The Worst State in the U.S. for Hiking (And Where to Go Instead)

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Planning a fall hike? You’ll have a better time in Alaska than in Kentucky, according to a study from FitRated. FitRated analyzed Yelp reviews for over 16,000 hiking trails across the country to determine which states have the best and worst hikes. 

According to FitRated, the top 10 states for hiking are:

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1. Alaska
2. Arkansas
3. Hawaii
4. Washington, D.C.
5. Iowa
6. Arizona
7. Utah
8. West Virginia
9. Nevada
10. North Carolina

The study also looked at which states had the largest proportion of bad reviews for trails and determined that Kentucky was the worst state for hiking in the U.S., with twenty percent of trails rated as three stars or less.

The results of this survey should be read with some skepticism, as FitRated didn’t sort through the data to make sure trails were actually trails. (For example, FitRated counted Manhattan’s paved and elevated High Line in this study, which seems like a very loose definition of a “hiking trail”.)

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