Hiking the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, 2nd

Rating:
Summary: Buy this book before hiking.
Review: I have been to this wilderness area and I bought the book after the fact. I wish I would have had it first but I now have planned on some of the hikes I will be going on in the future. The book has great information on trail conditions, types of wildlfe and how strenous the hikes are. At the end of each hike Mr. Schneider gives the fishing prospects for lakes and streams. I still read the book with my map spread uot on the floor so I can get an idea of what I am reading about. Well organized information

Rating:
Summary: Buy this book before hiking.
Review: I have been to this wilderness area and I bought the book after the fact. I wish I would have had it first but I now have planned on some of the hikes I will be going on in the future. The book has great information on trail conditions, types of wildlfe and how strenous the hikes are. At the end of each hike Mr. Schneider gives the fishing prospects for lakes and streams. I still read the book with my map spread uot on the floor so I can get an idea of what I am reading about. Well organized information

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre at best
Review: This book contains enough useful information to fill perhaps half its contents and is thus probably worth around half the list price. I've always preferred guidebooks that simply describe each individual trailhead, trail, or route rather than organizing these into predefined trips or hikes. That said, I found this book more irritating than others I've read that use this style:

1. Padding / Duplicated Information
1a. Introductory material is copied verbatim from Bear Aware
1b. Entire paragraphs are copied throughout the book; compare pages 79 & 119, 214 & 219, 217 & 222-223, and many others
1c. Many of the trips contain so much duplicated information as to be silly. For example, trip 30 contains the entirety of trips 27, 28, and 31, while trip 12 contains the entirety of trips 10, 11, 13, and 14. Anyone can figure out how to make a shorter trip by simply not hiking as far up the trail before turning back.
2. Confusing / Conflicting Information
2a. Page 16 encourages you to "avoid making loud noises that may disturb others" while page 26 suggests making "a lot of noise" as a recommended technique for avoiding bear encounters. The context is different, but the message is confused at best.
2b. The trips covered on pages 67, 108, are 135 are described in the text as being 'heavily used', while in each case the usage description in the trip overview is listed as "Moderate"
2c. For those who prefer this style of guidebook, I suspect there are far too many 'shuttle' trips - those ending at a trailhead distant from the beginning
3. There's no index
4. There's no separate list of trailheads
5. On page 78 Mystic Lake is incorrectly described as "the deepest lake in the Beartooths"