AMC Outdoors, April 2007
With the release of the White Mountain Guide's 28th edition, a hiking institution turns 100.
"You’ve heard the book referred to as the hiker’s bible,” says Larry Garland. “I think it’s a well-deserved moniker.” He should know. As AMC’s cartographer, Garland’s responsible for making and ensuring the accuracy of the maps that accompany the White Mountain Guide, a task that has him collecting and assembling tens of thousands of data points. “There’s a lot of pressure to get it right.” If longevity is any indication, Garland and the many editors, writers, and mapmakers who preceded him have succeeded. AMC’s flagship guidebook celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, making it the oldest continuously published trail guide in North America. Released this month, the guide’s 28th edition plots nearly 1,500 miles of trails. Every step of which, by the way, Garland has personally walked.
The White Mountain Guide has long been an indispensable resource and trail companion for people to explore the White Mountain National Forest. But the book was hardly unique when it first appeared in 1907 under the cumbersome title, Guide to the Paths and Camps in the White Mountains. 
Prior to its publication visitors to the area used such guidebooks as Thomas Star King’s The White Hills and Samuel Eastman’s White Mountain Guide Book. Both devoted a lot more space to describing bucolic views than explaining where paths went. “There weren’t many trails,” says Eugene Daniell, co-editor, along with Steven D. Smith, of the current edition. “[So] they were heavy on tourist information and descriptions of views because there wasn’t a great deal of hiking to be done.”
The White Mountain Guide’s greater emphasis on trail descriptions represented a departure from the more florid fare of the day. Early editors also happened to be prodigious trail builders, experience that added to the book’s on-the-ground accuracy. While little new trail construction occurs today (the 28th edition does include the recently completed Grafton Loop Trail on the west side of Grafton Notch), the editors’ work remains as vital as ever. Paths are rerouted and closed, trailheads are moved, and sights and conditions constantly change. “The guidebook can only be a record of how things were at a certain period of time. Things are always changing,” says Smith. “A lot of people look at it from one edition to the next and may not notice major changes, but there are subtle changes, fine tuning. Sometimes views become grown over, someone might have cleared a vista years ago and it’s no longer there.”
Garland, Smith, and Daniell are kept busy making sure every change is reflected in the guide. In the past it was not a three-man operation; committees of people would divvy up trails to monitor. 
“The history of the White Mountain Guide had been built around college professors who spent every summer at their farms in the mountains, and they became intimately familiar with the trails of their particular area,” says Daniell. “By the 1950s and 1960s the life of a college professor changed radically. They no longer took the whole summer off and went to the mountains.”
Since it would be impossible to walk every inch of every trail for each edition, Garland and the editors make an effort to stay in touch with the insiders most familiar with changes, such as the U.S. Forest Service, trail maintenance clubs, state parks, land trusts, and even customers at The Mountain Wanderer, Smith’s bookstore in Lincoln, N.H. Smith tries to hike twice a week and has only 50 miles left before he finishes all the trails in the guide. But he also monitors hiking websites where users post trip reports and updates on trail conditions in the White Mountains.
When Daniell first started working on the guide in 1979 he was still trying to define its audience. “The prevailing theory in earlier years was that we were writing for people who were already experienced woodsmen,” says Daniell, the longest-serving editor in the guide’s history. That’s changed, and he takes special care to emphasize exactly what hikers can expect when they set out on a trail; detailing elevation gain and potential hazards along a route helps hikers make the right decisions about where to go. “Some people want to go out and challenge themselves and improve their skills; others want to go out and have a pleasant walk.”
Educating hikers and helping them stay safe will remain a big part of the White Mountain Guide’s mission for its next 100 years. But there are certain to be other changes. “Who knows what a White Mountain Guide would look like a century from now,” says Daniell. “It may be a flash memory card in a little device.” Smith hopes it always has a binding and pages. “I’m a bookseller and my wife is a librarian,” he says. “We hope the book part of it stays a tradition.”
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