Product Description

This completely updated and expanded guide offers more than 30 new hikes, a mix of day hikes and overnight backpack trips, and expanded natural history and background information on the area, making it the most complete guidebook to the region.

Divided into sections covering Tennessee and North Carolina, the guide is arranged so that all of the Tennessee trails can be done with a link, via the Newfound Gap Road, to the North Carolina trails and vice versa. All trails are grouped by access point, and each description includes mileage, elevation change, difficulty rating, camping information, cautions, links to other trails, and attractions. Special lists cover the best waterfalls, stands of old-growth forest, historic structures, wildflower spots, and mountain views. Additional chapters feature information on geology, flora and fauna, park history, and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #180963 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 285 pages

Review
From a veteran scribe who knows the region intimately, this second edition ... [is] lavishly illustrated and logically organized. -- Rock Hill (SC) Herald

It is one of the most informative and eaiest to use Smokies hiking guidebooks you'll find. -- The Knoxville News-Sentinel

Manning has obviously done his homework. He knows the dips and typography of each trail and mountain the way Mark Twain knew the bends and eddies of the Mississippi River. -- Tribune-Review, Pittsburgh, PA

From the Publisher
The first edition of this guide was titled The Best of the Great Smoky Mountains (ISBN 0-9625122-2-2). The new, second edition is completely updated and redesigned, and features 80 b&w photos and 26 maps.

About the Author
Russ Manning is the author of a number of outdoor guides including The Best of Shenandoah National Park; Exploring the Big South Fork; Tennessee's South Cumberland: A Hiker's Guide to Trails & Attractions, and more. He lives with his wife and frequent co-author, Sondra Jamieson, in Norris, Tennessee.

Customer Reviews

More than the trail
You don't have to just hike the Appalacian trail if you visit the Smokey Mountain National Park....and this book proves it. Packed with information about the parks and it's trails and non-trail hiking, it's a good book to pack for that vacation you are taking to the area. For day hikes, overnight hikes, or thru hikes of the area, this is a good resource.

Love this Book
I love this book as well as the other Russ Manning guide books. Although I try to keep books in great shape this one is so well used that it is dog-eared, written in, and just generally bent from all of the backpacking it has done. I rely on the guide book to get me to new heights in the Smokies. Russ Manning does a great description with the maps and with the hikes. And I know that he keeps up with the changes in the terrain since I have met him on one of my hikes in the Smokies.