Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book. The authors did their homework.
Review: During three months of 2003 I did a 1362 mile ultra marathon across the Rocky Mountains. One section was a climb and hike along the continental divide in the Beaverhead Range. I used this book for info on access trails to awesome CD ridge that separates Idaho and Montana. The book is informative, accurate and a good read. I recommend it.
Jerry S. Dixon, Biologist/Teacher of the Gifted
Science Advisory Committee Alaska SeaLife Center
1997 McAuliffe Fellow 2001 BP Teacher of the Year
VP Seward Iditarod Trailblazers
Judge, National Outdoor Book Award
Advisory Council Winter Wildlands Alliance
USFS/BLM/NPS smokejumper/FMO/fire ecologist (Ret.)
[...]
Gates of the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, May 12 to August 12, 2003, a 1362 mile ultra marathon across the Rocky Mountains. [...]
Rating:
Summary: A CDT Goldmine of Info!!!!
Review: Great book that is a must for any hiker thinking of doing a CDT thru-hike! My friends and I found this book most helpful in planning our hiking trips on the northern part of the Continental Divide Trail. Charts and graphs are all top-notch. ( If there is a better guide book on the Northern CDT, I would like to see it!!!) Great color photos of each trail section in the book. ( There are 32 sections with all phone numbers of close by Post Offices, grocery stores, and cafes) I highly recomend this book for all section and thru-hikers! Mad Monte PCT thru-hiker and CDT section hiker
Rating: 
Summary: A not very useful, but pretty book...
Review: I really wanted to like this book, because the photographs are good, the writing is good, and there is at least SOME useful information. And, it's a good pre-trip motivator. The problem is, it's the kind of book that should NEVER have been structured as a guide - instead, with a bit of rewriting, it could have (and should have) been a high quality coffee table book. To be fair, I found the overviews of each trail segment and the trail profiles to be quite useful. But, after hiking 430 miles of the CDT in Montana/Idaho, I have concluded that: 1) this guide is nowhere near detailed enough, 2) it is, unfortunately, not adequately set up for north to south hiking. My approach now is to sift through this book and extract whatever useful information I can find and add those tidbits to Jim Wolf's excellent, detailed, and comprehensive guidebooks, which are continually updated with new trail information.
Rating:
Summary: This book helped me through Montana
Review: Lynna was kind enough to send me a galley copy of her book last year as I left to hike the CDT from Mexico to Canada. When I reached the Montana/Idaho border I thanked her everyday for the direction her book gave me. The CDT is still a route finding nightmare over much of its 3,000+ miles. With this book I was able to gather many clues that kept me on a good route. It was also full of information and tips. I know Lynna and her brother spent a lot of time on the trail making sure this book was accurate. I saw them signed in on many trail registers. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail. It is awesome and so is Lynna's book.
Rating:
Summary: This book helped me through Montana
Review: Lynna was kind enough to send me a galley copy of her book last year as I left to hike the CDT from Mexico to Canada. When I reached the Montana/Idaho border I thanked her everyday for the direction her book gave me. The CDT is still a route finding nightmare over much of its 3,000+ miles. With this book I was able to gather many clues that kept me on a good route. It was also full of information and tips. I know Lynna and her brother spent a lot of time on the trail making sure this book was accurate. I saw them signed in on many trail registers. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail. It is awesome and so is Lynna's book.
Rating: 
Summary: CDT is a Work in Progress
Review: Mr. Morgan, in a review below, says that the book was written for armchair reading, from the seat of a car and offers as proof the trail description near Schultz Saddle. On page 151 of the guidebook the text reads in part "The Forest Service has plans to cut a trail through the trees above the road to Gibbons Pass, but that trail was incomplete when we hiked the CDT..." On page 23, the author notes, "The Continental Divide Trail is a work in progress...Significant improvements have been made in the past two years and the pace of change is accelerating as interest in the trail increases. Sections of the trail have changed since we hiked them; more will change in the future." It's great that the trail from Chief Joseph Pass to Schultz Saddle is now complete, and I've heard that further work after the fires of 2000 improved the trail even more. This book shows interim, proposed, and alternate routes for the CDT and also tells the reader which routes are depicted correctly on maps. Extremely detailed information throughout the book confirms a step-by-step familiarity with the trail. While the mileage info is accurate, I agree that the book would benefit from the addition of a table showing landmarks and miles for each segment.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice picture book, impractical as a guidebook
Review: The nice qualities about this book have been noted (if overstated), by the reviewers below. In addition to it's good photography, the book provides some information on how to prepare for a long distance hike, low-impact hiking, bear avoidance, etc. However, the information basically serves as a brief review. If you're not already acquainted with these concepts, this book will not serve as an adequate source of knowledge of these very important backpacking considerations. You'd do well to pick up another book specifically devoted to these sorts of issues if you're unfamiliar with them. My biggest complaint about this book is not its lack of information on how to backpack properly. I don't expect that from a guidebook, really. I'm just sort of disappointed by its impracticality. For backpackers who are concerned about pack weight, this book is simply a monster. Sure, it includes lovely color photographs and maps to give you a rough idea of the route. But it's all printed on 312 pages of heavy, glossy paper, making the book insanely heavy to actually be carried for hundreds of miles along the trail. In addition, in comparison to the other available guidebooks for the Continental Divide Trail, the trail descriptions are only so-so and conspicuously lack mileage indicators a lot of the time. In fact, for the 300+ miles of the Continental Divide Trail I plan on completing next season, I have found better, more detailed descriptions on a popular outdoor website. The one strong point about this book is this: it's the most up-to-date guidebook for the ever-changing CDT. 2 other guidebooks (separated into Northern Montana and Southern Montona volumes), written by Jim Wolf, are available for this trail, but they are somewhat out of date. Because the route of the CDT is not yet fully determined, less developed portions of the "official" trail route might change from one year to the next. While Wolf's books are much smaller, more detailed, and more practical for actual backpackers, the flashy, picture-filled volume by Lynna Howard DOES provide more recent, and therefore valuable, information about the trail. Having hiked the CDT in Wyoming and Colorado using the old guidebooks, I can attest to the usefulness of more recent trail information. For that reason, I'm glad I bought it. In summary, this book is a great book for sitting on your couch, looking at the pictures of Montana's CDT, and dreaming about that trip you're planning. But in the final analysis, I can't imagine actually lugging the thing along the trail, especially given what I feel are its deficiencies in trail description. When I hit the trail in Montana next summer, I will photocopy some of the relatively up-to-date information provided to supplement my old guidebook. The book WILL have some practical use for me. I don't suggest you not buy it; I simply suggest the older, smaller, humbler, and better written Jim Wolf guidebooks be the ones you carry on the trail.
Rating:
Summary: Nice picture book, impractical as a guidebook
Review: The nice qualities about this book have been noted (if overstated), by the reviewers below. In addition to it's good photography, the book provides some information on how to prepare for a long distance hike, low-impact hiking, bear avoidance, etc. However, the information basically serves as a brief review. If you're not already acquainted with these concepts, this book will not serve as an adequate source of knowledge of these very important backpacking considerations. You'd do well to pick up another book specifically devoted to these sorts of issues if you're unfamiliar with them. My biggest complaint about this book is not its lack of information on how to backpack properly. I don't expect that from a guidebook, really. I'm just sort of disappointed by its impracticality. For backpackers who are concerned about pack weight, this book is simply a monster. Sure, it includes lovely color photographs and maps to give you a rough idea of the route. But it's all printed on 312 pages of heavy, glossy paper, making the book insanely heavy to actually be carried for hundreds of miles along the trail. In addition, in comparison to the other available guidebooks for the Continental Divide Trail, the trail descriptions are only so-so and conspicuously lack mileage indicators a lot of the time. In fact, for the 300+ miles of the Continental Divide Trail I plan on completing next season, I have found better, more detailed descriptions on a popular outdoor website. The one strong point about this book is this: it's the most up-to-date guidebook for the ever-changing CDT. 2 other guidebooks (separated into Northern Montana and Southern Montona volumes), written by Jim Wolf, are available for this trail, but they are somewhat out of date. Because the route of the CDT is not yet fully determined, less developed portions of the "official" trail route might change from one year to the next. While Wolf's books are much smaller, more detailed, and more practical for actual backpackers, the flashy, picture-filled volume by Lynna Howard DOES provide more recent, and therefore valuable, information about the trail. Having hiked the CDT in Wyoming and Colorado using the old guidebooks, I can attest to the usefulness of more recent trail information. For that reason, I'm glad I bought it. In summary, this book is a great book for sitting on your couch, looking at the pictures of Montana's CDT, and dreaming about that trip you're planning. But in the final analysis, I can't imagine actually lugging the thing along the trail, especially given what I feel are its deficiencies in trail description. When I hit the trail in Montana next summer, I will photocopy some of the relatively up-to-date information provided to supplement my old guidebook. The book WILL have some practical use for me. I don't suggest you not buy it; I simply suggest the older, smaller, humbler, and better written Jim Wolf guidebooks be the ones you carry on the trail.
Rating:
Summary: Great if you want to read *about* the trail, but leave it home
Review: This is a great arm chair book, but questionable as an on trail guide. I just did a 300 mile through hike in Idaho/Montana. I picked up this guide, in addition to Wolf's, because it was written for northbound hikers. It's great for at home reading. For use on trail: Good parts: -Strip map style *contour* maps, a big help -Current information Bad parts: -I am virtually certain that some of this was done from a car window. Examples: -The description of how to find the spring above Pattee Creek. This is an important source, in an unlikely place on a hill side. This guide's location description boils down to 'over there some place'. -The guide misses and never notices that there is good trail leading north to the Schultz Saddle, it walks you there on a road. -The within the text mileage figures, counting sometimes from section start, sometimes from other important way point makes nice reading, but bad on trail use. This sort of information needs to be in a (boring) table, to make it unambiguous and easy to figure from. ...Tom M (PCT '94)
Rating:
Summary: Informative, Inspiring, and Entertaining
Review: This is one of the best hiking guides I have ever seen. The author has packed an amazing amount of information into this book, and it is all clear and easy to use, whether you are planning a day hike or longer adventure. Introductory material covers everything you need to know - how to avoid grizzly bears, how to physically prepare for long distance hiking, how to respect the environment as you pass through. Alternate, proposed and real routes are all covered. The book also covers things you don't necessarily NEED to know, but that will make your experience of the area so much richer - history, geology, wildlife and more. Everything is presented in an enormously readable tone, with humor and insight. For example: "definition of lost: when you know where you are, but you don't know where the damned trail is." How many guidebooks can make you laugh out loud? You know Lynna Howard has been there and experienced the trail fully, and she inspires you to see it for yourself. Each section of trail is represented by clear maps and gorgeous color photos by Leland Howard - well above the usual guidebook standard. In checking Amazon for other books by Lynna and Leland, I was thrilled to see that they have done a coffee table book on the same section of trail, so the photography will get its full due. The publisher should be commended for putting together such a well-published, attractive package. I can't wait to hit the trail!
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