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Hiking in Palm Springs

When was the last time you ditched the wicked winter weather and followed the snowbirds to the sunniest part of Southern California; Palm Springs. Well, if you're coming to Palm Springs you need to pack a T-shirt, some shorts, and might I recommend some hiking shoes - why you ask? Because in and around Palm Springs there are some magnificent hiking trails, and the weather is good all year round. Yes, it's very hot in the summer time, but if you can handle the heat, and take some water with you on your hikes, you are sure to lose water weight. Okay so, let's talk about this and your next vacation shall we?

First, if you are going to go hiking in the Palm Springs area, I would like to recommend a very good book to you, it is completely user friendly, and gives you the exact mileage of nearly every great hiking trail within a 50 mile radius. This is a book that I own personally, and use regularly. The name of the book is;

"140 Great Hikes In and near Palm Springs," by Philip Ferranti and Hank Koenig, published by Westcliffe publishers, 2008, 296 pages, ISBN: 1-56579-490-7.

These guys really know their stuff, and the authors are avid hikers, and even dedicated their book to their favorite hiking dog; Skitts. This book has hiking trails in Mecca Hills and Box Canyon nearly 30 of them. There also for great hiking trails listed from Coachella Valley Preserve. There are a number of desert cities surrounding Palm Springs, it is not isolated all by itself anymore, In fact there are 550,000 people in the Coachella Valley during the season, which is the wintertime when all the snowbirds come out. The rest of the time the population hovers around 300,000.

In any case all these other desert cities also have trails, and they have listed 12 extremely excellent trails, four of which I've been on myself in some of the other cities. There are 16 trails listed in the Palm Springs and Indian Canyon areas, and 30 trails in the nearby San Jacinto Mountains, with six trails in the Santa Rosa Mountains, as well as a number of trails in Joshua Tree National Park. The park is awesome, and if you've never been there, you must go.

The book also has trails in the San Bernardino Pass, and the Orocopia Mountain wilderness area. There are detailed maps of every single trail with all the distances and directions of how to get to the trailhead, and important tips along the way, along with various landmarks listed, and scenic outlooks. Anyways, this is the very best book I have ever found for those that wish to go on hiking excursions in and around the Palm Springs area. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this, and I highly recommend this book to you.