Outdoor Books
Hiking Books
Hiking books come in three kinds, and people usually want one at a time. Practical handbooks help you stay safe and comfortable. Route guides take you along one particular trek. Long-walk narratives are the books that make you want to go in the first place. This shelf has all three, from British hills and the Alps to Kilimanjaro, the Camino and the Appalachian Trail. For route guides, check the edition: paths, huts and permits change.
Start here
If you are starting out
Handbooks rather than route guides: weather, navigation, clothing, safety, and what to do when it goes wrong. Safety on Mountains is from the British Mountaineering Council, Mountaincraft and Leadership is a long-standing UK text on mountaineering and hillwalking, and Woman in the Wild is a guide to hiking, camping and backcountry travel for beginners and up.
If you would rather read about a long walk
Four walks of very different length and purpose: the Appalachian Trail, hiked with a friend; 1,100 miles of America's west coast by someone with no long-distance experience; a ten-month pilgrimage from Canterbury to Jerusalem; and an eighteen-year-old's year-long trudge from the Hook of Holland towards Istanbul.
If you are planning a trek
Route guides to classic treks: Kilimanjaro, Annapurna and the Tour of Mont Blanc, all from Cicerone, which publishes more of the trekking guides on this shelf than anyone else, and Lonely Planet's 50 hikes across Europe for choosing where to start.
Featured
Lone Wolf : Walking the Faultlines of Europe
An epic walk across the Alps in the footsteps of a wolf. In 2011 a young wolf called Slavc set out from Slovenia and, tracked by GPS, travelled a thousand miles through the Alps; Adam Weymouth follows his route, and the book throws light on Europe's mountainous hinterlands at a moment of political and environmental change. It was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize and the Sherborne Prize for Travel Writing.
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Explore
The same shelf, cut four ways. Each count is the number of books in this category carrying that tag, and that is exactly what you will land on.
The full shelf
All books in Hiking Books
133 books
