About

Hikes of the World is an independent guide to the most beautiful hikes in the Alps, across Italy, Switzerland and Germany. We have walked, photographed and written up every hike on this site ourselves, and each one has a page with its difficulty on the CAI scale, the time, the distance, the ascent and a rating out of 10.

There are 53 hikes today: 40 in Italy, 10 in Switzerland and 3 in Germany, for a total of 697 kilometres, 46,180 metres of ascent and 934 photographs. Most of them are around Lake Como, in Valchiavenna and in Valtellina, because we nearly always set out from Lombardy, but they reach as far as Mont Blanc, the Dolomites, the Valais and the Bavarian Alps.

How we rate

The rating is ours and measures how much we liked a hike compared with the others: the views, the variety of the route, the quality of the path and the balance between effort and reward. The site only collects the hikes we consider among the best in the Alps, which is why the ratings run from 7 to 10: three hikes have a 10, Seceda, the Aletsch Glacier and the Zugspitze via ferrata.

How to read the pages

The grade follows the scale of the CAI, the Italian Alpine Club, which we explain on a page of its own. Times and ascents are the ones we measured, at an easy pace and without counting stops; the track of every hike is on Komoot, where you can download it and follow it on your phone.

Contact

To tell us about a mistake, a closed path or a hike we should do, write to giorgio.orsucci@gmail.com, or follow us on Instagram.