The 34 Greatest Mountains for Hiking and Trekking

High country: summits, ridgelines, and seas of cloud. These are the mountains of the atlas — some walk-up viewpoints, some serious high-altitude treks. Every entry is honest about difficulty and what to bring.

Annapurna Sanctuary

Gandaki, north-central Nepal

A high glacial amphitheatre ringed by a wall of 7,000- and 8,000-metre Himalayan giants — the beating heart of one of the world's great treks, reached through rhododendron forest and terraced hills.

Mountain South Asia

Denali

Alaska, USA

The highest peak in North America — a 6,190-metre wall of rock and ice towering over the Alaskan wilderness, so tall its base-to-summit rise is among the greatest of any mountain on Earth.

Mountain North America

Grand Teton

Wyoming, USA

A wall of jagged granite peaks erupting straight from a flat valley floor with no foothills — the most abruptly dramatic mountain front in North America, mirrored in glacial lakes.

Mountain North America

Huangshan

Anhui Province, China

The 'Yellow Mountains' — a range of granite peaks and wind-sculpted pines that rise from seas of cloud, the landscape that inspired centuries of Chinese painting and poetry.

Mountain East Asia

Landmannalaugar

Southern Highlands, Iceland

Rhyolite mountains streaked in red, pink, green, and gold above black lava fields and steaming hot springs — the most colourful landscape in Iceland's remote interior highlands.

Mountain Europe

Mont Blanc

French Alps (France–Italy border)

The highest peak in the Alps and western Europe — a great dome of snow and ice above Chamonix, ringed by glaciers, granite spires, and the birthplace of mountaineering.

Mountain Europe

Mount Everest

Mahalangur Himal, Nepal / Tibet (China) border

The highest point on Earth — 8,849 metres above sea level, where the Himalaya's collision-built peaks reach into the 'death zone', drawing climbers and trekkers to the roof of the world.

Mountain South Asia

Mount Pulag

Benguet, Cordillera, Philippines

Luzon's highest peak at 2,922 metres, famous for its dawn 'sea of clouds' — a rolling white ocean seen from a summit of dwarf bamboo grassland high in the Cordillera.

Mountain Southeast Asia

Simien Mountains

Amhara, northern Ethiopia

A dramatic highland escarpment of jagged pinnacles and mile-deep gorges — the 'Roof of Africa' — home to gelada monkeys, walia ibex, and Ethiopian wolves found nowhere else.

Mountain Africa

The Dolomites

South Tyrol / Trentino / Veneto, Northern Italy

A range of pale limestone towers, sheer walls, and jagged spires in the Italian Alps that glow rose and gold at dawn and dusk — the famous 'enrosadira' — above green alpine meadows and turquoise lakes.

Mountain Europe

The Matterhorn

Zermatt, Valais — Swiss/Italian border

The most iconic peak in the Alps — a near-perfect rock pyramid rising in isolation above Zermatt, its four steep faces aligned almost to the compass points, mirrored in still alpine lakes.

Mountain Europe

Torres del Paine

Magallanes, Chilean Patagonia

The signature landscape of Chilean Patagonia — three sheer granite towers rising above windswept steppe, glacial lakes, and hanging glaciers, roamed by guanacos, condors, and pumas.

Mountain Latin America

Valley of Flowers

Uttarakhand, India

A high Himalayan valley that erupts each monsoon into a carpet of alpine wildflowers — hundreds of species blooming beneath snow peaks and glaciers in one of the world's great floral spectacles.

Mountain South Asia

Abisko

Swedish Lapland, above the Arctic Circle, Sweden

A national park in the far north of Swedish Lapland famous for some of the clearest skies on Earth — and, beneath them, one of the world's finest windows onto the northern lights.

Mountain Europe

Aoraki / Mount Cook

Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand

New Zealand's highest peak — a snow-and-ice pyramid rising above glacier-fed turquoise lakes and the country's longest glacier, in the heart of the Southern Alps' greatest concentration of high mountains.

Mountain Oceania

Glacier National Park

Montana, USA

The 'Crown of the Continent' — a wilderness of knife-edged peaks, hanging valleys, turquoise glacial lakes, and alpine meadows in the northern Rockies, crossed by one of the world's great mountain roads.

Mountain North America

Golden Mountains of Altai

Altai Republic, southern Siberia

Where Siberia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and China meet — glaciated peaks above turquoise rivers and steppe, holding the most complete sequence of vegetation zones in the region.

Mountain Central Asia

Gros Morne

Newfoundland, Canada

A dramatic Newfoundland wilderness of landlocked fjords and bare orange mountains — where a slice of the Earth's mantle lies exposed at the surface, helping prove the theory of plate tectonics.

Mountain North America

Horton Plains & World's End

Central Highlands, Sri Lanka

A high, misty plateau of montane grassland and cloud forest in Sri Lanka's highlands, ending abruptly at World's End — a sheer escarpment that drops nearly 900 metres to the plains.

Mountain South Asia

Mount Apo

Davao del Sur / Cotabato, Mindanao, Philippines

The highest mountain in the Philippines at 2,954 metres — a potentially active volcano whose slopes hold sulfur vents, a summit boulder field, crater lakes, and one of the country's most important refuges for the Philippine eagle.

Mountain Southeast Asia

Mount Guiting-Guiting

Sibuyan Island, Romblon, MIMAROPA

A jagged, saw-toothed peak crowning Sibuyan — an island so ecologically intact it's called the 'Galápagos of Asia' — offering one of the most technical and rewarding climbs in the Philippines.

Mountain Southeast Asia

Mount Kazbek & Gergeti

Kazbegi, Greater Caucasus, Georgia

A glacier-clad 5,000-metre volcano in the Greater Caucasus, above which a lone medieval church stands on a green ridge — one of the most iconic mountain scenes in the Caucasus.

Mountain Europe

Mount Kenya

Central Kenya

Africa's second-highest peak — the eroded core of an ancient volcano, crowned with glaciers on the equator and ringed by bizarre giant plants found nowhere else.

Mountain Africa

Mount Kilimanjaro

Northern Tanzania

The highest mountain in Africa and the tallest free-standing mountain on Earth — a snow-capped volcanic giant rising alone from the savanna to 5,895 metres, climbable without technical gear yet crowned with vanishing equatorial glaciers.

Mountain Africa

Mount Kinabalu

Sabah, Borneo, Malaysia

The highest peak in Southeast Asia's island world — a granite giant on Borneo, ringed by one of the richest concentrations of plant life on Earth, from giant Rafflesia flowers to carnivorous pitcher plants.

Mountain Southeast Asia

Mount Roraima

Canaima National Park, Venezuela

A vast, cloud-wrapped table mountain rising in sheer 400-metre cliffs above the jungle — a 'lost world' plateau of black rock, endemic plants, and waterfalls spilling into the void.

Mountain Latin America

Picos de Europa

Asturias, Cantabria & León, northern Spain

A compact range of sheer limestone peaks rising to 2,600 metres barely 20 kilometres from the Atlantic — glacier-carved gorges, karst towers, and Spain's first national park.

Mountain Europe

Rainbow Mountain (Vinicunca)

Cusco Region, Peruvian Andes

A high Andean ridge striped in bands of red, gold, green, and turquoise — mineral-stained sediments laid bare at over 5,000 metres, one of the most colourful mountains on Earth.

Mountain Latin America

Rwenzori Mountains

Uganda–DR Congo border

The 'Mountains of the Moon' — Africa's highest range not born of volcanism, carrying equatorial glaciers above a surreal bog world of giant heathers and lobelias.

Mountain Africa

Table Mountain

Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

The flat-topped sandstone massif that presides over Cape Town — a sheer-sided landmark often draped in a 'tablecloth' of cloud, and the heart of a plant kingdom so rich it is unique on Earth.

Mountain Africa

Tatra Mountains

Poland–Slovakia border

The highest range of the Carpathians — a compact alpine world of granite spires, glacial lakes, and deep valleys, home to bears, wolves, lynx, and the rare Tatra chamois.

Mountain Europe

The Asir Mountains

Asir Province, southwestern Saudi Arabia

A green, misty mountain range in Saudi Arabia's southwest — terraced highlands and juniper forests, cooled by monsoon cloud, that overturn every expectation of the desert kingdom.

Mountain Middle East

The Pitons

Soufrière, Saint Lucia, Caribbean

Two dramatic volcanic spires rising straight from the Caribbean Sea — the twin cones of Gros Piton and Petit Piton, cloaked in rainforest, that have become the emblem of Saint Lucia.

Mountain North America

Yosemite Valley

Sierra Nevada, California, United States

A glacier-carved granite valley of sheer cliffs and thundering waterfalls in California's Sierra Nevada — home to the monoliths of El Capitan and Half Dome, and groves of giant sequoias, the largest trees on Earth.

Mountain North America