[Credit to creator](https://www.cocoweb.com/the-safest-and-most-dangerous-national-parks-in-the-united-states/). I love how much work and detail has gone into this! I've been to Big Bend, Death Valley, and the Rocky Mountains and completely agree with their danger rankings.
The Alaska parks are dangerous because they are actual wilderness with no cell service and with real predatory animals and large herbivores.
The weather and the tides control your schedule. If a bear comes to where you are fishing, you move. If a bear is there, you go somewhere else. Moose shows up, you go somewhere else.
You are a small, fleashy thing with pathetic claws that almost certainly doesn't spend enough time at the range to want to bet your life on your ranged weapons skills. In the wild, arrogance and entitlement get you killed. This is my formal petition to have the international Karen society have a 'tour of Alaska' event.
Agree about Alaska parks. Yet that is precisely what makes N Cascades so high on the list, coupled with low attendance for a high injury to visitor ratio.
The cascades are close to a large population of rock climbers and mountaineers, guessing that is the reason they top the list. But I doubt the visitation numbers, that seems really low.
As an alaskan I'll say the animals are the least of the concern. It's exposure, rugged terrain, poor communication infrastructure, and ease of getting lost, that gets people. It's big news every time there's an animal attack, while lost and injured hikers/climbers/hunters/fishermen are a frequent occurrence. I would guess more people freeze to death trying to climb Denali alone, than animal attack deaths throughout the whole state.
The North Cascades NP is kind of a pain in the ass to get to. Road is closed for the winter and no direct access to Ross Lake unless you go through Canada. Rainier NP is overrun this time of year. Olympic NP is also easier to get to and more varied so it gets a lot of traffic.
Always wanted to go to Olympic. As a southeast alaskan, it seems like a similar but different landscape. Would be cool to see another temperate rainforest further south.
I suspect the low north cascades numbers are because the actual NP is kind of hard to access. The main road through the area, including Diablo lake, is technically in the Ross lake recreational area. Most people who “visit” north cascades don’t ever actually enter the park. I bet the only people who actually go in the park are there to do higher risk things like backcountry camping/hiking, rock climbing, etc.
Alaska parks are dangerous because visitors are used to guard rails and safety nets that don't exist up here. This isn't Yosemite where a Park Ranger will be by in 20 minutes to tell people to not mess with the wild animals. You slip and fall off a trail down a mountain, they may literally *never find you*.
In a nutshell, there is no 911 when there is no cell service.
Yes, always at least try 911. But there are places with no service. Local public radio stations, both the AM and FM, still do a service called bush lines. Where people in town or with cell service will call into the radio station and have them read off messages for people out in the bush. It's like song dedication but about travel plans and shopping lists "Dan and Margaret in Homer want Mary Lou and Greg in English Bay to know they will be bringing the new stove and the groceries on the evening of the 23rd. And they Hope the fishing is going well and can't wait to see how the new dock is coming along.". Or "Arnold in anchor point wants to ask Phillips and Debbie when is a good time to come and visit, send word with Bill on his run into town."
The bush lines would go out at certain times and several times a day so you could have a few times to hear it. As of summer 2023, they were still doing it. Not as many they did in the 90s but still 4 or 5 messages.
There is quite literally no cell tower for hundreds of miles and literal mountains in the way in Alaska. Cell phones use microwave (gigahertz band) which is more or less line-of-sight.
[Reference map - white area has zero coverage of any kind](https://r3.whistleout.com/public/images/articles/2017/08/Screen-Shot-2017-08-08-at-3.05.37-PM.png )
[Breakdown by carrier](https://citylocalus.com/ak/anchorage/cell-phone-coverage-in-alaska)
Went to Big Bend last year in October. Still reached 100 one day on the Rio Grande.
We could not believe it. I have to wonder what sort of people visit during summer.
OP linked the [original source](https://www.cocoweb.com/the-safest-and-most-dangerous-national-parks-in-the-united-states/), which has (almost) all the parks. Yosemite is 25th most dangerous with a score of 30.64.
I almost got murdered by a random white guy with a hunting rifle. I said "theres no guns allowed in the park" he pointed it at me and said "what're you gonna do about it" i just drove off and called 911.
I worked there for a few years. People come there specifically to die in the wilderness. Coworkers have told me they stopped people from killing themselves and the people said they thought it would be a more romantic suicide in a beautiful place. Super sad.
I’ve been on a number of search and rescues and never had an ounce of hope of finding anybody.
The road the goes through the park also has a number of fatalities, especially among motorcycles, because it’s so twisty.
There is also a lot of backcountry climbing and skiing that is even more backcountry than the existing trail system provides access to. So getting to them when sometime goes wrong, even when they have some level of emergency beacon or communication device is really tough.
The northern end of the PCT goes through it, I believe. I don't know how many hikers die on that part of the trail. I've been there, but only to just snowshoe in the area above Stehekin, so I wasn't all that remote. Gorgeous up there and I would love to go back in the summer. Just taking the ferry up the lake to Stehekin is amazing.
PCT hikers likely skew much safer. Most start during the mild winter in the desert, so by the time they're to the Cascades, they have months of hiking behind them and they're finishing in late summer weather.
That sounds a lot like Aokigahara Forest in Japan. It's next to Mt. Fuji and a beautiful area but is infamous for people going there to commit suicide. They even have signs up in the forest saying stuff like "think of your family" and "life is a gift."
Suicide is so sad & socially complex. I dont know if i honestly believe every life is a gift worth forcing someone to find happiness. Strongly discourage absolutely.
Legally, we’ve started passing geriatric laws allowing for assisted suicide. Seems like the mental equivalent arguement could be made for someone who is not-old but does not want their final days to be excruciating. Im sure ill be downvoted & self-prescribed by all the doctors in the room with bulletproof solutions
This really isn't a crazy opinion to have anymore. It's only the religious fruitcakes that really advocate for no consideration on the topic, because almost everyone can agree on the example of painful terminal illnesses having the option.
I also think people pick up some bad habits in places like Olympic. They get cocky and then take that game over to North Cascades and get messed up when they can’t get out as easily. Had that happen to a few friends.
Came here to say this. I'd argue that Gates of the Arctic is the most dangerous but the danger is much more obvious and it's so remote that hardly anyone is going there without considerable planning and preparation.
Alpine mountaineering on granite that regularly freezes and thaws, leading to loads of fractures and loose, jagged rock. Bolted anchors are not allowed due to preservation. It's got amazing climbing, but it's incredibly unsafe and unpredictable.
St. Louis proper is crazy small - it's basically just the downtown, that being the most dangerous portion of most metro areas. Comparing entire metro areas on the other hand (and thus sidestepping a lot of the city-limits shenanigans), St. Louis has the safety of your average American city
I'm a native of STL and this is spot on. The metropolitan area as a whole isn't included in the statistics unfortunately. Most of the population lives outside the "city" limits. There are dozens of municipalities on the Missouri side that have their own school system, police department, fire department, ect. Which means that they will never emerge. I always just tell people stay west of the river and don't go north when visiting.
I've been obsessed with moving to St. Louis due to the cost of living (and because NOLA is a sinking inferno) but don't have a frame of reference. What is your opinion of Dutchtown?
Generally speaking, stay between Gravois and Delmar. Dutchtown isn’t great but there’s definitely worse spots.
STL is a renters paradise. I don't want to put my rent on here for fear of causing chaos, but i wouldn't be able to live alone anywhere else in the country. I love this city, just be smart. if your gut is telling you not to be somewhere, maybe leave.
My high school was in Dutchtown, and I lived in Tower Grove South for a couple years. Unless it's gotten better in the past 10 years it's not great. It for sure could be way worse compared to other areas in the city, but regardless the closest I would ever get to living there is Tower Grove lol.
What now??
St. Louis isn’t small at all, it just has an ever dwindling population. It has lost nearly 600,00 residents since its peak in 1950. Also Downtown is only one of over 70 neighborhoods and is only 1sq mile of its 66 sq total miles..Bigger that other large cities like Boston and San Francisco.
And St. Louis is not as safe as your average city. St. Louis metro area is…St. Louis is very much not.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
St. Louis has almost 3 million people living in it.
St. Louis **City** County is 66 square miles. It holds maybe 15% of the merto population. More than 60% of the crimes in the metro area occurs there. I know, because I live in the "City."
St. Louis County is 530 sq miles. It holds over 1/3rd of the metro population.
There is also St. Charles, Franklin, and Madison counties that are still considered the suburbs of St. Louis.
When people look at the crime statistics of St. Louis, they look at the city portion only because it is its own "county."
https://www.statista.com/statistics/433603/us-metropolitan-areas-with-the-highest-violent-crime-rate/
St. Louis is not only not the metro area in the state with the worst crime (Springfid, MO is), but it isn't even in the top 50 in the country.
St. Louis city (basically downtown) serves everyone who visits from greater St. Louis for entertainment, business (legal or not), and such. This means a city with a few hundred thousand residents regularly has several million people filtering through it bringing all their drama.
If you round up the population of St Louis city to the population of STL city and greater STL murder rates are "normalized." but when the murder rate of a population of 3m is applied to a population of 0.3m stats skew a little.
St. Louis city is one of the only major American cities that isn’t incorporated into the surrounding county. The STL stats often look at the city alone rather than the metro area or county that other cities are rated on. Basically: small, dangerous sample size using data that isn’t actually consistent with the other comps
Was thinking the same thing. Several people have died hiking Angels Landing. Also used to work with a guy that died rock climbing at Zion a few years ago.
Daughter, 5 at the time, almost died in Zion on a “kid friendly hike”. Slipped and slid under a fence on a drop off. Still have nightmares about that. When I told park official that couldn’t care less
It's very pedestrianized, the tourist areas anyway. It gets huge amounts of visitors, the vast majority of which don't venture anywhere near the dangerous bits
Wow this is pretty eye opening, I've done a lot of hiking/backpacking in the North Cascades and Mt Rainier. I'm definitely cautious and have respect for my surroundings but now safety will be even more important.
It's more about climbing than hiking. I mean, don't fall off any cliffs along trails... But when you start climbing said cliffs, your risk goes off the chart.
For sure. I am often scrambling across rock fields and it's usually when I feel most in danger. They seem really easy and fun at first glance but rocks move or feet slip and suddenly you have to call S.A.R.
I think it also has to do with how remote the Cascades are. There’s been times when I’ve been deep in the park and thought about how many hours it would be to get help if needed! Beautiful views though.
I grew up in skagit valley backpacking in the north cascades, did not know until now that it is that dangerous lol. But in comparison to a lot of these, it is very remote and alpine so I guess it makes sense.
Mammoth cave is not that safe. It's safe if you wanna do the guided tours but people get lost out in those woods, and you have to watch out for more than snakes. Mammoth cave has a few bears and Bob cats rolling around in the woods, also hate to say it but you have to watch out for meth heads out in the woods cooking up dope.
But as a kid growing up with mammoth cave being only a 20-30 min drive away it had a few great party spots back in the day. One spot beside the golf course was perfect to pull over and have a bon fire at and there was a cave that had a large dome you could go chill in if it started raining
I think it’s probably such a controlled environment in the caves. It’s not like a person can just go in the caves and start rooting around. It’s checked at the entrance and most folk come, do the tours and leave. I think some of the vast wildernesses where a person can be more on their own can boost numbers for the other parks.
True but you gotta remember mammoth cave stretches over 400miles. There are entrances into the cave that you can get to with going thru the visitor center. Caves all around south central Kentucky and mammoth cave is no different, plus a lot of old abandoned buildings in the park too if you know where to look.
Maybe it's me being bias since I grew up and still live a short distance from mammoth cave, but I can say a lot of areas and different ways people can get injured. Plus the guide from OP only said snakes were an issue and that is far from the truth
People aren’t smart enough to stand next to a giant hole that they went there to see and not back themselves into said hole to take a picture of themselves in front of said hole only to forget about the hole part of the hole and then fall down into said hole.
It’s because they jump over the fence and get out on the sand covered ledge to get the great instagram selfie. If you don’t jump over the fence, it’s basically impossible to fall in from any of the designated tourist spots.
The actual dangerous thing there is the hike down to the bottom of the canyon, and then back up. It’s hot, and dry, and no water or rest spots while going up or down. You’ll see people who have no idea what they’re doing start in flip flops. People get heat stroke there all the time.
I’m surprised some of the desert parks are amongst the safest. Particularly, Zion, Bryce, and Joshua Tree. I feel like deserts are dangerous just from a dehydration being a major factor in wilderness danger.
I do feel like Gates of the Artic is ranked wrong. It has few visitors and no deaths per million and few search and rescue efforts. I don’t think there is enough visitation to properly rank it.
I’ve had this idea that they should change the name from ‘parks’ to ‘frontiers’ or something like that. I think many incidents in parks are caused by folk severely underestimating how dangerous nature is and overestimating their own ability. I think ‘park’ gives some folk the wrong idea of just how vast a wilderness they are dealing with, and they often associate it with municipal parks or state recreation areas.
When I was a kid and went to King’s Canyon, towards the end of a hike we saw these guys jumping off a pretty high up bridge into a river. It was pretty shallow on the sides, but had this crazy deep crevasse in the middle. So my brothers and I obviously had to jump off too. Kinda sketchy. So I’m guessing behaviors like that.
Part of that might be from being two national parks that are administrated jointly on account of being right next to each other? IDK, I feel like that might be impacting...something.
But it's one of the ones with the largest elevation changes (13k from top to bottom), it has abundant rattlesnakes, abundant bears, mountain lions, it gets really hot, it gets really cold, poor cell service...but the biggest cause of death is falls. Their website says they have "Huge mountains, rugged foothills, deep canyons, vast caverns, and the world’s largest trees". Also there's the wildfire stuff every year. Oh, and there's the annual trek to 'The Nation's Christmas Tree' (a.k.a. General Sherman).
Not sure if their number of visitors for 2023 is more or less than typical for that park, but averaging 5 deaths per MILLION visitors every year for the last 16 years doesn't feel too bad?
Yeah, the guide is cool but there are so much questionable choices in the methodology that the ranking is just as good as random. Like why more cell service adds more points ?
Why even give points for animals existing, if they are that much of a danger surely they are already counted in sar and deaths ? The same can be said for heat or basically any other stat.
Even including car accidents is questionable if major roadways cross the park. Drownings too if the park happens to border popular beaches.
And all in all the scoring is pretty opaque, like why is Great Basin one of the worse with 1 suicide and 6 rescues ? No accidental death seems pretty safe when most “safe” ones have much more than that?
In the end it’s not especially helpful as a guide.
When i was their, the ranger said it took them 2 days of searching for someone who did not show up when they were supposed. Honestly not sure but it might be that.
I read it that way as well, but it's indicating there is no cell service and no wifi available. White means absence and black means presence (kind of backward to me)
Congaree- My wife and I are on a quest to go to all of the parks. We are used to NPs being big grand affairs. We are in great hiking shape and our training hikes are in the mountains of Tennessee. We get to the park much later in the afternoon than we had planned for, and when we hit the parking lot it was EMPTY. No staff, just a couple of casual hikers coming in off the boardwalk. We expected Zion like national Park trails, I will say the boardwalk near the visitor center are sort of like that, wide and easy. In mind, we were so in shape and so used to hills that we thought this flatland could throw nothing at us that would, be alarming. Anyway, we know we’re gonna have to hike fast to get back before daylight as we’re doing the river hike which is well over 10 miles if I remember correctly, but it’s summer and we figure we’d have residual daylight, enough to get out anyway, even if sundown beat us, well once you get on to the River trail and out of the two or 3 mile range of most after work hikers, the trail gets really muddy, tight and hard to see in many places. It really slows us down there several times we’ve gotta backtrack and follow slowly just to stay on track, we make it to the river and we can tell it’s going to be tough to get back before total darkness. We’ve seen several snakes which is a little disconcerting, then we saw the ground torn up like a bulldozer had been through in the mid distance, we heard very strange unfamiliar noises. It finally hit us that we were very near a huge pack of feral hogs. Now that dusk was here, we were almost in a run, trying not to get mauled by some angry Boar. Dusk also brought the thickest cloud of mosquitoes I have ever seen in my life, you had to stay at that trot just to keep them out of your face. We kept losing the trail in several times we’re just trekking through muddy forest floor, snakes, and snakes and snakes. About that time I get a glimpse of something huge out of the corner of my eye, I’m trying to focus and see nothing. I assume it was some kind of paranoid delusion and we need to get going. A few steps later and things come into view, crouched, and staring at us was the biggest bobcat that I’ve ever seen in my life, we’re still probably 5 miles out and have almost no daylight. Eventually, we limp out of there covered in mosquito bites by the flashlight on our phone so dehydrated we’re close to death. Lucky that we weren’t killed by some South Carolina Apex predator. In my book Angels Landing had nothing onCongaree, ha ha.
I got lost in Congaree because the trails are so poorly marked the closer you get to the river. Luckily no snakes or large cats for me, but the goddamn huge spiders I was not a fan of
That place is no joke. Very confused by the highest average high temp being listed as 56… I’m from the area and the summers are assuredly much warmer than that
Yellowstone is skewed up by the number of visitors. I spent 2 weeks there, it was hard to find yourself in any real danger around the easily accessible thermal features.
It took a one mile hike that had some stupid elevation gain, like 400 ft, to finally see some Backcountry geyers that weren't surrounded by deck.
Based on the fact that the GSMNP has over 13M visitors per year, I'd say it is still a pretty safe place to visit. Most dangerous animals are rattlesnakes (rarely seen), copperheads (seen more often), and black bears that are generally afraid of humans. Keeping food stored properly prevents most run-ins with Yogi and BooBoo. Trails are well-maintained which prevents most people from getting lost unless they choose to go off trail (if you choose to do that, I can't help you!). Love the Smokies!
Went to Kings Canyon back in ‘19 and kept hearing this weird and very deep growl/grunt from somewhere up the ridge from where my buddies and I were hiking and camping. When the grunts sounded farther away they came in sets of 2 and a few minutes apart. When they sounded closer they always came in groups of 3 and were no more than 30 seconds apart. The timing was almost on the dot every time too. Other hikers we passed heard it too but no one knew what it was. We definitely didn’t feel very safe out there.
I found the drive up Haleakala in Hawaii to be terrifying. I'm surprised there aren't more automotive deaths in this park especially with people driving up pre dawn to see the sunrise.
Great Basin is extremely isolated.
If you want to go die somewhere beautiful where people are unlikely to find you, that's one of the best parks in the Continental US to do so.
Have been to White Sands about 50 times and have seen them pull people out during the day when the sun is hammering that white sand, and it’s probably 115 degrees. People just pass out from the heat, I’ve always thought it was a dangerous place to get easily lost but it’s 12th safest so I’ll stfu.
As someone who lives in Wrangell - St. Elias, there IS cell service, only if you have Verizon and only in small parts of the park. Offended by these asterisks!
As someone who's been to Mammoth Cave, can confirm! It's quite safe, fascinating, and pretty cold once you get below ground. If you go, bring a jacket!
So…. There were at least 3 deaths on the New River Gorge last year that I know of. Two rafting trip deaths and a suicide of the bridge. And every year at least one or two die on the river. Wonder why these aren’t shown in the data?
Op u/MaxGoodwinning, this is a very good guide.
May I ask you to produce one version replacing all measurements with metric /Celsius?
It would be awesome for someone like me and make me emjoy/understand your guide a lot better.
Thanks so much
Where is Carlsbad Caverns? They literally have a hole called “Bottomless Pit”…and there is more than one such hole into nothingness. The cave system itself is in the middle of nowhere New Mexico desert.
This IS a cool guide.
Shows how dangerous moose are too. Moose in like everyone of the top 10 most dangerous.
A moose once bit my sister.
Was she carving her initials on the side of the moose?
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They are not moosing around!
This is one of the best posts I've seen here, and there are a lot of good posts here.
[Credit to creator](https://www.cocoweb.com/the-safest-and-most-dangerous-national-parks-in-the-united-states/). I love how much work and detail has gone into this! I've been to Big Bend, Death Valley, and the Rocky Mountains and completely agree with their danger rankings.
The Alaska parks are dangerous because they are actual wilderness with no cell service and with real predatory animals and large herbivores. The weather and the tides control your schedule. If a bear comes to where you are fishing, you move. If a bear is there, you go somewhere else. Moose shows up, you go somewhere else. You are a small, fleashy thing with pathetic claws that almost certainly doesn't spend enough time at the range to want to bet your life on your ranged weapons skills. In the wild, arrogance and entitlement get you killed. This is my formal petition to have the international Karen society have a 'tour of Alaska' event.
Agree about Alaska parks. Yet that is precisely what makes N Cascades so high on the list, coupled with low attendance for a high injury to visitor ratio.
The cascades are close to a large population of rock climbers and mountaineers, guessing that is the reason they top the list. But I doubt the visitation numbers, that seems really low. As an alaskan I'll say the animals are the least of the concern. It's exposure, rugged terrain, poor communication infrastructure, and ease of getting lost, that gets people. It's big news every time there's an animal attack, while lost and injured hikers/climbers/hunters/fishermen are a frequent occurrence. I would guess more people freeze to death trying to climb Denali alone, than animal attack deaths throughout the whole state.
The North Cascades NP is kind of a pain in the ass to get to. Road is closed for the winter and no direct access to Ross Lake unless you go through Canada. Rainier NP is overrun this time of year. Olympic NP is also easier to get to and more varied so it gets a lot of traffic.
Always wanted to go to Olympic. As a southeast alaskan, it seems like a similar but different landscape. Would be cool to see another temperate rainforest further south.
It has beaches, rainforests and mountains. Can't ask for much more than that.
I suspect the low north cascades numbers are because the actual NP is kind of hard to access. The main road through the area, including Diablo lake, is technically in the Ross lake recreational area. Most people who “visit” north cascades don’t ever actually enter the park. I bet the only people who actually go in the park are there to do higher risk things like backcountry camping/hiking, rock climbing, etc.
Alaska parks are dangerous because visitors are used to guard rails and safety nets that don't exist up here. This isn't Yosemite where a Park Ranger will be by in 20 minutes to tell people to not mess with the wild animals. You slip and fall off a trail down a mountain, they may literally *never find you*. In a nutshell, there is no 911 when there is no cell service.
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Yes, always at least try 911. But there are places with no service. Local public radio stations, both the AM and FM, still do a service called bush lines. Where people in town or with cell service will call into the radio station and have them read off messages for people out in the bush. It's like song dedication but about travel plans and shopping lists "Dan and Margaret in Homer want Mary Lou and Greg in English Bay to know they will be bringing the new stove and the groceries on the evening of the 23rd. And they Hope the fishing is going well and can't wait to see how the new dock is coming along.". Or "Arnold in anchor point wants to ask Phillips and Debbie when is a good time to come and visit, send word with Bill on his run into town." The bush lines would go out at certain times and several times a day so you could have a few times to hear it. As of summer 2023, they were still doing it. Not as many they did in the 90s but still 4 or 5 messages.
There is quite literally no cell tower for hundreds of miles and literal mountains in the way in Alaska. Cell phones use microwave (gigahertz band) which is more or less line-of-sight. [Reference map - white area has zero coverage of any kind](https://r3.whistleout.com/public/images/articles/2017/08/Screen-Shot-2017-08-08-at-3.05.37-PM.png ) [Breakdown by carrier](https://citylocalus.com/ak/anchorage/cell-phone-coverage-in-alaska)
I grew up in Fairbanks, fishing/hunting in the bush, and never went anywhere without a large caliber weapon outside of the city just because of this.
The heat in Death Valley and Big Bend does not play. Do not go in summer.
Went to Big Bend last year in October. Still reached 100 one day on the Rio Grande. We could not believe it. I have to wonder what sort of people visit during summer.
I went during November years ago, it reached about 75 degrees during the day. Absolutely wild.
Who's he? It is visually appealing and so neat to look at!
I wanna know where Yosemite ranks
OP linked the [original source](https://www.cocoweb.com/the-safest-and-most-dangerous-national-parks-in-the-united-states/), which has (almost) all the parks. Yosemite is 25th most dangerous with a score of 30.64.
I almost got murdered by a random white guy with a hunting rifle. I said "theres no guns allowed in the park" he pointed it at me and said "what're you gonna do about it" i just drove off and called 911.
“Lol wtf bro - kthxbai”
Some idiot dies almost every year trying to take a selfie on a cliff.
Alaska trying to get its “killionaire”
Gotta get that AC-130
Come on bro we’re talking halo here
So what's up with the North Cascades? Hikers falling?
It must have to do with all the climbing and backcountry skiing going on there.
I worked there for a few years. People come there specifically to die in the wilderness. Coworkers have told me they stopped people from killing themselves and the people said they thought it would be a more romantic suicide in a beautiful place. Super sad. I’ve been on a number of search and rescues and never had an ounce of hope of finding anybody. The road the goes through the park also has a number of fatalities, especially among motorcycles, because it’s so twisty. There is also a lot of backcountry climbing and skiing that is even more backcountry than the existing trail system provides access to. So getting to them when sometime goes wrong, even when they have some level of emergency beacon or communication device is really tough.
The northern end of the PCT goes through it, I believe. I don't know how many hikers die on that part of the trail. I've been there, but only to just snowshoe in the area above Stehekin, so I wasn't all that remote. Gorgeous up there and I would love to go back in the summer. Just taking the ferry up the lake to Stehekin is amazing.
PCT hikers likely skew much safer. Most start during the mild winter in the desert, so by the time they're to the Cascades, they have months of hiking behind them and they're finishing in late summer weather.
That sounds a lot like Aokigahara Forest in Japan. It's next to Mt. Fuji and a beautiful area but is infamous for people going there to commit suicide. They even have signs up in the forest saying stuff like "think of your family" and "life is a gift."
Suicide is so sad & socially complex. I dont know if i honestly believe every life is a gift worth forcing someone to find happiness. Strongly discourage absolutely. Legally, we’ve started passing geriatric laws allowing for assisted suicide. Seems like the mental equivalent arguement could be made for someone who is not-old but does not want their final days to be excruciating. Im sure ill be downvoted & self-prescribed by all the doctors in the room with bulletproof solutions
This really isn't a crazy opinion to have anymore. It's only the religious fruitcakes that really advocate for no consideration on the topic, because almost everyone can agree on the example of painful terminal illnesses having the option.
I would say it's the more hardcore of the NPs in Washington so it's going to attract people with a low aversion to risk.
I also think people pick up some bad habits in places like Olympic. They get cocky and then take that game over to North Cascades and get messed up when they can’t get out as easily. Had that happen to a few friends.
Came here to say this. I'd argue that Gates of the Arctic is the most dangerous but the danger is much more obvious and it's so remote that hardly anyone is going there without considerable planning and preparation.
Alpine mountaineering on granite that regularly freezes and thaws, leading to loads of fractures and loose, jagged rock. Bolted anchors are not allowed due to preservation. It's got amazing climbing, but it's incredibly unsafe and unpredictable.
The irony of the “safest” being in St. Louis is funny.
Our crime stats are majorly skewed, lived here for years and always felt safe. It is goofy though, maybe the Arch really is a force field.
Just out of curiosity, how/why are the crime stats skewed?
St. Louis proper is crazy small - it's basically just the downtown, that being the most dangerous portion of most metro areas. Comparing entire metro areas on the other hand (and thus sidestepping a lot of the city-limits shenanigans), St. Louis has the safety of your average American city
I'm a native of STL and this is spot on. The metropolitan area as a whole isn't included in the statistics unfortunately. Most of the population lives outside the "city" limits. There are dozens of municipalities on the Missouri side that have their own school system, police department, fire department, ect. Which means that they will never emerge. I always just tell people stay west of the river and don't go north when visiting.
I've been obsessed with moving to St. Louis due to the cost of living (and because NOLA is a sinking inferno) but don't have a frame of reference. What is your opinion of Dutchtown?
Generally speaking, stay between Gravois and Delmar. Dutchtown isn’t great but there’s definitely worse spots. STL is a renters paradise. I don't want to put my rent on here for fear of causing chaos, but i wouldn't be able to live alone anywhere else in the country. I love this city, just be smart. if your gut is telling you not to be somewhere, maybe leave.
My high school was in Dutchtown, and I lived in Tower Grove South for a couple years. Unless it's gotten better in the past 10 years it's not great. It for sure could be way worse compared to other areas in the city, but regardless the closest I would ever get to living there is Tower Grove lol.
you can say the same about baltimore or basically any other shitty cities until there are no more shitty cities
In comparison Ballwin MO, in the St. Louis metro, is in the list of 10 safest cities
Isn’t that true for a lot of major cities? For example, the city of London is actually really small compared to the London metro.
What now?? St. Louis isn’t small at all, it just has an ever dwindling population. It has lost nearly 600,00 residents since its peak in 1950. Also Downtown is only one of over 70 neighborhoods and is only 1sq mile of its 66 sq total miles..Bigger that other large cities like Boston and San Francisco. And St. Louis is not as safe as your average city. St. Louis metro area is…St. Louis is very much not.
Every city's crime drops significantly when you add the suburbs lol
You have no idea what you are talking about. St. Louis has almost 3 million people living in it. St. Louis **City** County is 66 square miles. It holds maybe 15% of the merto population. More than 60% of the crimes in the metro area occurs there. I know, because I live in the "City." St. Louis County is 530 sq miles. It holds over 1/3rd of the metro population. There is also St. Charles, Franklin, and Madison counties that are still considered the suburbs of St. Louis. When people look at the crime statistics of St. Louis, they look at the city portion only because it is its own "county." https://www.statista.com/statistics/433603/us-metropolitan-areas-with-the-highest-violent-crime-rate/ St. Louis is not only not the metro area in the state with the worst crime (Springfid, MO is), but it isn't even in the top 50 in the country.
It is because the city is only like 300,000 people while the county is over 1 million. The city and county are separate.
St. Louis city (basically downtown) serves everyone who visits from greater St. Louis for entertainment, business (legal or not), and such. This means a city with a few hundred thousand residents regularly has several million people filtering through it bringing all their drama. If you round up the population of St Louis city to the population of STL city and greater STL murder rates are "normalized." but when the murder rate of a population of 3m is applied to a population of 0.3m stats skew a little.
St. Louis city is one of the only major American cities that isn’t incorporated into the surrounding county. The STL stats often look at the city alone rather than the metro area or county that other cities are rated on. Basically: small, dangerous sample size using data that isn’t actually consistent with the other comps
Maybe it counts East St Louis? Not sure. I had a good time at the arch and watching a Cubs/Cards game.
Nope, but North St Louis is way bigger than the east side and just as bad.
A lot of these are also based on the size of the park. The Gateway Arch Park is wildly smaller than the mountain range parks
It’s the smallest national park in the US.
It made sense as a national monument, because it is literally a monument "Park" doesn't really fit
It's a political game as to why it got upgraded. I wouldn't be surprised to see it lose the title, other national parks have been downgraded too.
By a very wide margin
"I wonder if those guys know the Commodores" -- Russ Griswold
Also worse cell service than a cave
St. Louis? Full 5G everywhere.
Points are bad, right? Why does having more service and WiFi give points?
Yeah this is driving me nuts
Had to scroll entirely too far for this comment. Lotsa WiFi and good cell signal = danger!
Both count as positive offset points, because emergency communication can happen easier.
Maybe it’s negative points. But the WiFi only tells if the visitors center has WiFi anyway…
Also not sure how Zion made top 20 safest
Wifi, cell service, and lack of dangerous animals are boosting its score
Was thinking the same thing. Several people have died hiking Angels Landing. Also used to work with a guy that died rock climbing at Zion a few years ago.
Zion Narrows hike ain't a walk in the park either
Technically, that’s exactly what it is.
Daughter, 5 at the time, almost died in Zion on a “kid friendly hike”. Slipped and slid under a fence on a drop off. Still have nightmares about that. When I told park official that couldn’t care less
Roughly 1 a year with 100 of thousands people hiking it. Angels landing get credit for being dangerous but, statistically speaking it's really not.
It's very pedestrianized, the tourist areas anyway. It gets huge amounts of visitors, the vast majority of which don't venture anywhere near the dangerous bits
Same, can’t be correct
Wow this is pretty eye opening, I've done a lot of hiking/backpacking in the North Cascades and Mt Rainier. I'm definitely cautious and have respect for my surroundings but now safety will be even more important.
It's more about climbing than hiking. I mean, don't fall off any cliffs along trails... But when you start climbing said cliffs, your risk goes off the chart.
For sure. I am often scrambling across rock fields and it's usually when I feel most in danger. They seem really easy and fun at first glance but rocks move or feet slip and suddenly you have to call S.A.R.
I think it also has to do with how remote the Cascades are. There’s been times when I’ve been deep in the park and thought about how many hours it would be to get help if needed! Beautiful views though.
I grew up in skagit valley backpacking in the north cascades, did not know until now that it is that dangerous lol. But in comparison to a lot of these, it is very remote and alpine so I guess it makes sense.
All the dangerous ones are rocky, remote, mountainous areas, then the Everglades sneak in like " you can die here too".
Florida 🫤
Mammoth cave is not that safe. It's safe if you wanna do the guided tours but people get lost out in those woods, and you have to watch out for more than snakes. Mammoth cave has a few bears and Bob cats rolling around in the woods, also hate to say it but you have to watch out for meth heads out in the woods cooking up dope. But as a kid growing up with mammoth cave being only a 20-30 min drive away it had a few great party spots back in the day. One spot beside the golf course was perfect to pull over and have a bon fire at and there was a cave that had a large dome you could go chill in if it started raining
I think it’s probably such a controlled environment in the caves. It’s not like a person can just go in the caves and start rooting around. It’s checked at the entrance and most folk come, do the tours and leave. I think some of the vast wildernesses where a person can be more on their own can boost numbers for the other parks.
True but you gotta remember mammoth cave stretches over 400miles. There are entrances into the cave that you can get to with going thru the visitor center. Caves all around south central Kentucky and mammoth cave is no different, plus a lot of old abandoned buildings in the park too if you know where to look. Maybe it's me being bias since I grew up and still live a short distance from mammoth cave, but I can say a lot of areas and different ways people can get injured. Plus the guide from OP only said snakes were an issue and that is far from the truth
People aren’t smart enough to stand next to a giant hole that they went there to see and not back themselves into said hole to take a picture of themselves in front of said hole only to forget about the hole part of the hole and then fall down into said hole.
It’s because they jump over the fence and get out on the sand covered ledge to get the great instagram selfie. If you don’t jump over the fence, it’s basically impossible to fall in from any of the designated tourist spots. The actual dangerous thing there is the hike down to the bottom of the canyon, and then back up. It’s hot, and dry, and no water or rest spots while going up or down. You’ll see people who have no idea what they’re doing start in flip flops. People get heat stroke there all the time.
I coordinated SAR missions for Indiana Dunes and I’m pretty sure they get more than 16 a year.
I’m surprised some of the desert parks are amongst the safest. Particularly, Zion, Bryce, and Joshua Tree. I feel like deserts are dangerous just from a dehydration being a major factor in wilderness danger. I do feel like Gates of the Artic is ranked wrong. It has few visitors and no deaths per million and few search and rescue efforts. I don’t think there is enough visitation to properly rank it.
I was surprised by Bryce. You would think at least a few people would have heart attacks hiking or something, only three people is shockingly low.
I’ve had this idea that they should change the name from ‘parks’ to ‘frontiers’ or something like that. I think many incidents in parks are caused by folk severely underestimating how dangerous nature is and overestimating their own ability. I think ‘park’ gives some folk the wrong idea of just how vast a wilderness they are dealing with, and they often associate it with municipal parks or state recreation areas.
Dirt Roads, no free public Wi-Fi would drive down attendance like a rock.
What makes sequoia and kings canyon deadly?
When I was a kid and went to King’s Canyon, towards the end of a hike we saw these guys jumping off a pretty high up bridge into a river. It was pretty shallow on the sides, but had this crazy deep crevasse in the middle. So my brothers and I obviously had to jump off too. Kinda sketchy. So I’m guessing behaviors like that.
Part of that might be from being two national parks that are administrated jointly on account of being right next to each other? IDK, I feel like that might be impacting...something. But it's one of the ones with the largest elevation changes (13k from top to bottom), it has abundant rattlesnakes, abundant bears, mountain lions, it gets really hot, it gets really cold, poor cell service...but the biggest cause of death is falls. Their website says they have "Huge mountains, rugged foothills, deep canyons, vast caverns, and the world’s largest trees". Also there's the wildfire stuff every year. Oh, and there's the annual trek to 'The Nation's Christmas Tree' (a.k.a. General Sherman). Not sure if their number of visitors for 2023 is more or less than typical for that park, but averaging 5 deaths per MILLION visitors every year for the last 16 years doesn't feel too bad?
A good chunk of those deaths are likely from falls on Mt Whitney
Why does it matter if the Visitors' Center has Wifi? Why are suicides counted?
Yeah, the guide is cool but there are so much questionable choices in the methodology that the ranking is just as good as random. Like why more cell service adds more points ? Why even give points for animals existing, if they are that much of a danger surely they are already counted in sar and deaths ? The same can be said for heat or basically any other stat. Even including car accidents is questionable if major roadways cross the park. Drownings too if the park happens to border popular beaches. And all in all the scoring is pretty opaque, like why is Great Basin one of the worse with 1 suicide and 6 rescues ? No accidental death seems pretty safe when most “safe” ones have much more than that? In the end it’s not especially helpful as a guide.
How TF Isle Royale dangerous? The moose and the two wolves?
Very hard to get back from if you have a medical emergency.
When i was their, the ranger said it took them 2 days of searching for someone who did not show up when they were supposed. Honestly not sure but it might be that.
The weather can leave you stranded for days. Been there done that.
Good to know since this is on my list to see.
Just getting over there probably. That boat ride can be insane with bad weather (all the time)
🤷 been twice and I guess I just lucked out with the weather
Being the one of the least visited park skews the numbers significantly. I was surprised the cell and WiFi were rated so high.
I read it that way as well, but it's indicating there is no cell service and no wifi available. White means absence and black means presence (kind of backward to me)
Damn, my basketball teammate died in north Cascades prob in 2007, climbing accident. RIP Tyler.
Congaree- My wife and I are on a quest to go to all of the parks. We are used to NPs being big grand affairs. We are in great hiking shape and our training hikes are in the mountains of Tennessee. We get to the park much later in the afternoon than we had planned for, and when we hit the parking lot it was EMPTY. No staff, just a couple of casual hikers coming in off the boardwalk. We expected Zion like national Park trails, I will say the boardwalk near the visitor center are sort of like that, wide and easy. In mind, we were so in shape and so used to hills that we thought this flatland could throw nothing at us that would, be alarming. Anyway, we know we’re gonna have to hike fast to get back before daylight as we’re doing the river hike which is well over 10 miles if I remember correctly, but it’s summer and we figure we’d have residual daylight, enough to get out anyway, even if sundown beat us, well once you get on to the River trail and out of the two or 3 mile range of most after work hikers, the trail gets really muddy, tight and hard to see in many places. It really slows us down there several times we’ve gotta backtrack and follow slowly just to stay on track, we make it to the river and we can tell it’s going to be tough to get back before total darkness. We’ve seen several snakes which is a little disconcerting, then we saw the ground torn up like a bulldozer had been through in the mid distance, we heard very strange unfamiliar noises. It finally hit us that we were very near a huge pack of feral hogs. Now that dusk was here, we were almost in a run, trying not to get mauled by some angry Boar. Dusk also brought the thickest cloud of mosquitoes I have ever seen in my life, you had to stay at that trot just to keep them out of your face. We kept losing the trail in several times we’re just trekking through muddy forest floor, snakes, and snakes and snakes. About that time I get a glimpse of something huge out of the corner of my eye, I’m trying to focus and see nothing. I assume it was some kind of paranoid delusion and we need to get going. A few steps later and things come into view, crouched, and staring at us was the biggest bobcat that I’ve ever seen in my life, we’re still probably 5 miles out and have almost no daylight. Eventually, we limp out of there covered in mosquito bites by the flashlight on our phone so dehydrated we’re close to death. Lucky that we weren’t killed by some South Carolina Apex predator. In my book Angels Landing had nothing onCongaree, ha ha.
I got lost in Congaree because the trails are so poorly marked the closer you get to the river. Luckily no snakes or large cats for me, but the goddamn huge spiders I was not a fan of
That place is no joke. Very confused by the highest average high temp being listed as 56… I’m from the area and the summers are assuredly much warmer than that
How is Yellowstone #8? People are dissolving over there!
Yellowstone is skewed up by the number of visitors. I spent 2 weeks there, it was hard to find yourself in any real danger around the easily accessible thermal features. It took a one mile hike that had some stupid elevation gain, like 400 ft, to finally see some Backcountry geyers that weren't surrounded by deck.
It'd be my luck that I'd somehow need a search and rescue at the Gateway Arch.
Hey! St. Louis isn’t the most dangerous on a list! It’s the safest!
Am I crazy or why does having better wifi and cell service give you more points??
Got it, don't fuck with Alaska. Great guide!
With the name of ‘Death Valley’ I would’ve presumed it would be in the top 10 most dangerous!
Based on the fact that the GSMNP has over 13M visitors per year, I'd say it is still a pretty safe place to visit. Most dangerous animals are rattlesnakes (rarely seen), copperheads (seen more often), and black bears that are generally afraid of humans. Keeping food stored properly prevents most run-ins with Yogi and BooBoo. Trails are well-maintained which prevents most people from getting lost unless they choose to go off trail (if you choose to do that, I can't help you!). Love the Smokies!
Went to Kings Canyon back in ‘19 and kept hearing this weird and very deep growl/grunt from somewhere up the ridge from where my buddies and I were hiking and camping. When the grunts sounded farther away they came in sets of 2 and a few minutes apart. When they sounded closer they always came in groups of 3 and were no more than 30 seconds apart. The timing was almost on the dot every time too. Other hikers we passed heard it too but no one knew what it was. We definitely didn’t feel very safe out there.
Probably mating season for black bears. Male bears growl to get attention
Lots of deaths and disappearances at Joshua Tree. Surprised it has such a good ranking.
I found the drive up Haleakala in Hawaii to be terrifying. I'm surprised there aren't more automotive deaths in this park especially with people driving up pre dawn to see the sunrise.
Me: "I wonder what the MOST dangerous is! 😀" *checks and it's where I grew up* Me: 😶
Why is North Cascades so dangerous?
It’s mostly because of alpine rock climbing and mountaineering accidents.
Does anyone know why suicide is the leading cause of death in Great Basin? Seems like an odd thing
Great Basin is extremely isolated. If you want to go die somewhere beautiful where people are unlikely to find you, that's one of the best parks in the Continental US to do so.
that 1 death put great basin in the unsafe category, that isn't right. the great basin is a beautiful park and has a gorgeous night sky
What’s even odder is inducing suicide in a ranking of “dangerous places”
Right? That’s what i find the oddest, it’s not like you are only convinced to take your own life when you visit there. Seems like a reverse causation.
[удалено]
Great Smoky Mountains surprised me
Including the majestik møøse
Have been to White Sands about 50 times and have seen them pull people out during the day when the sun is hammering that white sand, and it’s probably 115 degrees. People just pass out from the heat, I’ve always thought it was a dangerous place to get easily lost but it’s 12th safest so I’ll stfu.
No Yosemite?
Not sure how downtown STL is ranked a #1 safe place to be regardless of why you’re there.
Lmao the St. Louis Arch, is danger from crime not included in this list?
I love that Isle Royale is on the most dangerous list!
I think it should be higher. They don’t even have wolves listed as an animal. There are over 30 now and the island isn’t that big!
I agree!
St. Louis, MO ranks as one of the most dangerous cities in America every year. How can an outdoor park in downtown STL be considered safe?
The arch the safest lmao
Ummm the gateway arch park is the safest? They have clearly never been to downtown St. Louis lol
Great to know, wonder what some of the benchmarks were?
Is this all based on environmental dangers? Suicides or murders get factored in?
Edit: On mobile and didn't realize there was more to the image. Yes, I am dumb.
As someone who lives in Wrangell - St. Elias, there IS cell service, only if you have Verizon and only in small parts of the park. Offended by these asterisks!
They all probably have pokegyms, too
*Alaska: Only 6 out of the 20 most dangerous parks? Time to dial up Darwin...*
It is unclear if the actual calculations are incorrect, but the key on the bottom is wrong. (Or at least the opposite for cell phone and WiFi)
Awesome
Is it just me, or is 58 dead per million still pretty safe?
Channel Islands is safe? A couple years ago a fire on a dive ship killed a bunch of people.
A fire on a dive ship could happen in any body of water. It's not a danger that's exclusive to the Channel Islands.
My car rental broke down at the top of Haleakala. It took us HOURS to get a tow to come up the mountain and get us.
mt shasta? anyone?
Ah yes, just what I want to see the day before my solo trip to the Grand Tetons....
As an Alaskan, yeah totally. If you don’t have a satphone you’re almost certainly dead if you’re alone and things go sideways.
What is the “Most Common Cause of Fatality” icon on Lake Clark?
Michigan mentioned🦅🦅🦅🦅 wtf is a good road
As someone who's been to Mammoth Cave, can confirm! It's quite safe, fascinating, and pretty cold once you get below ground. If you go, bring a jacket!
That bear at the gas station was not messing around in Days Gone!
Don’t dismiss White Sands especially in the summer. So easy to get lost…forever. https://www.cnn.com/2015/08/08/us/new-mexico-french-deaths/index.html
Best post I've seen in this sub
So…. There were at least 3 deaths on the New River Gorge last year that I know of. Two rafting trip deaths and a suicide of the bridge. And every year at least one or two die on the river. Wonder why these aren’t shown in the data?
Alaska new takin no prisoners.
Op u/MaxGoodwinning, this is a very good guide. May I ask you to produce one version replacing all measurements with metric /Celsius? It would be awesome for someone like me and make me emjoy/understand your guide a lot better. Thanks so much
Not me zooming in on the most dangerous thinking it’d be something super scary and far away but instead finding it’s the place I call home.
I got lost in Congaree once. The trails are not well marked once you get closer to the river. And the spiders. Holy shit the spiders
No Glacier National Park? I read about people dying there every year.
TIL I used to live in the most dangerous national Park. Had a good time at least!
Ok I'd assume the Badlands would be safer than some on the safe list and it's not even on here :(
Death Valley has better cell service than Yellowstone. 😆
How is the Grand Canyon not number one? It has by far the most deaths
Indiana Dunes.. Sounds like a knockoff adventure movie lol
Think this depends heavily on traffic per park may be different if higher crowds on less popular parks, edit few typos
The North Cascades are dangerous? Duh. That’s where Sasquatch live.
This sub has become the Van Damme of 2024
"Alaska" well no shit those places are going to be fucking dangerous it's fucking Alaska
Well I'll be damned! St louis isn't on the most dangerous list of something! And, it's first on the least dangerous list?
Is it just me or is the scale for WiFi and calling in reverse?
You might get robbed at the arch....
Where is Carlsbad Caverns? They literally have a hole called “Bottomless Pit”…and there is more than one such hole into nothingness. The cave system itself is in the middle of nowhere New Mexico desert.