Thread: The Most Dangerous Road in the World is...

... Not the aptly named 'Death Road', surprisingly enough.

And nor is it anywhere near Nakorn Bumfuck.

In fact nowhere in Thailand even makes the list:

Skippers Canyon Road named one of the most dangerous in the world

10:39 AM Friday Jan 22, 2016


South Island
Skippers Canyon Road was ranked in the top three most dangerous in the world. Photo / Dean Purcell

A stretch of road in the South Island is the third most dangerous in the world, according to an international watchdog website.

Website dangerousroads.org -- which searches for the world's most dangerous routes -- has labelled Skippers Canyon Rd, 25 minutes from Queenstown in the Mt Aurum Recreation Reserve, as "unbelievably scary as it's totally narrow and difficult to manoeuvre your car".

The gravel road is predominantly used by tour buses and commercial tourism operators for activities such as jet boating.


The gravel road is predominantly used by tour buses and commercial tourism operators for activities such as jet boating. Photo / Dean Purcell

However, the website warns visitors the route is so dangerous that "your rental car insurance won't be honoured if you drive on it".

It went on to say: "This gravel road, with a length of 16.5 miles (26.5km), carved by hand by miners over 140 years ago, is made from a very narrow cut in the middle of a sheer cliff face."

While Skippers Canyon was ranked in the top three most dangerous, it pales alongside the top two listings.

A highway to hell in Turkey which has taken a toll of numerous lives in recent years is named as number one.

The D915 Bayburt Road is 170km long with 29 dangerous hairpin bends and no railings to prevent cars plunging over the edges. It is located in the foothills of the towering Soganli Mountain and was built by Russian soldiers in 1916.



Parts of the road are closed in winter due to snow, blizzards and ice.

Number two on the list is India's Keylong-Kishtwar Road. Vehicles are constantly twisted along this high mountain trail which has mind-numbing vertical drops.

Mike Noon, Automobile Association general manager of motoring affairs, said it was not a surprise Skippers Canyon Road was on the list of most dangerous roads.

"I have been on it before on a tour van but would not choose to drive it myself," he said.

Some corners had been strengthened underneath by stones to hold the road to the cliff and the route should not be tackled by inexperienced drivers, he cautioned.

"It has spectacular views but it is a pretty hairy stretch, especially on the corners."

OTHER DANGEROUS ROADS LISTED:

4. France-Italy border (in the Alps) - La piste de l'Amitie
5. Bolivia - Death Road
6. Pakistan - Fairy Meadows Road
7. Siberia - BAM road
8. Northern Peru - Ruta 3N
9. Iceland - Route 622

skippers canyon?

pah! a walk in the park, a sunday afternoon drive.


here are a couple i did in the eighties in india.



fotu la pass in kashmir.




khardung la pass in ladakh.

Originally Posted by taxexile

fotu la pass in kashmir.

Pffft, doesn't even make the Top 10. And all those sheep would cushion your fall.

There's a quite fascinating BBC [two] program series that still runs current shows.

The World's Most Dangerous Roads

tsk tsk tsk, thats a womans road, nothing more.

heres another from my himalayan adventure, the buttock clencher, the scrotum shrinker, the defecator, gentlemen, i give you the mighty rohtang pass.

Originally Posted by taxexile

fotu la pass in kashmir.

Cool pic tax. You should put it in the "amazing pics" thread.

Originally Posted by taxexile

skippers canyon?

pah! a walk in the park, a sunday afternoon drive.


here are a couple i did in the eighties in india.



fotu la pass in kashmir.

Is that Betty up the back sniffing goat butt?

Just out of interest and only tangentially related, but has any one experienced an increase in a fear of heights the older you get?

I've done the Bolivian 'death road' in the back of a lorry- hairy stuff.

Yunnan province in China has some pretty hair-raising roads too- made more so by the fact they don't, or didn't, even bother collecting the numerous twisted wrecks lying at the bottom of ravines- maybe they didn't even bother collecting the bodies.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

Just out of interest and only tangentially related, but has any one experienced an increase in a fear of heights the older you get?

By the time I retired at age 56 the thought of hanging from a box at 33 meters was a daunting prospect.

In the younger years loved it.

Originally Posted by taxexile

skippers canyon?

pah! a walk in the park, a sunday afternoon drive.


here are a couple i did in the eighties in india.



fotu la pass in kashmir.




khardung la pass in ladakh.

Was gonna say...BS survey without India ranking high! I spent three years driving the roads around different parts of India and have never seen more dangerous. GREAT photo!

Just out of interest and only tangentially related, but has any one experienced an increase in a fear of heights the older you get?

I do seem to be making more and more use of hand-rails as time goes by.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

Just out of interest and only tangentially related, but has any one experienced an increase in a fear of heights the older you get?

Definitely!

I even did a bungee jump to try and cure myself of it....made it bleeding worse!

Fcuk skippers and fcuk all the other roads.

that what we could say danger with beauty...

I reckon I'd rather do all of those than take a potter down Raqqa High St.

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

Just out of interest and only tangentially related, but has any one experienced an increase in a fear of heights the older you get?

Worried you might fall off your wallet?

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

I reckon I'd rather do all of those than take a potter

You would be so lucky.

the uk has its fair share of spectacular roads.

the hardknott pass in the lake district.






In praise of Britain's two most outrageous roads - Wrynose and Hardknott passes | UK news | The Guardian

Harry Berger can remember the first time he came over Wrynose and Hardknott, two passes into the Eskdale Valley in the Lake District. He’d got as far as Elterwater, close to the start of Wrynose, and had 20 minutes to reach his appointment. It was his first encounter with the physical geography of the passes and like many before him, he found that the contours of a map entirely failed to capture the reality of the roads.

As Berger puts it: "It doesn’t matter how many circles you put on a map, you don’t realise how steep it is."

After negotiating his way up and down the steep ascents and descents and round the hairpin bends to the valley, he had already written it off as a place where he might invest in a pub business: "I did Wrynose, I was following a snail and I overtook him and I came down the [Hardknott] pass and thought forget it, I might as well go home, nobody’s ever going to come here.

I walked into The Boot Inn and it was heaving – there were about 100 people in there in the middle of June on a Tuesday. I turned round and said, 'Where the hell has everybody come from?'"

He had counted only four cars in the car park: "They had come off the train, they had come off the fells, come from everywhere." Not only was it Berger’s first encounter with Wrynose and Hardknott, but it was also the first and last time he overtook someone on the stretch of road.

That was in June 1998 and later that year he, his wife Paddington and their two children moved to The Boot Inn. They now own and run the Woolpack Inn, further along the valley. Berger says he never wants to leave Eskdale but he’s had to adapt to the unique landscape, explaining that you must accept you’re a long way from anywhere else.

Hardknott Pass is known as one of Britain's most challenging roads
Hardknott Pass is known as one of Britain's most challenging roads. Photograph: Phil Rigby/Lake District Icons by Michaela Robinson-Tate and Phil Rigby
Berger’s first experience of driving over Wrynose and Hardknott isn’t unusual.

The twin passes are often crossed on the same journey – from Little Langdale to Eskdale – but Alfred Wainwright warned that drivers who have come over Wrynose from the east must expect "a much stiffer climb" over Hardknott and should approach it with "the utmost concentration". Hardknott is often described as the most difficult road in Britain.

But Berger sees it slightly differently: "The description that we’ve coined for them – Hardknott and Wrynose – is they’re Britain’s or England’s two most outrageous roads. They’re not necessarily the steepest or highest, but they’re the most outrageous."



Cockley Beck farmhouse was built in the late 1860s and stands at the point where the feet of the two passes meet. Today it belongs to the National Trust and is occupied by farmer Kevin Wrathall, his partner Sandra Swainson and their two daughters. The summer brings a constant stream of people to their home. "I prefer the winter to the summer when people come knocking on the door," says Wrathall. "They’ve blown a tyre off or they’re lost. 'Can we borrow your toilet?', 'can we have a drink?'. If it’s an emergency I don’t mind at all but if it’s just changing their tyre they should be able to get on and do it." Modern reliance on mobile phones means that when visitors find themselves without a signal, they’re flummoxed.



The beginning of Hardknott pass - described by Alfred Wainwright as "a heart-stopping series of sharp and narrow hairpin bends."

Originally Posted by Little Chuchok

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

Just out of interest and only tangentially related, but has any one experienced an increase in a fear of heights the older you get?

Definitely!

I even did a bungee jump to try and cure myself of it....made it bleeding worse!

Fcuk skippers and fcuk all the other roads.

Same here. Did one of those "catapult" bungee contraptions where they fire you into the sky. Had recurring nightmares about it many times afterwards..

At age 60 I did my first tandem skydive , when I got to the ground with adrenalin still kicking in I would have gone straight back up and done it again , 3-4 hours later and still to this day I thought "what the fuk were you thinking'.

I'm a rail enthusiast and these don't exactly get the pulses racing

Originally Posted by AntRobertson

Just out of interest and only tangentially related, but has any one experienced an increase in a fear of heights the older you get?

I'll let you know. Apparently I'm jumping out of a plane at 16,000 feet over Nevada in July.

cant do hights anymore, i would even get dizzy on a fat woman,