Hiking Fatality & Search-and-Rescue Statistics
Real data from the three countries with publicly available, citable search-and-rescue statistics — the US, UK, and Australia — plus the peer-reviewed research on what actually predicts survival.
Last updated: July 2026
United States
The National Park Service publishes its own mortality data: an average of 358 deaths per year across all NPS units (2014–2019), a mortality rate of 0.11 per 100,000 recreational visits in 2019, with motor vehicle crashes, drownings, and falls as the top three unintentional causes, in that order. A separate peer-reviewed 16-year study (1992–2007) found 65,439 search-and-rescue incidents involving 78,488 people, with 2,659 fatalities and 13,212 people rescued alive — hiking was the activity involved in 48% of all incidents requiring assistance.
United Kingdom
Mountain Rescue England and Wales logged 3,784 call-outs and 3,093 deployments in 2024, backed by 167,411 volunteer hours. Slips and trips caused 23% of incidents; a missing-person search was involved in 16%. Only 7% of rescues used helicopter support — most mountain rescue is done on foot by volunteers. Separately, Scottish Mountain Rescue recorded 798 incidents and 1,270 call-outs in 2025, with slips/trips (152 cases) and medical emergencies (63 cases) the leading causes.
UK mountain rescue call-outs
| Organization | Year | Call-outs | Volunteer hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mountain Rescue England and Wales | 2024 | 3,784 | 167,411 |
| Scottish Mountain Rescue | 2025 | 1,270 | 39,229 (callout hours) |
Mountain Rescue England and Wales, 2025 Annual Review. Scottish Mountain Rescue, Facts and Statistics page. Both fetched directly from the organizations' own published reports.
Australia
In Queensland alone, search-and-rescue authorities assisted 1,648 people in 2019, drawing on 8,733 police person-hours plus more than 34,000 volunteer hours. In New South Wales, the Blue Mountains — the state's busiest park at roughly 4 million visitors a year — saw 9 rescues in a single weekend in 2025; the volume of rescue activity there was significant enough that NSW Police created a dedicated search unit ("TREK") in 2008 specifically because of it.
Why rescue speed predicts survival
A peer-reviewed study of nearly 3,300 search-and-rescue cases found that a 51-hour cutoff after someone is reported missing is 98.9–99.3% accurate at predicting whether they'll be found alive. In practical terms: the timing of the initial report matters more than almost any other single factor in the outcome. This is the strongest, most directly relevant finding in the wilderness-safety research reviewed for this page — stronger than any claim about solo vs. group hiking, which no agency has published verified data on.
What we couldn't verify — and won't publish
A global, cross-country fatality comparison table (the kind that circulates widely online, often with a specific number for dozens of countries) does not trace to any single real, citable source — country reporting standards differ too much to compare directly, and several commonly-cited national figures could not be verified against a primary government source in our research. Similarly, no agency publishes a verified breakdown of hiking fatalities by age group with hard rate data, and the widely-repeated claim that solo hikers make up a specific percentage of SAR incidents traces only to unsourced secondary sites. Rather than publish numbers we can't stand behind, we're stating plainly that they don't exist in verifiable form.
Sources
- National Park Service — Mortality Data
- Heggie & Amundson, "Dead Men Walking: Search and Rescue in US National Parks," Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, 2009 (PubMed)
- Mountain Rescue England and Wales — 2025 Annual Review
- Scottish Mountain Rescue — Facts and Statistics
- Australian Journal of Emergency Management, "Understanding lost person behaviour in the Australian wilderness for search and rescue," April 2023
- Adams et al., "Search Is a Time-Critical Event," Wilderness & Environmental Medicine, 2007
Frequently Asked Questions
How many people die hiking in the US each year?
The National Park Service's own mortality data shows an average of 358 deaths per year across all NPS units, 2014–2019 (roughly 7 per week), with a mortality rate of 0.11 per 100,000 recreational visits in 2019. This covers all park-related deaths, not hiking specifically, since NPS doesn't publish a hiking-only breakdown.
What is the leading cause of death in national parks?
According to NPS's own published mortality data (2014–2019), the top three unintentional causes, in order, are motor vehicle crashes, drownings, and falls. Suicides accounted for 93% of intentional deaths in the same period.
How many mountain rescue call-outs happen in the UK each year?
Mountain Rescue England and Wales logged 3,784 call-outs in 2024, backed by 167,411 volunteer hours. Scottish Mountain Rescue separately recorded 1,270 call-outs in 2025. Both organizations publish detailed annual statistics specifically so they can be cited.
Does hiking alone increase the risk of dying?
No government agency has published a verified statistic on what share of hiking incidents involve solo hikers specifically — a commonly-repeated 58% figure traces only to unsourced websites, not a real study. What is well-documented is that the speed of reporting someone missing is the strongest predictor of survival in SAR research, and hiking alone removes the person most likely to report you missing quickly.
What's the single most important factor in surviving a hiking emergency?
Based on peer-reviewed search-and-rescue research, it's how quickly you're reported missing. A 2007 study found a 51-hour cutoff from the missing-person report predicts survival with 98.9–99.3% accuracy — meaning the timing of that initial report matters more than almost any other single variable in the outcome.
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