When I offered to review this guide I had no aspirations to actually do any long distance walks let alone the longest continuous footpath in the world!  I live a busy life and like running, climbing and mountaineering none of which feel very compatible with a 2650-mile journey on foot. However, after reading just a few pages of this inspirational little book, I was beginning to realise that moving steadily through different landscapes and achieving a longer term goal is also something very special and to my surprise something that I would probably enjoy! It is really quite straightforward you start at the Mexican Border , walk across the South California Desert, traverse the mountains of the High Sierra and finally make your way through the temperate rainforests of Washington State to the Canadian Border!

This is an excellent guide.  It is methodically presented and its 348 pages are packed with useful information and contacts. It is obvious from the level of detail that is included that the author has walked the trail himself and awe inspiring that he has actually completed it three times! This means that there is an authenticity about the information and a well-informed European perspective on the practical and logistical challenges presented by attempting a long distance walk in another Continent.

The first quarter of the guide covers general information about what the walk has to offer and what walking it is actually like.  There are sections on the geology, the weather and the flora and fauna but arguably the most interesting and relevant are the detailed sections on planning.  Here you are introduced to the world of the ‘thru-hiker’ versus the ‘section-hiker’, to ‘trail angels’,’drift bins’,’zero days’,and the ‘ADZPCTKO’.  In short you are given essential inside information about the choices you will need to make before and during the walk with particular emphasis on when you start and how many days you will take to complete it.  There are extensive sections on selecting appropriate kit, on the options for food and water and the advantages and disadvantages of going solo. The author breaks things down into manageable chunks so that even someone like me, a novice long distance walker, could imagine themselves sorting out the logistics and successfully completing the walk.

The author gives a grounded assessment of the risks involved and the book gives you the opportunity to learn about how to minimize these. He suggests it is relatively easy to avoid rattlesnakes and protect your food from bears and with a bit of planning to find enough drinking water and avoid heat exhaustion but points out that the majority of people abandon their hike because of blisters often caused by setting off too fast and trying to stick to an over ambitious schedule. Johnson states that between 20 and 30% of thru-hikers abandon their trip in the first week and it seems that one of his aims in writing this guide is to reduce that figure; the guide has a wealth of information to ensure that you are one of the successful ones.
The importance of a realistic schedule is highlighted and the guide includes detailed schedules for 110.120.130.140.150.160.170 and 180 day thru-hikes as well as details of the author’s own journeys. These tables could be used as an off the shelf training and planning schedule for any aspirant thru-hiker and although the author urges us to use them he also points out very clearly that it is important to have a realistic picture of your own abilities and reminds us that there is no excuse for poor planning! If you haven’t got time to train before hand and are ‘extremely unfit’ then he still has a solution for you..the super-slow start!

The remainder of the book presents a series of maps which collectively give a detailed guide to the trail itself. For me these maps are the highlight of the book, easily accessible information in a clear and consistent format they must have taken hours and hours to produce! They are beautifully presented demonstrating the author’s skill as a cartographer (he surveyed and drew orienteering maps in a former life!) and they just make me want to go and explore the area myself. I was slightly surprised that he chose to orientate the maps to True North as this means an additional calculation for each map but given that only orienteers will be accustomed to working with magnetic north it is probably a good idea and will increase the longevity of the publication. 

This part of the book is broken into 11 sections each with an overview map, a section summary which gives hours, distances and height gain, the best time of year to complete the section and a long list of useful addresses and contacts. Each overview is followed by the appropriate number of route maps at a scale of 1:100,000. In total there are 174 of these route maps that although not a large enough scale for detailed navigation are reported to be accurate enough to use to follow the trail.  Each map shows major junctions, decision points, water sources and ranger stations as well as giving distances, timings and height gain. There is a short written description of each leg and on some pages he has found room to add information about points of special interest or suggested detours.  It would take hours to fully absorb all the information contained in these maps but means there is no excuse for poor planning!

This is a delightful book aimed primarily at the thru-hiker but also useful for people wanting to do shorter sections of the trail or to link to this trail from other walks such as the John Muir Trail.  It is small enough to carry with you on the actual hike but arguable its best use will be to leave behind with partners, friends and family who want to follow what you are doing when you are away.  So don’t just go and by a copy for yourself, get two or three so that when you return from your successful thru-hike there are a few people who know where you have been and what it might have been like!

Liz Campbell