Terrifying Wilderness Sports

This rundown is a cliff-hanger, truly. We're discussing Earth's most risky, terrifying and strange natural spots that people have somehow conquered as wilderness sport zones, making Pandora and Mordor look tame.

Mount Huashan -- Shaanxi, China

Seeming like a scene from old ink artwork, Mount Huashan rises about 2,100 metres (6,800 feet) into the mists in China's Shaanxi region. Including impossible sheer drops and crags in the cedar-studded limestone, climbing the mountain would be almost unimaginable with the exception of a terrifying trail system developed in the early 1800s.

Appearing like a scene from a bad dream, a rickety system of boards 0.6 metres (2 feet) wide circle the mountain, permitting climbers to cling to life as they clutch chains unsafely bolted into the soft cretaceous sedimentary rock. Climbers can appreciate a drop of 915 metres (3,000 feet) in places. The numbers of deaths that happen here have not been totalled but rather there have been sufficient to give this unearthly place the title 'Mountain of Death.'

The Prophet -- California, USA

A cliff without kindness, the Prophet can anticipate your destiny with 100 percent exactness in the event that you attempt to climb it without world class skills and gear. Almost perfectly smooth, the composite rock cliff reaches out in a sheer line more than 550 metres (1,800 feet) into the sky from the rocky canyons below.

Climbers ascend the terrifyingly smooth cliff by wedging a climbing cinch inside cracks and afterward climbing a couple feet before holding on firmly and reconnecting it. The stone is so difficult, ordinary pitons can't be utilised. Some even more extreme climbers ascend partway up without the advantage of a rope, giving death a good opportunity. The greatest danger of the rope method is slippage of the clamps because of human mistake in securing them.

Phantom Cave and Peacock Springs -- USA

While the possibility of climbing an enormous cliff and conceivably falling to one's death is adequately terrifying, a surprisingly more terrible attempt is to sink underneath the surface of the Earth. In an undeniably famous hobby, extreme sports experts combine the skills of the scuba diver and spelunker by swimming through pitch dark caves and tunnels hundreds of metres beneath the surface.

The paths have been mapped to lengths of 400 metres (1,300 feet) with further depths still unexplored. The ways narrow to the point where passing through turns into agility test at only 0.6 metres (2 feet) around in a few spaces. Extreme claustrophobia combined with an apprehension of drowning and darkness is totally warranted.