Colorado's Thirteeners: From Hikes to Climbs Paperback – September 1, 2018

This book is an inspirational, helpful resource for climbing Colorado's peaks above 13,800. Great photos and route descriptions. Roach Points are given to indicate the difficulty of a route. Well written, comprehensive. I have used it along with the website 14ers.com to climb several of Colorado's high thirteeners.

It's a great resource for Colorado's 13ers. I purchased 13ers because I also have the Colorado's 14ers by the same author.

Content is excellent and is an extremely invaluable resource. The binding however, is terrible with pages separating and coming loose almost immediately.

When I originally moved to CO, I immediately fell in love with the Roach guides to the CO 13ers and 14ers. I even tracked down Gerry's then out of print guide to the Flatirons, a local cult classic for Flatirons scramblers. The peak guides are the closest CO analog to Secor's Sierra bible, The High Sierra: Peaks, Passes, Trails, only with better maps. I since relocated, but when planning an upcoming off-trail backpacking trip to the Weminuche Wilderness (including a scramble of Vestal's Wham Ridge), I decided to upgrade to the newer edition of the 13ers book. I have no doubt it will be a great resource for mileage, x-country passes, and scrambles.

This second addition is very good. If you have used his more famous 14ers guidebook, the layout is very similar. One thing to note for those living in the Front Range, not many of those 13ers make the cut. For Front Range 13ers the Derek Wolfe guidebook is the way to go. Only about 3 overlapping routes with this text.

I sought out a copy of the prior edition (yellow spine) of Gerry and Jennifer's 13er book during the 10-15 years that it was out of print. It reads like the third edition (blue spine) of Gerry's famous 14er book (rather than the first or second editions) with "efferculty" scores that put into perspective the pitch, terrain, distance, complexity, etc.No book that I know of addresses (or even attempts to address) ALL of Colorado's 637 ranked 13ers (and scores of unranked <300 ft prominence 13ers). What Gerry and Jennifer do here is review multiple route options (not EVERY route option) on Colorado's "Centennial 13ers" (those that, along with the 14ers account for the highest 100 peaks in Colorado) ALONG WITH quite a few not-quite Centennials and dozens of "extra-credit" 13er the occasional12er summit that you may or may care to add onto a 13er expedition.For instance, when you read about Vestal Peak (#77 overall in Colorado) , you'll get technical and non-tech routes on Vestal, and the Roaches also go on to describe routes on nearby Arrow (#104), Trinity (#103), "West Trinity" (#120), and "East Trinity" (#138). You don't get routes on more obscure and lower-elevation summits in the area like Electric Peak, Garfield Greystone, etc. A lot of regions the Roaches describe are like that. They specifically focus on the peaks with summits 13,800 ft -13,999 as it says on the cover, and then, in most cases, provide additional info on nearby or link-able peaks that fall just outside that elevation. Apart from some confined areas in the Sawatches, the Roaches do not (and really cannot) provide an exhaustive list and write-up of every summit you could seek out.If you want to visit some really beautiful areas - this book is an excellent resource (please tread lightly!). If you're plotting long-distance expeditions or ridge-runs, this book is only a starting point. There's not enough beta in most sections of the book to completely exhaust what you might want to know about an area, particularly as you move to peaks below the 13,800 ft threshold and thru-hike or link disparate areas to one another.

I like the info in this book, but the first time I opened it the binding broke in the middle and the pages are coming out....

If you love his 14er book then this is a no brained purchase. Well written like the previous focusing on 13.8 and up. My wife and I love using these books. This one is especially nice as it helps you find less hiked mountains :)