I’ll be hiking this in September. It looks like there are two guide books out there: The End-to-ender and the Long Trail Guide. I’d rather only carry one! Any advice? I’ll be resupplying along the way and would really only want to carry it for water info, shelter stops, and what services are in nearby cities. Thanks in advance!
Clair
The Long Trail guidebook is put out by the Green Mt. Club and is the official book describing the trail. It contains maps (small ones) but has the entire trail on it. Some history of the trail is included as well as distances to nearby towns at road crossings.
The end-to-enders guide is a small summary of the trail with more detailed information about shelters, water, what can be obtained at nearby towns, etc. It is not a big book, therefore light weight and not bulky.
The GMC has also published a new fold-up map of the entire LT. It is quite nice and has the advantage of being semi-waterproof as well as being smaller than the book. More detailed and even some contours for a rough idea of what your elevation changes will be as you hike.
If I were you, I would purchase the latest copy of the End-to-Enders guide and one of the new maps. Get the guidebook for additional reference but don’t bring it on your hike.
WoodBadge
Clair,
I bought the LT guidebook from the GMC and pored over it all winter before my hike. Unfortunately it has scant (or no) information on any of the town services and I ultimately bought the End-to-enders guide as well. It’s a slim book, with the same info duplicated twice for northbounders, then southbounders. Seemed a gyp to me at the time I got it, but having used it extensively for only part of the trail, it is essential for knowing current town amenities.
The guidebook is compact though heavy for its size. The maps were a nice size and all I needed for hiking (I did the first 100 mi of the trail), and the trail descriptions accurate. There is, however, lots of extraneous info on peripheral day hikes in each division, plus two sections in the back that cover the AT sections in Vermont in as much detail (I’m talking about the part of the AT that doesn’t even coincide with the LT).
Easiest solution for me was to tear out what I needed for a 50-60 mi section from both books and slip the pages in a ziploc. The maps I adhered to pages in a small fieldbook that I used as a journal. I got new maps/descriptions for upcoming sections as needed; in your case this would be something easy to mail yourself up-(or down-)trail.
BT
Backtrack