in the Backcountry Adventures series, Backcountry Adventures Southern California provides a helpful, concise chart with each trail description, listing starting and finishing point, mileage, driving time, and elevation. Backcountry Adventures Southern California is the most comprehensive book of its kind and is indispensable for planning any kind of outdoor adventure in the Golden State. It will appeal to everyone who loves the backcountry: campers, anglers, four-wheelers, hikers, mountain bikers, snowmobilers, amateur prospectors, sightseers, and more...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #181219 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 637 pages

Review
"The wealth of information is second to none, and the presentation makes it a pleasure to read." -- 4 Wheel Drive & Sport Utility Magazine

"To borrow a line from a well-known company: Don't leave home without it." -- Truck Trend

"To say we'd strongly recommend this book is an understatement." -- AutoWeek

Customer Reviews

Best 4x4 book available!!
This book has everything a casual offroader or overlander would want (this book does not cover the hardcore break stuff, tear up your rig trails). Great descriptions of the trails and the road surface you be riding on. Great turn bu turn directions to each trail with GPS coordinates! Also explains some of the history and highlights of the trail and rates all trails for remoteness and beauty. Interesting book just to read for fun. There is no better off road book available!

A guide to getting to know Southern California
After being transplanted to Southern California from the Northwest, I felt hemmed in, separated from all things natural. Backcountry Adventures has helped to change that. It's a wonderful guide to exploring the region.

The hefty book begins with a historical, botanical and geographic guide to the region, highlighting Southern California's explorers, settlers, missionaries, bandits, flora, fauna and more. It then moves into the individual descriptions of off road routes.

The book is geared towards exploring Southern California's outdoors with a 4WD and might disappoint the Glamas crowd who is focused doing awesome things in their trucks. But, for those of us looking to justify the excess of our SUV's with some exploration, it's perfect.

Each route guide begins with a simple rating guide which rates the trail on a number of qualities like driving difficulty and remoteness, then moves into a description of its history and the history of the region it explores. Next comes a description of the route itself, and then a detailed turn by turn guide with GPS coordinates.

The only real complaint I have with this book is that sometimes routes can be difficult to find without reading through the entire guide. It does contain a few "20 most scenic routes" and whatnot lists, but includes no way to find, say, the most remote routes in the book.

The other thing I'd suggest to improve the book is an accompanying website with downloadable GPS coordinates and user comments. Typing in the coordinates for a route is needlessly time consuming, and being able to download them from the internets would be wonderful. Hearing feedback from other drivers would also be great.

All in all, this book has helped to liberate me from the urban sprawl of Southern California, and for that I'm very grateful.

Great book!
Tons of info, loads of great photos show you clearly what to expect on each trail. I'll be buying the Northern Cali book next.