Catskill Trails: A Ranger's Guide to the High Peaks: The Northern Catskills, Vol. 1 »

Ed Henry has worked as a forest ranger in the Shenandoah and Great Smokey Mountains National Parks, and for the US Forest Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. He is also the author of "Catskill Trails Book Two: the Central Catskills," and "Gunks Trails: A Ranger s Guide to the Shawangunk Mountains." His fourth guidebook, a ranger s guide to the trails of the Taconics and Berkshires, will be published by Black Dome Press in 2007.

A National Parks Service Forest Ranger takes you step by step on a guided tour of some of the most rugged wilderness terrain in the northeastern United States-the high peaks of the Catskill Forest Preserve-as well as guiding you to some of the more accessible and better trammeled sites and scenes of "Rip Van Winkle Country."

The author, a conservation professional, has taken an interdisciplinary approach, drawing the latest information from geology, forest ecology, meteorology, wildlife biology, geography, economics, and history to offer a well-rounded picture of the Catskill Mountains as the hikes rise to the sky through levels of rock strata and ever-changing forests. The goal. as the author states, is for the reader to experience the hike and see the Catskills as "a natural historian, not a tourist," and to see not just the present, but the past as well... and maybe even the future.

"Book One: The Northern Catskills" includes: the escarpment wall, Huckleberry Pt., Plattekill Clove, Kaaterskill High Peak, Kaaterskill Clove, Roundtop, Hunter Mtn., Windham High Peak, Pratt's Rock, Mount Utsayantha, Huntersfield, The Devil's Path: Indian Head, Twin, Sugarloaf & Paltyeau, Bearpen, The Blackhead Range: Thomas Cole, Blackdome & Blackhead.

Sept./Oct. 2000 - Trail Walker

"The author paints verbal pictures of the region not often found in guide books... "