World's Scariest Hikes

A man-eating trifecta of bears, wolves, and cougars call the woods around this trail home. Yet adventurers come from all over the world to hike the 48-mile route, which was built decades ago as a seaside trail to aid troubled ships that came in from the fickle Pacific waters offshore. Today, hikers spend up to a week attempting to traverse the trail, which is inside the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. Steep slopes, bridges, and wooden ladders up cliffs create an injury-prone path where a twisted ankle can leave you out of luck for days.

Bring your bike helmet and your bear pepper spray! According to the Alaska Fish and Game department, a “few dozen” brown bears roam the area around Rover’s Run, a popular mountain-biking trail in the outskirts of Anchorage. Indeed, a mauling this year and one in 2008—both nonfatal—have prompted local officials to consider shutting down the trail. It is a former game trail converted for biking and skiing use. Alaska Fish and Game says it “has long been a place where bears come down from the mountains and congregate for salmon heading upstream to spawn.”

Often cited as the toughest hiking trail in the East, this east-to-west voyage in the Catskill Mountains of New York traverses the spine of the mountain range. It is just two hours north of Manhattan, but the route is wild; hikers will find rocky and near-vertical sections, waterfalls, and slippery slabs of rock on knee-crushing downhills. Long, precipitous, and difficult, the path travels 25 miles and ascends six major Catskill peaks. And did we mention the bears? Be sure and hang your food supply in a tree at night to avoid black bear harassment.

Cliffs rise 4,000 feet out of the ocean. Falling rocks, copious mud, rain, and flash floods are commonplace. Traversing Kauai’s paradisiacal Na Pali Coast, this dramatic and remote wilderness path is a winding, 11-mile feat complete with waterfalls, lush jungle, slippery descents, and hairpin switchbacks abutting 300-foot drops directly into the ocean surf below.

A trek uphill to see steam vents and rivers of lava on Guatemala’s Pacaya Volcano is a popular tourist hike, since it’s near Guatemala City. But after a shower of volcanic rock killed a reporter this spring, Pacaya National Park closed the trail. Visitors were soon bypassing the usual route, according to an Associated Press article, and heading up the volcano through a private farm in a nearby village.

For various tragic reasons, four hikers died in separate incidents on the Kokoda Track during the 2009 trekking season. The trail runs for 60 extremely remote miles overland through Papua New Guinea’s Owen Stanley Mountain Range, climbing to more than 7,000 feet. A journey on the trail—which was the site of a World War II battle between Japanese and Australian forces—takes 4 to 10 days for most groups. Weather swings between hot days and frigid nights. Malaria and other tropical diseases are constant threats on what is among the world’s most dangerous long-distance backpacking routes.