Book Reviews

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Remembering life on the run

An interview with legendary author Joanne Greenberg about her 21st book, a memoir of her time as a volunteer emergency medical technician in the Colorado Rockies

By Suzanne Macaulay | December 12, 2024
“I felt myself sinking into the local geography and climate as deeply as though I had spent my childhood there. We began to know, within the limits of our district, the ten or fifteen mini-climates of the hills we lived in, places where the snows melted earlier, or the wind made the way crusty and precarious, pockets of chill, pockets of calm.” — Joanne Greenberg, On the Run
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Hiking With Kids Colorado: 52 Great Hikes for Families

Jamie Siebrase
Falcon Guides, 2021
288 pages
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Hiking With Kids Colorado: 52 Great Hikes for Families provides a guide for a hike a week within a year, detailing trails suitable each season—including winter—for the entire family. Inspired by son Brian, accompanied by husband Ben and championed by her own nature-loving parents, Colorado-based author Jamie Siebrase birthed this “how to hike with children” book. (See our review of Siebrase’s picture book Tonight! A Bedtime Story here.) Winter hikes include the “Pines to Peaks Loop”, a 1.1-mile lollipop shaped treading trail, easy to access from downtown Boulder, crossing three distinct ecosystems: meadow, ponderosa pine parkland, and forest. Another hike, “Lake Gulch and Inner Canyon Loop,” begins in Castle Rock within Castlewood Canyon State Park. The 2.2-mile hike begins easy and turns moderate, passing through ponderosa pine, Gambel oaks, mountain mahogany, and snowberry along the trail. Near Snowmass Village, “The Rim Trail South to Spiral Point” boasts iconic vistas.  This is a 2.6 mile out-and-back hike that is moderate in difficulty. From the trailhead, hike west through aspen groves. This is a popular snowshoeing trail in winter. Siebrase offers useful details on subjects like trail etiquette and preparedness needs, as well as keeping canine-children leashed. The text is clearly broken down into seasonal hikes offering a variety of difficulty and distance explanations, as well as directions to trailhead locations, a familiar obstacle to the would-be family hiker. Legible trail maps show where to go once arrived and the book is peppered with fun facts. — Shelli Rottschafer