Afoot and Afield: Inland Empire: A Comprehensive Hiking Guide

by David Money Harris, Jennifer Money Harris

The Inland Empire—the area east of Los Angeles and located primarily in San Bernardino and Riverside counties—is known as Southern California’s big backyard. And with its mountain, foothill, valley, and desert recreational opportunities, it’s a hiker’s paradise. Afoot & Afield Inland Empire describes nearly 200 noteworthy hikes ranging from easy to very strenuous in this first comprehensive hiking guide to the length and breadth of Inland Empire. These hikes explore Southern California’s three tallest mountains, the stark beauty of the high desert, including Joshua Tree National Park and Mojave National Preserve, as well as trails that wind through urban and regional parks. Each hike is shown on custom-created maps that also include GPS waypoints: the maps alone are worth the price of the book.

Genres: Nonfiction

410 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2009

About the author

David Money Harris is the Harvey S. Mudd Professor of Engineering Design at Harvey Mudd College. Dr. Harris received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1999 and his S.B. and M. Eng. degrees from MIT in 1994. His research interests include high speed CMOS VLSI design and computer arithmetic. He is the author or coauthor of CMOS VLSI Design: A Circuits and Systems Perspective, Digital Design and Computer Architecture, Logical Effort, Skew-Tolerant Circuit Design, and numerous hiking guidebooks including Afoot and Afield Inland Empire, Afoot and Afield Los Angeles County, Afoot and Afield Orange County, 101 Hikes Southern California, Trails of the Angeles, San Bernardino Mountain Trails, and Day & Section Hikes Pacific Crest Trail: SoCal. He holds a dozen patents, has written numerous papers, and has designed microprocessors at Intel Corporation, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, and Broadcom, and his passion for chips is reflected in his books on the subject. He began his hiking adventures as a wee tot on his father's back and has been exploring the mountains and deserts ever since. Now, his own three boys are frequent companions on these trips.

Reviews

[Elizabeth de Moya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think he got lucky with the geographical location because there are so many amazing hikes in this region. It's a technical guide that is not meant to be read all the way through. But I did anyway. Harris is a mountaineer and a geologist so he looks at the hikes from a mountain climbing perspective. There is also a lot of local history. I never realized how many old mines, caves and petroglyphs there were out in the desert surrounding LA. I found a lot of hikes I want to go on. But I'm going to check the trail conditions from now on because the chapter about Mt Baldy was not up to date, and I could have died in an impassible icy crevice.

[Melissa]

Super helpful and informative book of local hikes for the IE! I've mapped out a lot of hikes I hope to try (and have already tried a few) based on this guide. The maps and hints are especially helpful.

[Jon Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

I use this book often and find it very accurate.