The 50 Best Hiking, Trekking, and Walking Books of All Time
The next best thing to hitting the trail? Hitting these books. (BONUS: Nude drawing of me, below!) My latest for BACKPACKER.com. WRITTEN & ILLUSTRATED & FLASHED BY PETER MOORE
As close readers of Road2Elsewhere know, this blog may as well be called the Trail2Elsewhere, so committed am I to travel on foot. Last winter I was foolish enough to propose an article about the best hiking books of all time to BACKPACKER.COM, and my otherwise sensible editors were foolish enough to assign it to me.
It was a bitch!
But what a wonderful to-read list I came up with, for my trouble.
If you’re a fan of one-foot-in-front-of-the-other, or just reading about grand adventures, dive in. Happy trails and happier reading.
YOU CAN’T HIKE ALL THE TIME. Most of us need to make a living, for instance. But that’s why there are books about hiking. And backpacking, and mountaineering, and tramping, and walking. When you’re not stretching your legs, you can stretch your imagination for the next adventure.
So as I’ve waited for trails to thaw and mud season to dry out this spring, I’ve been assembling a list of the 50 best books about life on the trail. Some are a walk in the park. (Reading Diana Helmuth is like rolling out of your sleeping bag laughing.) Some are epics. (Wu Cheng’en’s 1592 story of a long, difficult walk had such an impact in China that it still gets referenced in popular culture almost 500 years later). Some rise to the level of poetry. And then there’s the bookshelf laden with thru-hiker tales. It may actually be faster to walk those trails than it is to read all the books about them.
It is, of course, a fool’s errand to name the 50 best anything. But I’m just the fool for the job. I did seek some expert sources while compiling this list: My literate friends and editors at Backpacker; the staff of Back of Beyond Bookstore in Moab; the redditors of r/hiking; Kerri Andrews, who edited the amazing book Way Makers: An Anthology of Women’s Writing about Walking; James Edward Mills of the Joy Trip Project.
Mills in particular is on a mission to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the outdoors. In an email, he proposed a few of his favorites (included below), and cited a key advantage of casting a wider net for hiking books, and buddies: People who have felt excluded from the outdoors can give a whole new perspective on what’s great about being out there.
Great hiking books conjure your dream mountains—and trekking nightmares—into existence. And the best part: They’ll inspire and inform you as you shoulder your own pack, put one foot in front of the other, and build your own narratives. That’s better than reading any book. Or even 50 of them.
Did I pick the right books? You tell me. No, better yet: don’t. Read your own favorite hiker-author’s work, then get out there. The best story you’ll ever create is one you walk through yourself.
NOTE: The books below are presented in no particular order.
(Photo: Courtesy, Penguin Random House)
GLORYLAND, by Shelton Johnson (2009)
This historical fiction, written by a Yosemite park ranger, tells the tale of Elijah Yancy, who was born to Black and Native American sharecroppers on Emancipation Day in 1863. He walked west to discover his country, the beauties of the Yosemite valley, and his humanity.
Free sample: “All you need to get to heaven is a good pair of boots.”
(Photo: Courtesy, Mountaineers Books)
HOW TO SUFFER OUTSIDE: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO HIKING AND BACKPACKING, by Diana Helmuth (2021)
Backpacking is the most fun you can have while being utterly miserable. Helmuth helps hikers laugh through the quarter-sized blisters and the freezing rain, and provides useful tips for anyone venturing outdoors.
Free sample: “Grab the [pack] straps behind your head and pull them down, like the legs of a toddler that you’ll kick off your back if it doesn’t stop flailing. You should feel like your pack is teetering off your hips, with about an inch between your shoulder and the shoulder strap. Adjusted properly, it should feel like more of your weight is being carried by your hips, not your shoulders. Good job—you’re on your way to becoming a chiropractor’s dream.”
THRU-HIKING WILL BREAK YOUR HEART: AN ADVENTURE ON THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL, by Carrot Quinn (2015)
An internet addict finds community in the all-too-real world of the Pacific Crest Trail.
Free sample: “Time disappears, and it is just me and the mountain, and the wind. I have always been in this windstorm, I think, as I fight my way forward. And I will always be in this windstorm. Up ahead, on a ridge, is a single tree. Someday, I think, I am going to be reincarnated as that tree. As punishment for every choice I’ve ever made. Or as a reward.”
(Photo: Courtesy, Canongate Books)
THE LIVING MOUNTAIN: A CELEBRATION OF THE CAIRNGORM MOUNTAINS OF SCOTLAND, by Nan Shepherd (1977)
The Scottish novelist, poet, and naturalist penned this ode to the Scottish Cairngorm mountains. She is a spiritual sister to Annie Dillard, and her book is a light carry: only 167 pages.
Free sample: “Simply to look on anything, such as a mountain, with the love that penetrates to its essence, is to widen the domain of being in the vastness of non-being. Man has no other reason for his existence.
”
WILD: FROM LOST TO FOUND ON THE PACIFIC CREST TRAIL, by Cheryl Strayed (2012)
She lost her mom, quit her marriage, and even lost her hiking boots along the Pacific Crest Trail. But along the way from the Mojave Desert to Oregon, she gained a new sense of self and life direction she previously lacked.
Free sample: “I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me.”
(Photo: Courtesy, Mountaineers Books)
MOUNTAINEERING: FREEDOM OF THE HILLS, by Mountaineers Books (1960, 9th edition 2017)
Crafted and updated by 40 mountaineering experts, this tome is the definitive skill manual for mountaineers.
Free sample: “If the only answer [to your hiking predicament] is silence, sit down, regain your calm, and combat terror with reason. Once you have calmed down, start doing the right things.”
(Photo: Courtesy, HarperCollins)
SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET, by Heinrich Harrer (1953)
Harrer, an accomplished Austrian mountaineer—and, less laudably, a member of the SS —ended up in a British internment camp after World War II broke out while he was on a Himalayan expedition. He escaped, and then tramped around Tibet for seven years, teaching the young Dalai Lama along the way. His book was fodder for a Brad Pitt movie.
Free sample: “The absolute simplicity. That’s what I love. When you’re climbing your mind is clear and free from all confusions. You have focus. And suddenly the light becomes sharper, the sounds are richer and you’re filled with the deep, powerful presence of life.”
(Photo: Courtesy, Penguin Random House)
A WALK IN THE WOODS: REDISCOVERING AMERICA ON THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL, by Bill Bryson (1998)
Maybe you should just stay in your easy chair by the fire, instead of attempting the Appalachian Trail. Bryson hiked most of it for you already, and his suffering is funnier than yours.
Free sample: “Black bears rarely attack. But here’s the thing. Sometimes they do. All bears are agile, cunning and immensely strong, and they are always hungry. If they want to kill you and eat you, they can, and pretty much whenever they want. That doesn’t happen often, but—and here is the absolutely salient point—once would be enough.”
CLICK HERE FOR A FULL FORTY-TWO OTHER ALL-TIMER TITLES, PLUS SEVENTEEN OTHERS, SO I COULD COVER MY LIST-MAKING ASS. WOULDN’T YOU, IF YOU HAD THIS IMPOSSIBLE ASSIGNMENT?
BONUS QUOTE FROM YET ANOTHER GREATEST HIKING BOOK OF ALL TIME
“Pilgrim said, ‘You can walk from the time of your youth till the time you grow old, and after that, till you become youthful again; and even after going through such a cycle a thousand times, you may still find it difficult to reach the place you want to go to. But when you perceive, by the resoluteness of your will, the Buddha-nature in all things, and when every one of your thoughts goes back to its very source in your memory, that will be the time you arrive at the Spirit Mountain.’” — From THE JOURNEY TO THE WEST, by Wu Cheng’en (1592)
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And now I want to hear from you:
Click “comment” below, and tell me the most gratifying hike you’ve ever been on. My favorite trail in the whole world? The Castle Trail, on Mount Jefferson in New Hampshire.
Yours?
No! I’ll have to check it out. My favorite is In A Sunburnt Country. Laughed so hard I cried multiple times.
I love Bill Bryson!