Waterfalls of Colorado

Reviewed by Dean Goss

Marc Conly's effort is one of the earliest of the new wave of waterfall guidebooks. Considering he was working without a lot of other books to draw comparisons and inspiration from, and considering that color printing was still out of reach for the average author, he did a fine job.

His book is thorough, he covers more than 250 waterfalls in the state of Colorado and this represents the overwhelming bulk of the beta information that we have in the World Waterfall Database's Colorado datum. There aren't many photographs, but there are a lot of maps, and the text is well written, certainly good enough to inspire the region's hikers to find the falls on their own.

The waterfalls are grouped by river drainages, thus are in a fairly logical sequence for facilitated exploration. Each waterfall entry has a brief factbox covering Access, Rating (a 5 star system), Type (using the standard nomenclature as developed by Greg Plumb), USGS Topographic Quad name, Trail length, Altitude, and Elevation Change. In addition, the well written text is descriptive, both of the falls themselves and the journey to reach them.

The Bottom Line: This is the definitive volume for Colorado Waterfalls. Considering its early entry into the waterfall field, it was well ahead of its time in terms of functionality and design. This book would certainly benefit from a second edition. Marc, if you're taking notes, a fine color revision would be a big hit! If you plan to do any waterfall exploration, this definitive book will unlock Colorado.