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Map guide for mountain bikers in the Philadelphia area: book review

Map guide for mountain bikers in the Philadelphia area: book review

Just the other day, I was talking to an acquaintance about high-tech bike gear. Specifically, we struck up a conversation about portable tire pumps, the little ratchet-type pumps that are lightweight and that you can take with you in the event a tire goes flat on the road or on a trail in the middle of nowhere. They only weigh a few ounces, not even a whole pound. But they sure come in handy if you get a flat tire, patch up that tire, and need to pump it again to continue your journey.

After finishing that conversation, I realized how much I love going out and mountain biking the trails near where I live. Unfortunately here in California we’ve had a few fires, and one of my favorite trails has literally burned to the ground, it smells like you’re driving through a burned barbecue, it’s ugly, and it looks like hell. Even if you don’t know what hell is like, I think you could say the same if you saw it this way.

One of the coolest things I like to do when I travel is rent a mountain bike, or borrow one from a friend, and find out what kinds of trails are nearby, trails that I could explore on a mountain bike. In fact, there is a very good book on mountain bike trails in the Philadelphia area. This is a Falcon Map Guide, it is a book that I have and would like to recommend to you. The name of the book is;

“Mountain Biking in the Greater Philadelphia Area: A Guide to the Best Off-Road Bike Rides in the Delaware Valley,” by Bob D ‘Antonio, Falcon Press, Guilford, CT, 2004, 223 pages, ISBN: 0-7627 -2806-X.

This book includes all the information you need. It tells you where each trailhead is, how to get there, where to park, how many hills, how many miles and equipment tips you might need, and how long it might take to complete based on your skills and physical strength. Each trail also displays an elevation graph like they do on the Tour de France stages, where you can look and see on a graph how many feet of elevation you go up and down as you travel.

If you are going to do any type of mountain biking in the greater Philadelphia area, you should also get this book. It is not very expensive, but it is a must. Consider all of this and think about it.

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