<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Review of a Review of 100 Classic Tours...
Review: Everybody is a critic, including some twelve year olds.Talk about a scathing review, this kid really let me have it. However... * If you want to ride Tomyhoi in winter, get a snowmobile, or take a week off and make sure your life insurance is paid up. This is not a winter tour. As an aside, most of Washington's mountains are not accessible in winter. Blame God, USFS, or NPS. * I am not a self-proclaimed guru. Some publicist wrote that. I have a job. I try to get out and ride or ski. That's it. * The Publisher did the maps. My contribution was the relevant information, not the format. I'm sure the Publisher would be happy to create maps just for you if you would guarantee payment! *The avalanche zone indicator debate is obviously alive and well. I'm personally against showing the "danger zones" but Publisher insisted on it. And, if you read the book, you'll discover that you and I agree on this point also. *Photograph selection and captions, indeed the entire content of The Book is subject to the discretion of the Publisher. Gary Brill had agreed to provide images for this book but did not deliver by the Publisher's deadline. I had a contractual obligation to deliver and I did. Fourteen out of seventyfive aerial shots doesn't seem excessive, especially if they offer information not otherwise possible. *It is not muddled thinking to encourage dog owners to consider the consequences of taking their dog in the woods and show an image of a Husky inside the Stevens Pass Ski Area boundary. Personally, I enjoy outings with dogs. *My route times don't seem underestimated. Camp Muir is easily reached in under four hours by fit climbers, in good conditions, carrying a daypack. An hour for lunch and a nap, and an hour for a leisurely descent makes for a reasonable day. * Finally, my first guidebook was published in 1986, not two decades ago. It was intended as a year-around guidebook, not a winter guide. The current guidebook is a similar effort, with an added emphasis on snowboarding. Further comments or questions can be addressed to me at Burgdorfer@hotmail.com. Happy Trails! Rainer Burgdorfer
Rating:
Summary: Gary Brill where are you now?
Review: I heard the older version of this book has better pictures
Rating:
Summary: By far, the best backcountry ski/board guide available in WA
Review: Reading the other reviews of this book, I felt that people were ganging up on the author and that I just needed to chime in with my two cents worth. I believe this book to be far and away the best backcountry skiing/snowboarding guide available for Washington. These are the epic routes and memorable peaks that are the stuff of touring legend. I have found the route descriptions to be highly accurate and the maps to be fine for the purposes of illustration. After all, you should really have a full USGS or at least Green Trails map when you go into these areas anyways. The only thing I wish had a bit more consideration are snowboard specific hazards such as long flat or uphill areas along the descent. These add drastically to estimated times, especially when postholing is involved. That, however, is my minor quibble. I've made several of the trips in this book and loved them all (even last weekend when I broke my splitboard out by the Sulphide Glacier). Hardly a weekend passes where I do not have this book out planning my next escapades with my climbing partner. An admirable job on highly variable subject matter. Now, if I can just find a book that accurately predicts what the snowpack will look like for a given day...
Rating: 
Summary: Major disappointment
Review: The first sentence of the first route in Rainer Burgdorfer's tired tome tells you all you have to know about his disappointing second edition. In describing Tomyhoi Peak's "reasonable access," he uses the parenthetical phrase, "once Twin Lakes Road is clear of snow." What that means is that if you want to ride this peak in the winter, you must add at least 3 miles and 2,000 vertical feet to the route outlined in this guide. In fact, the trailheads to half of the routes and hills in Burgdorfers dated rehash cannot be reached in the winter. Fifty-one of the 102 routes in the book are inaccessible during the months of December, January and February. Worse still, if you take this self-proclaimed "guru's" advice, more than one-third (36) of the hills are only reachable in April, May or June. I don't know about you, but the kind of snow I love to ride just doesn't fall from the sky in April, May or June. If you are looking for a good winter backcountry ride guide, look somewhere other than this book. But describing trails that you can't reach in the winter isn't the only major failing of this book. At least half of the maps in the book are unreadable because the contour lines are too light, too small, or too close together. It would have been far better to create new maps with greater contour intervals. Of more concern to the reader is that the maps show potential "avalanche zones." A backcountry snowboarder or skier new to this type of adventure might reasonably conclude that these zones are the ONLY areas to worry about avalanche hazard. Anyone with an ounce of experience know this is not true--but beyond that, it is a gross insult to the reader to assume that anyone who plies the winter backcountry cannot recognize an avalanche slope. Further, Burgdorfer's writing is barely informative and massively boring. At times, his huge ego interferes with an objective analysis of the route; for example, his recommendation of the Muir Snowfield solely for its " entertainment value"--presumably derived by watching skiers or riders who don't have his skill or experience. Yet another fatal problem with the book are many of the photgraphs, including a photo by the author of footprints in the snow on Page 56. This useless picture indeed is worth a thousand words--all of them derogatory. In a sad departure from the publisher's (The Mountaineer) usual careful editing for liability concerns, another photo in the book depicts a shirtless skier wearing shorts "on a glacier" (Page44). And the overuse of aerial photograpy would suggest that the author spent more time scouting routes from an airplane in the winter than he did on the snow. Another example of muddled thinking and inattentive editing is the photo on Page 116 of a dog on one of the routes, yet Burdorfer cautions readers on Page 15 to "consider leaving your dog at home." If indeed he wants us to leave our dogs at home (including those trained in avalanche rescue work), perhaps the dog should have been cropped out of the photo. The Indefatigable Ego of the author is also evident in his under-estimation of "ski times" on most of the routes. Anyone who has climbed to Camp Muir from Paradise, almost 5 miles and 5,000 vertical feet, will tell you it takes a great deal longer than 6 hours, but Burdorfer classifies this an "intermediate" route-- and most intermediates would take at least 5 hours simply climbing up to Muir in the dead of winter. In sum, this book was originally written more than two decades ago. It wasn't a helpful guide to Washington's winter backcountry then, and the second edition--which could hardly be called "new"--is no better.
Rating:
Summary: Major disappointment
Review: The first sentence of the first route in Rainer Burgdorfer's tired tome tells you all you have to know about his disappointing second edition. In describing Tomyhoi Peak's "reasonable access," he uses the parenthetical phrase, "once Twin Lakes Road is clear of snow." What that means is that if you want to ride this peak in the winter, you must add at least 3 miles and 2,000 vertical feet to the route outlined in this guide. In fact, the trailheads to half of the routes and hills in Burgdorfers dated rehash cannot be reached in the winter. Fifty-one of the 102 routes in the book are inaccessible during the months of December, January and February. Worse still, if you take this self-proclaimed "guru's" advice, more than one-third (36) of the hills are only reachable in April, May or June. I don't know about you, but the kind of snow I love to ride just doesn't fall from the sky in April, May or June. If you are looking for a good winter backcountry ride guide, look somewhere other than this book. But describing trails that you can't reach in the winter isn't the only major failing of this book. At least half of the maps in the book are unreadable because the contour lines are too light, too small, or too close together. It would have been far better to create new maps with greater contour intervals. Of more concern to the reader is that the maps show potential "avalanche zones." A backcountry snowboarder or skier new to this type of adventure might reasonably conclude that these zones are the ONLY areas to worry about avalanche hazard. Anyone with an ounce of experience know this is not true--but beyond that, it is a gross insult to the reader to assume that anyone who plies the winter backcountry cannot recognize an avalanche slope. Further, Burgdorfer's writing is barely informative and massively boring. At times, his huge ego interferes with an objective analysis of the route; for example, his recommendation of the Muir Snowfield solely for its " entertainment value"--presumably derived by watching skiers or riders who don't have his skill or experience. Yet another fatal problem with the book are many of the photgraphs, including a photo by the author of footprints in the snow on Page 56. This useless picture indeed is worth a thousand words--all of them derogatory. In a sad departure from the publisher's (The Mountaineer) usual careful editing for liability concerns, another photo in the book depicts a shirtless skier wearing shorts "on a glacier" (Page44). And the overuse of aerial photograpy would suggest that the author spent more time scouting routes from an airplane in the winter than he did on the snow. Another example of muddled thinking and inattentive editing is the photo on Page 116 of a dog on one of the routes, yet Burdorfer cautions readers on Page 15 to "consider leaving your dog at home." If indeed he wants us to leave our dogs at home (including those trained in avalanche rescue work), perhaps the dog should have been cropped out of the photo. The Indefatigable Ego of the author is also evident in his under-estimation of "ski times" on most of the routes. Anyone who has climbed to Camp Muir from Paradise, almost 5 miles and 5,000 vertical feet, will tell you it takes a great deal longer than 6 hours, but Burdorfer classifies this an "intermediate" route-- and most intermediates would take at least 5 hours simply climbing up to Muir in the dead of winter. In sum, this book was originally written more than two decades ago. It wasn't a helpful guide to Washington's winter backcountry then, and the second edition--which could hardly be called "new"--is no better.
Rating:
Summary: THE guidebook for Washington backcountry skiing
Review: This is a much better alternative than the Seabury Blair book of a similar nature. Many of the pictures in this book will get you pumped to ski some awesome terrain.Most of these tours are for advanced skiers. The book is well put together, with maps for each tour, often indicating avalanche prone areas. There are also some nice touches, such as a section on figuring out Cascade weather. The pictures, while inspiring, are not as good as those in Burgdorfer's previous book. The ones that have been removed for this edition, which were the best ones, seemed to all be from one person... Gary Brill. Interesting. Perhaps he is intending to publish a ski touring book too? There is definitely room from improvement in a backcountry skiing guide for Washington, but this is the best there is right now.
<< 1 >>
|
