Robert Stone

Robert Paul Stone (born March 10, 1951) is the author, photographer, and publisher of the trail guide series Day Hike Books. Since 1991, Stone has hiked every trail in the Day Hike Book series, covering thousands of miles of trails throughout the western United States and Hawaii. He has self-published more than 30 hiking guides in the series, many of them in their third, fourth, fifth, or sixth editions. He is a bestselling and multiple award-winning author. Stone summers in the Rocky Mountains of Montana and winters on the California Central Coast.

Stone was born in Los Angeles in 1951. In 1981, he relocated to Red Lodge, Montana, where he started his own real estate business. In 1991, he began to write, publish, market, and distribute local trail guide booklets for Red Lodge and Yellowstone National Park. The pamphlets were so successful that in 1992, he struck a distribution deal for future books with ICS Books, a major publishing house. Subsequently, Stone left the real estate industry and devoted himself full-time to researching, writing, and publishing substantial trail guides. In 1997, ICS was bought out by Globe Pequot Press, who continued to distribute his books. Presently, he self-publishes and is distributed through National Book Network. Stone has written, revised, and published 31 guides for trails in Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, California, and Hawaii, 20 of them currently in print and as eBooks. Stone frequently updates his books, seeking new trails and improvements of previous editions.