[.ca] Mountain Biking Southern California (ISBN 1560448075)

Great variety of trails.:
I found this book to very informative and opened up a lot of new riding experiences for me. As a Ventura/Los Angeles local, I got bored with the same old trails. This book provided me a good foundation to begin exploring a world of new trails, all within a few hours of my own home. The best part is that with one book, I was able to find trails in towns like Moro Bay, Santa Barbara, Big Bear and San Diego where I can now take weekend trips and know where to ride. The trail descriptions gave me a strong sense of the terrain and level of dificulty and I found them to be very accurate.

A colorless, forgettable, unremarkable guidebook.:
This book is quite disappointing. The maps are okay, the elevation profiles are helpful, but otherwise it's utterly bland--and one thing mountain biking shouldn't be is bland. There's no sense of what makes these mountain bike routes special (and if you've ever ridden in Southern California, you know how special the riding is). I think there are other guidebooks about Southern California that give you a lot more bang for your buck. There's no reason to settle for something as lazy, mundane, and obviously-tossed-together-just-to-make-some-cash as this.