One of my favorite hiking guides ( )

This was my Hiking Bible during my Hiking Decade (my twenties) during the 90s when I spent just about every weekend in So Cal's local mountains exploring summits, abandoned mines, hard to reach waterfalls (like the one featured on the cover -- Fish Fork Falls -- an 18 mile round trip heartpounder which literally requires swimming in spots in order to reach your destination), the "Bridge to Nowhere" -- a highway bridge built in 1936, seventy feet above the East Fork of The San Gabriel River which, after the great flood of March, 1938, left little of the road but the bridge, and which is now owned by a bungee-jumping company (hike in five miles and leap off a bridge!) -- the ruins of trail "resorts" from the "Great Hiking Era" of the early 1900s, abandoned "trails", hidden GPS markers, tunnels, cross country bushwhacking routes, swimming holes, natural waterslides, fire lookouts and whatnot.

Schad's descriptions are spot on, his mileages and directions uncannily accurate (compared to a lot of other So Cal hiking guides), and he writes in an engaging manner that makes you curious about what he's describing; curious to lace on those lug-soled water-proof boots, tie on that bandanna and bolt for the trails! ( )