Utah's Incredible Backcountry Trails

by David Day, J. David Day

An illustrated, full color hiking guide to Utah's backcountry trails. Included are 92 trail maps and hundreds of exquisite color photographs taken along the trails in Utah's 5 national parks, 15 wilderness areas, and other less well known and less protected areas.

Genres: Outdoors, Reference, Travel

431 pages, Paperback

First published July 27, 2006

About the author

David Day (b. 14 October 1947 in Victoria, British Columbia) is a Canadian author of over forty books: poetry, natural history, ecology, mythology, fantasy, and children's literature. Internationally he is most notably known for his literary criticism on J. R. R. Tolkien and his works.

After finishing high school in Victoria, British Columbia, Day worked as a logger for five years on Vancouver Island before graduating from the University of Victoria. Subsequently he has travelled widely, most frequently to Greece and Britain.

Day has published six books of poems for adults and ten illustrated children's books of fiction and poetry. His non-fiction books on natural history include The Doomsday Book of Animals, The Whale War, Eco Wars: a Layman Guide to the Environmental Movement, Noah's Choice and most recently Nevermore: A Book of Hours - Meditations on Extinction (2012).

His Doomsday Book was a Time Magazine Book of the Year and became the basis for the 100 part animated-short TV series "Lost Animals of the 20th Century".

David Days best-selling books on the life and works of JRR Tolkien include: A Tolkien Bestiary, Tolkien: the Illustrated Encyclopedia, Tolkien's Ring, The World of Tolkien and The Hobbit Companion.

Day's Tolkien's Ring was illustrated by academy award-winning artist Alan Lee, as was Castles, The Animals Within, Gothic and Quest For King Arthur.

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE that this book is essentially the third edition of the author's Utah's Favorite Hiking Trails book, but he has renamed it. Day has added a few new trails and added color, but the trail descriptions are the same as the 2nd edition. This is by far the best hiking guide I have seen for Utah. You can tell that the author has walked every trail, probably multiple times. Each trail comes with color photographs and an easy to read map. David Day also provides history and background for each hike, which is fun. The trail descriptions are easy to read and follow. The author also rates each trail from 1 to 5 stars. The two things I wish Day had done for this guide was add a trail difficulty rating for each trail and further explain why he gave each trail the star rating he did. this author also did a trail guide for Colorado(Colorado's Incredible Backcountry Trails).

[Barbara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like how this author has give a 1-5 star rating to each hike, but it would be nice if he had done a list or put the stars in the table of contents so I didn't have to page through the entire book trying to find out which ones were 5-star hikes.

Nice maps.

[Miki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book for backcountry hikes, especially for southern Utah. Nice glossy photos. The easy hikes are really easy and could probably be done with children.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great descriptions of backcountry trials. Need to pull back out for camping planning.