Mountain Biking the Washington, D.C./Baltimore Area, 4th: An Atlas of Northern Virginia, Maryland, and D.C.'s Greatest Off-Road Bicycle Rides (Regional Mountain Biking Series) Paperback – August 1, 2003

Good book but getting outdated.

I live in DC and it's difficult to find a good ride without taking an afternoon drive. This book is really thorough and helpful, with places I wouldn't have otherwise known about and more info than I already knew about other places.

This book is pretty much a joke of a guidebook. Most of the "trails" are things like bike paths and not really mountain biking... It pretty much misses all of the great trails in Maryland

This is an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to explore the remarkable number of great trails located within about 4 hours of Washington, DC (most are located with 1-2 hours). Organized into regions and including areas from Shenandoah National Park to large secluded multi-use state parks to small suburban trail parks, and everything in between, this collection will keep you busy in and educated about the area's excellent offerings for many many years. About five years ago some buddies and I started consulting this book for what became regular weekend MTB outings, including some very difficult half-day trail rides and camping on a few occasions. A few years later after the friend in charge of selecting the weekend's trail moved to TX, he sent me the book with a note reminding of the good times and passing it down for my own (more-likely) use. It's now a go-to resource, in its second life, for day hikes with my wife. Success? She is constantly amazed at the beautiful gems we can reach in 1-2 hours time outside DC. Highly educational and revealing, and highly recommended.

It had a lot of good trails that I would not have known about otherwise. It has trails for every skill level and gives instructions on how to get to the trails. It even includes an elevation map and picutres from the trails. My only complaint is that it defines the trails as easy,easy to moderate, moderate, moderate to difficult or difficult, but some of the trails are rated easy like the cheseapeke bay trail(which is the only trail in the book which is not mountain biking) and rockburn regional park. They are totally different, chesepeake bay is flat and no obstacles whatsoever while rockburn has obstacles and minor hills and doubletrack. The two are very different but rated the same so it would be better if it was rated on a scale of maybe 1-10 or something like that. To one of the other reviewers who said it didn't have real mountain biking-the book has gambrill in it, which is arugably the hardest mountain biking in the state and some of the hardest in the country. If thats not "real" mountain biking than what is? THere is plenty of real mountain biking in it, and this book was reccomended by many people to me. I would recomend this too, you should defintly buy this if you plan on going mountainbiking, whether you are a begginer, intermediatae or advanced biker.