Outdoor Skills Books for Hikers – A Curated List

As someone who enjoys reading books as much as I do spending time outdoors, every year I spend quite a lot of time researching books that could help improve outdoor skills for passionate hikers such as myself. Whether it’s a better understanding of the environment, reading the weather, learning bushcraft or survival techniques, extra skills and knowledge always come in handy out there.

Either in the off-season, when I am travelling, or when I need something to read when camping, I am always looking to improve my outdoor skills and understanding of the environment,

Because of that, with my own research and reading, I have come up with a list of books that really helped me improve both my outdoor skills and safety guidelines, orienteering skills, and general knowledge in a way that made my time outdoors even more enjoyable and safe.

So if anyone were to ask me which book I’d recommend for those purposes, here is the list I would share. And, if you have friends or relatives who are into hiking and are looking for gift ideas, you can hardly go wrong with any of these books.

Yes…I’m a bookworm.

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend books I have personally read and found valuable, and as such, may be valuable to others sharing the same passions and interests.

1. Mountaineering & Outdoors

• Mountaineering – The Freedom of the Hills: If you were only to buy one book for your outdoor skills in the mountains, buy this. It’s a classic, comprehensive foundation text by multiple authors. Against what the title may suggest, this is not only a mountaineering book. It covers all of the outdoor fundamentals in depth, from clothing to choosing the right camping gear, cooking, and wilderness navigation, plus the basics of travelling on snow and ice, and how to assess avalanche dangers. And a bit of mountain geology and the basics of mountain weather. It’s a sort of a “bible” of the mountains, so to speak, not only for mountaineering, but for general and practical backcountry advice.

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2. Reading the Sky: Mountain Weather

• Mountain Weather by Jeff Renner: This is the book to learn about and understand mountain-Specific Weather Systems and microclimates. It covers the basics of mountain weather, winds, and thunderstorms, and what to do for safety. For US readers, it also explains weather systems from Alaska to the Appalachians via the Pacific Southwest and the Rockies. And while this section is on specific US regions, there are plenty of general weather observations that come in handy. Essential book, especially if you expect to spend days off the grid in remote areas.

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• The Cloud Book by Richard Hamblyn: While it may look like a little coffee-table book, “The Cloud Book” contains photos of different types of clouds, weather phenomena with explanation, and how to “read” them. For instance, you can learn how to read the clouds and understand if a certain type means rain later in the day. So, all the transition signals you may want to spot when the weather is about to change.

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3. Navigation Without Technology

• Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass by Harold Gatty: This is a book about natural navigation techniques. By natural, I mean navigating as if modern navigation devices did not exist. This is how humans navigated the Earth before GPS, compass, and even maps existed. With your senses and elements of the earth. And while these are skills most of us won’t need to rely on nowadays, the knowledge they bring makes it easier to read your environment when navigating the outdoors.

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• Essential Wilderness Navigation by Craig Caudill & Tracy Trimble: the technical map-and-compass counterpart to the book above, this is a great book to read if you want to learn about modern navigation tools, techniques, and how to use them. Plus, an introduction to “natural” navigation and orienteering.

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4. Wilderness Survival & Bushcraft

• Boreal Survival Handbook: Gems from Wilderness Arts and Recreation Magazine by Mors Kochanski: This is a collection of articles that appeared first in a Wilderness magazine. In-depth resources on Wilderness living skills, survival gear and equipment, first aid, and dealing with the real dwellers of the wilderness environment (animals). It’s the no-nonsense, down-to-earth, “smell of woods & fireplace” book in the list.

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• Ray Mears’ Essential Bushcraft by Ray Mears: practical bushcraft and living-off-the-land skills. Personally, I am much closer to Ray Mears’ approach than to Bear Grylls. By that I mean Nature and the wilderness are places to discover and enjoy, not to fight against. So while it is a survival book, the attitude of being in nature to enjoy it with your skills permeates all the pages of the book. Basic gears and techniques, shelters, and living off the land, with drawings and illustrations that make the book even more enjoyable to read.

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5. Seeing the Mountains: Observation & Craft

• Mountain Light by Galen Rowell: In a bit of a shift compared to the books mentioned above, this is another book that may look like another coffee-table book. “Mountain Light” may appear as a simple photography book at first, but what it really does is explain the quality of light in the mountains and what it means for landscape photography, as well as how to enjoy it even if you are not hiking with a camera. It’s also about how elements in the landscape come together as a vision, and as such, it’s a great tool to learn to see instead of looking at a landscape and its elements, and the enjoyment that comes with it for anyone frequenting the outdoors.

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Conclusion

That wraps up my list of recommendations for hikers who want to improve their outdoor skills or to have a better general understanding of that environment, and improve backcountry safety as well as enjoyment.

Are there any books you would add to the list, or books on the same or other topics that you enjoyed reading? If you have any books to recommend, let me know in the comments; I’m always looking for more books to read, too. Happy hiking and happy reading!

Additional Resources

• More Books List: Best Books about Hiking in Iceland or about Hikes in Norway
• Head back to the main page to discover more Hikes and Tips