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The Ultimate Desert Handbook : A Manual for Desert Hikers, Campers and Travelers | 
 enlarge | Author: Mark Johnson
Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $10.25
You Save: $7.70 (43%)
New (30) Used (8) from $10.09
Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 125211
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 296
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.6
ISBN: 007139303X
Dewey Decimal Number: 613.69
UPC: 639785802488
EAN: 9780071393034
ASIN: 007139303X
Publication Date: March 26, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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Book Description
The Ultimate Desert Handbook is the first truly comprehensive handbook on desert travel and exploration, presenting the desert not as an alien environment to be overcome or endured, but rather as a fascinating opportunity for anyone eager to learn about and enjoy a different kind of outdoors experience. Assuming no prior desert know-how, this detailed guide is intended for hikers, backpackers, campers, and 4WD vehicle travelers, along with a wide range of other adventure enthusiasts pursuing their chosen activities into the desert - rock climbers, birding enthusiasts, pilots, nature lovers, and wildlife/landscape photographers. Even dayhikers and occasional visitors to desert destinations will find the book easy to understand and extremely useful. The Ultimate Desert Handbook is packed with information and includes descriptions and histories of deserts around the world, a complete survey of the North American deserts, their indigenous peoples, plants, and wildlife; expert advice, including historical background and the latest technical developments in desert hiking, backpacking, camping, equipment, footwear, and clothing. Also included are chapters on desert mountain biking, first aid, wildlife observation & photography (including tips on film cameras, digicams, and night optics), desert hazards and survival, finding & treating water from all manner of desert sources, as well as preparing and using desert vehicles and animal transport. Last but not least is the most thorough section on desert navigation ever published - from using the stars to map, compass, sextant, and the Global Positioning System - and easy-to-follow advice on everything from selecting a low-impact campsite to signaling and rescue communications. * A Ragged Mountain Press Outdoors Paperback * 5 8 * 291pp * 80 photos and illustrations.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 Ultimate Desert Handbook October 19, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Great book. Among it's many strengths are the extensive discussion of finding water (from many different sources), direction finding, and hazards. Even as a long-time desert rat I learned things that are useful to know.
 Read it and be prepared! August 17, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Awesome book! We bought this book as a guide to prepare for a backpacking trip to the West Texas deserts of Big Bend and the Devil's River earlier this year and its advice came in handy on more than a few occasions, especially the section on camping advice, equipment, and clothing. The book's use of real-life excerpts of news stories (from those who didn't take the desert seriously enough) was effective at getting the book's message across on to anyone preparing to hike the desert, as well as the drive back. In fact we ran into a couple who didn't bring enough water and when they got back to the trailhead, their truck had blown a radiator hose. They were hurting. As the Scout motto says, read this and be prepared before you go.
It's the best desert hiking and survival book.. July 20, 2006
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
The Ultimate Desert Handbook is the best book on desert hiking and survival I have found, and I have read them all. That's not just my opinion, but also that of all my friends who like to backpack and hike in the desert. Unlike other books that claim to cover the subject of desert hiking and survival, this one actually does so. Water, acclimatizing the body, clothing and equipment, navigation, backpacks and gear, information on different deserts of the world - nothing is left out.
Johnson's book is actually both well-written and very well organized, with the most important aspects, such as finding water, trip planning, etc. in the first chapters, progressing in order. The criticism of the book as somehow biased towards vehicle travel is completely off-base, and makes me wonder how carefully the critic read the material. It has a single solitary chapter on desert vehicles and preparing them for desert conditions (makes sense, because unlike other places, you may have to drive for miles through remote, waterless areas just to get to the trailhead!). In fact, the book is primarily oriented towards hikers and backpackers - probably 250 of the book's 296 pages are devoted to the subject - especially those preparing for treks in remote desert. The book actually covers a wide range of subjects - adapting to different desert conditions, trip planning, backpacking and camping gear, desert first aid, snakes and other hazards, and it has the best chapter on pathfinding and navigation (read: staying alive) in the desert I've found to date.
As to gear and equipment, the author does take space to provide suggestions on advantages and disadvantages of many items, including the newer methods of water purification, ultralight equipment, GPS receivers, water storage, Camelbaks, and so on. But rather than the usual generic discussion, the information is nicely geared to desert hiking: in the case of drinking tube systems, right down to the need to insulate one's drinking tube and choose light-reflecting colors, a tip omitted by other books. I personally found all of this very useful information, and I can't see how it possible how learning something about one's gear for such a different environment as a desert could be either impractical or frivolous. The author did probably assume the reader is intelligent enough to realize that you can't possibly bring everything along, and to make one's own choices regarding total pack weight. Suggestions are just that, not everyone will agree with them, but such is life. For myself, I'd certainly want to know the practical applications and limitations of various types of gear and clothing, especially as they apply to desert hiking. If you don't like it, you can skip the chapter - doh! I find it very strange that anyone could condemn a desert travel book with a single-star rating because it allegedly reviews 'too much' equipment, then criticize it yet again with the trivial complaint that the book left out the manufacturer's address for one's preferred brand of compass. Bizarre.
I found the Ultimate Desert Handbook to be the first desert hiking book I've read that acknowledges the differences between the major U.S. desert regions AND provides information throughout the book useful to each desert region, not to mention other deserts of the world. This material is provided throughout the book, and is NOT limited to the brief descriptions in the introductory chapter. This is significant, as many hiking books that purport to deal with desert travel or survival base a lot of their material on experiences gained from one particular desert, guidance that isn't always applicable to others.
There's a lot of material here I've never found in other desert survival books (or nature 'walking' guides for that matter), and that includes the U.S. Army and Air Force survival manuals. For instance, I've always read that barrel cactus may be used for water in an emergency - but was surprised to learn that there are several look-alike subspecies with pulp that are poisonous or sickening, something the Native Americans knew but apparently the Air Force doesn't, so this book tells how to identify them, just in case. Many books tell you about the solar survival still and transpiration bag, but the author takes care to point out their fatal flaws. You can find information in this book I've never seen in any other hiking book that could only be of value to someone walking long distances in the desert: how to work primitive, wind, or solar-powered windmills, find directions from winds and eroded rocks, siphon water out of a covered aqueduct, hide a water cache, hike lava fields or sand dunes, find directions from desert tracks and trails, treat desert blindness, or perform first aid for arterial bleeding. Again, not something you're likely to find in the Audubon guides. Although the book isn't strictly a desert survival text, it's no surprise to see that it's very popular with park rangers, thru-hikers, desert expedition members, and those familiar with extreme desert travel.
Now, there are some things the book isn't, which is obvious to anyone who bothers to look over the chapter titles. It isn't a nature guide to desert flora and fauna - beyond telling you which plants, animals, and insects can hurt or help you, which is the point of the book. For example, we get extensive advice on avoiding potential injury from rattlesnakes (individualized to species where necessary), while learning there's no need to stomp on the local tarantula that comes close to your campfire. The book does takes care to demonstrate the fragility of the desert environment where indicated and provides advice on low-impact hiking and camping. This duality may bother some people used to strict genres such as 'hiking book', 'survival book', etc., but not to fear - it's all seamlessly integrated into a comprehensive guide to desert hiking, survival and travel. And since the book deals with BOTH desert hiking and desert survival, it teaches not only what to do in case of disaster, but how to prevent disasters in the first place through preparation, acquisition of expertise, and development of one's hiking and pathfinding skills. The book also isn't a long, novelistic narrative of one man's voyage of discovery and personal growth, so it could hardly be criticized for not including such material (how anyone could mistake it for such a book is baffling to me). The author is more concerned with providing objective information (as he should be in this type of book) to the reader rather than an homage to Ed Abbey, great a novelist as he was.
So, if you're a big-city dweller just looking for a good winter read, or the Latin scientific appellation for the local deer mouse, you'll need to go somewhere else. But if you need the best desert hiking and survival guide, this is it.
 Overrated-Oversized-Inadequate-Superficial July 13, 2006
8 out of 24 found this review helpful
Although it may be of some use as an introduction to persons who have never walked on a desert trail or been to the American southwest, and though the book constitutes a useful primer on equipment, navigation, & survival techniques, the book is poorly organized and edited with much less information than one might expect from a book of its physical size. It is not handy enough to throw into a knapsack nor is it well designed or beautiful enough to qualify as a coffee table book. The author appears to have done just enough research to cover the subject and satisfy his editors. There are no first hand descriptions of desert hiking or any first hand descriptions at all to suggest the author has any experience whatsoever. Less than one page is devoted to animal transport, ten pages to bicycle transport, and 32 pages to motor vehicles. One may thus conclude that the author has probably never walked more than a few hundred yards from a motor vehicle. The extremely modest effort made to be inclusive (to justify the title) by tackling all the world's deserts results in a text that suffers exceedingly with regard to specific characteristics of North American desert regions namely the Great Basin, Mohave, Sonoran, & Chiricahua. The few paragraphs dedicated to each of these is utterly insufficient in doing more than indicating their geographic location. The list of plants, animals, and insects for all is inexplicably conjoined and superficial (only 43 species of flora and fauna including reptiles and insects) and inadequately illstrated. Albeit a number of new species are introduced in the chapters on hazards and survival but these are not illustrated or very well described as to habits, distribution, & frequency. So much more is available from any decent nature guide (Peterson's, Audubon, etc.) Indeed the Golden Guides offer better coverage of Southwestern desert life & local culture despite their diminutive size. The author includes many lists of recommended supplies but little explication as to the rationale for their inclusion or their practical use. The author simply cribbed official sources including military manuals for much of this information. The assumption seems to be that you can carry all this stuff in a motor vehicle or helicopter. Though poor in describing North American desert regions and their ecology the book is nevertheless a decent introduction to certain technical aspects of desert hiking such as navigation and survival strategies. However all this information is readily available in other more thorough and entertaining hiking, camping, and survival guides. The skimpy two page bibliography inexplicably omits anything specific to the ecology of American deserts or to any of the well known, extremely useful, and entertaining works by Colin Fletcher ('The Man Who Walked Through Time', and 'The Complete Walker') or those by Edward Abbey ('Desert Solitaire') nor does it contain any comments on the usefulness or entertainment value of what is listed (How useful or entertaining is the ca. 1325 travel description by Abu Ibn Battuta?) The 'Resources' appendix is likewise superficial and omits a source for an important orienting product discussed and illustrated in the text (Suunto). In short, the book appears to be an editorial commission that though workmanlike as a piece of technical writing it utterly lacks any flavor or sense of what is purported to be described. The most useful chapter in the book is probably 'Water Supplies' with the paragraph on hyponatremia being the most important but there is no discussion as to how to make your own remedy for sodium deficiency until six chapters later when an inset describes the internationally accepted re-hydration formula.
Almost a necessity for desert backpacking March 4, 2006
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
This is without doubt a really useful book on desert backpacking and general camping and hiking. It's not a trail book, but really a general and in-depth training guide on exploring deserts and planning/preparation for such places. Unlike a lot of these types of books, this one is written in an absorbing manner. The chapters flow naturally, one to the other, and have plenty of illustrations (all black/white, though).
I picked up this book on a whim before heading out to Arizona and Utah and was surprised at how well it covered the subjects you might expected to need when hiking the desert. For example, in the desert navigation chapter, you aren't just told to 'carry a map and compass and look for landmarks'. The book leads you step-by-step through reading and understanding a map, different kinds of desert (rock, dune desert, etc.), likely desert landmarks and common mistakes in desert navigating, how to choose the right compass and GPS receiver, the weak points of these instruments, how to recognize trail 'signs' or traffic, and on and on.
Desert planning and equipment is also a great chapter. What boot soles work well on desert rock, what shoes to wear in loose sand, how to plan water loads, desert camping tips, how desert heat and different terrain will affect your mileage, etc. The author illustrates nearly every point with real-life news accounts of desert survivors (and victims) who experienced the issues encountered in desert situations.
By the time you reach the end of the book you know how to plan a desert hike, buy the right hiking and camping equipment and clothing, employ first aid for desert illnesses or heat exposure, avoid plant/animal dangers, survive if you get into trouble, and get your truck (or mountain bike!) desert-ready. Not bad.
In conclusions, this is the best outdoors guide I've read in a long time. Definitely check this book out if you are planning a desert trip.
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