As selected by Stephen Regenold, the Gear Junkie:
1. Half Dome’s Cable Route, Yosemite National Park
2. West Coast Trail, Vancouver Island, Canada
3. Mount Huashan Trail, China
4. Rover’s Run, Anchorage, Alaska
5. El Caminito del Rey, Spain
6. Devils Path, NY
7. Peekaboo Gulch, Utah
8. Kalalau Trail, Kauai
9. Pacaya Volcano, Guatemala
10. Kokoda Track, Papua New Guinea
Travel & Leisure – World’s Scariest Hikes
(Thanks for the link HikingintheSmokys.com)
besthike.com 
That’s a pathetic list. Does the “Gear Junkie” ever leave his living room?
The scariest thing on the Kalalau Trail would be the nude hippies lounging on the warm and sunny white sand beach. Peekaboo Gulch – all 50 m long – is a popular destination for families, as young children love to play in the fun shapes. Central Park in NYC is far more dangerous.
The scariest hike in the world unquestionably would be anything that crosses the Iran border!
Yep. He’s hard core.
http://gearjunkie.com/north-dakota-adventure-race
Agreed. I’ve done Half Dome and the West Coast Trail and wouldn’t consider them scary in the slightest.
I certainly don’t know what the “world’s scariest hikes” might be (except that the GJ’s list doesn’t come close – zero fatalities on some of those), but here are some suggestions:
1. Hiking in nation’s we are at war with (solitary confinement in Iran is really scary).
2. Anything in Bolivia (I had a gun pointed at my head outside La Paz, and on another occasion, our taxi was attacked by an angry mob; we narrowly escaped with broken windows only).
3. Any hike coinciding with demonstrations (saw 7 people shot to death by the Chinese in Tibet).
4. Any hike starting after Noon in summer in the Rockies (once threw my ice axe as far as I could when it started buzzing while trying to get off the Grand Teton during an electrical storm).
5. Any hike across an active glacier (fell into a crevasse on Rainier while roped to my partner, after soloing the same route one year earlier).
6. Hiking Mt Washington in winter (137 fatalities and counting).
7. Hiking Longs Peak in summer (3 fatalities in last 2 months).
8. Any slot canyon in Utah if you don’t check the weather report first (1997, 11 tourists flushed down Antelope like rats down a toilet).
9. Any trail in the High Sierra before July 15 (slipping while fording unnamed creeks means you could experience being inside a washing machine while falling 1,000′).
10. The coastal walks in Big Sur and Olympic NP if you neglected to check the tide tables.
In short, “falling” is actually quite rare (except on Longs; it’s almost impossible on the Kalalau, West Coast Tr, etc). Being an idiot on the other hand, is fairly common. The real scary trails, that are dangerous even if you are paying attention, are those with adverse local conditions.
… remind me NEVER to hike with you, Buzz.
🙂
AND … you just might get VD from that naked German girl in the waterfall, end of Kalalau.
My only truly SCARY hike: 1997/venezuela
http://www.i-needtoknow.com/rick/photos/1997/venezuela/pages/2543.html
Rover’s Run in Anchorage. Identified as scarey, presumably because Mr Regenold was aware of RRs notoriety in the media. But, as a local, I rate Rover’s Run, which I have been on several times, not any scarier than a dozen other hikes around the east side of Anchorage in July.