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You forgot about Slovenian Alps.

For lack of a better term, I believe that mountaineering is much stronger than hiking in Europe. You know, walking or climbing on marked trails to reach the peak. For example, in Croatia (not even mentioned in this video), there are a few long distance hiking trails, some shorter trails, but there are marked trails to virtually every peak in the country. And let me tell you, there are many.

If this video is just for Americans it was well done. If it is also for Europeans, the metric system should be used as well.

The U.S. idea of private property is sad, because it grew in a time when if someone wasn't letting you onto their land, you could just go find some other land they didn't own to do what you wanted to do. Now, thanks to Department of the Interior bureaucracy, that is no longer the case.

Walking is often not considered an activity in itself in Europe. My grandparents' local supermarket has regular customers who walk 2 miles to get there. Most, however, use a car, but many are elderly & used to walk years ago back when they were younger.

As a european, I hiked in Kenya. Was a damn weird feeling to know that leopards are all over the place.

Don’t try this in UK. 😂😂😂

I live in the US and there’s plenty of free camping and trails. You just need to know where to go. The popular tourist places yeah it’s probably not as nice of an experience to deal with all that. In the national forests you can camp wherever you want.

And mosques 😢😢😢😢😢 The first mosque ever built in France was after world war 1.

Crazy cheotic video.

I agree with a lot of this. After growing up in Switzerland most of my life and then hiking in the Rockies, I was amazed at the vast wilderness of the American West.

Scandinavia, Iceland, Balkans, Carpathians, Caucasus, there is so much variety in hiking possibilities and cultures in Europe that you didn't even touch on.

I've done several trips to the more sparsly populated of Sweden, and I don't mean Lapland. I don't "hike", just take walks in the nature. As soon as you get away from busy roads, you are guaranteed to within a few minutes find a spot by a lake or on a mountain where you hear nothing but the sounds of nature. And you're almost guaranteed not to see another human being.

2:01 A little bit wrong map. Missed Crimea peninsula as a part of Ukraine. It’s occupied by russia now, but officially it’s a territory of Ukraine

Also, there are Bears and wolfs in Europe too.

Sure it´s different. But if you want to hike in the mountains (wilderness) you will not encounter a castle at every step nor is every hike just going from one hut to another. Sure you have that option. But it´s not the only thing. And if somebody was complaining about missing ice-cream, they never really hiked in Europe properly. It was just a little trip for them. Doesn´t mean all Europeans hike to get ice-cream at the end of day.

I too have noticed that the trail network in the alps is MUCH better than in the Canadian Rockies. The alps have far more marked trails (which allow access to many summits) and they also go into higher difficulties. Normal trails go up to T4 (SAC hiking scale) and then, there are via ferratas, which are basically an extension of marked trails by other means. The Canadian trail network is far thinner and usually tops out at T3. Most summits are not part of the trail network and it is hard to figure out how hard the summit routes actually are. Some are easy to follow paths that aren't much different than harder european on-trail hiking, others are serious scrambles. The lack of good hiking maps is also an issue, I ended up using OSM for the most part, which has a lot of routes, but no clue about difficulty.

What I find interesting is that you present these tourist trap ranges of both places. There are really nice untouched places in the US and Europe. For e.g Alaska and the Carpathians

it's pretty weird that you limited Europe to just parts of old EU

all of southern poland is a hiker's dream, especially in the Beskid Niski and Bieszczady regions. like, you can enter ANY pathway, and just hike for hours, wandering through mountains, dense forests and rivers, also a lot ot these trails have many interesting sights like 2nd world war era cementarys, burned villages or old eastern churches

Another video where Europe is compared to the USA, but only a small part of Europe is actually compared. Europe is not a country, but a continent.

Like many others already have pointed out, the northern nordics is quite different. For example the northern most province of Norway is bigger than the country of Switzerland but with fewer than 80 000 inhabitants. That results in a population density of about 1.5 per square kilometers. Tourism is almost completely centered around outdoors experiences

I moved to Canada from Ukraine in 2011. I was shocked that in some province there is no public lands close to cities. In Quebec it was so hard to get access to rivers and some lakes vere totally private. Often you had to drive hours and pay money just to have a walk in the forest. It was horrible. Some other provinces are better but access to nature is considered to be a privilege and not a right. 😢 Often In Canadian Rockies camping sites are booked on day one and many trails are busier than in Slovakia, Romania or Ukraine.

As a German, I don't need any restaurants on my hikes.

Do you have some great ideas. I’m glad to see that you don’t have all the processed junk that so many other people bring to the trail and very little waste. Good job.

Good video but really busy edited. With sounds effect etc and quick images.

Great comparison! No blaming, no judgement, just helpful information 👍. Stefan from Switzerland with still an emotional connection to the USA after a year as an exchange student at Monterey High School in CA

u missed the balkans, the nordic countries, and technically the Ural mountains

This is super well made, but i feel as if it generalizes both Europe and the USA unfairly. For example, Scandinavia has a population density and wildlife richness that's just as wild as the Northwestern USA, even though its not even close to Alaska level, its still very natural. The Mediterranean has biodiversity on par with California which is the most biodiverse state in the USA. As for the defense of the USA, I feel like you could have compared more European-like American landscapes to Europe instead of American landscapes with no counterpart in Europe, I don't think the southwest, southern rockies, sierra nevadas, everglades, and to a smaller extent the appalachians are similar to Europe, they are much different. On the other hand, things like the cascades, Montana rockies, tetons, and all of Alaska are north American counterparts to Europe, so I guess it would be a more accurate comparison for these sort of places.

A lot of europeans complaining here but you do realize he is interviewing europeans and they shared their thoughts on this topic right?

Europe has very different hiking depending on the country and area. I am from Norway and if you go to Finnmark in Norway I doubt you will find any restaurants. The Swiss have so many tourists that want to see the amazing views up in the mountains, so they build gondolas to take paying customers there. So far, this culture has not stretched to Norway, but we do have some places accessible by road and a well established network of huts for tourists. I think the reason why Americans have this impression is that they often fall into tourist traps. Get to know some locals if you want the wilderness experience.

Greenbelly: "Here's how purple and blue are similar and how they're different." The comments: "YOU FORGOT MAGENTA AND TEAL AND SKY BLUE AND CHARTREUSE YOU IDIOT!"

Not adding Romania to this comparison is insane! Romania has 8.000 bears, Via Transylvanica, a trail that goes for 1.400 km.

Here in Southern California, the natural diversity is hard to beat. You can literally go snow skiing in Big Bear and the surf at Huntington Beach for dinner. Not to mention that from Mt. Whitney, the highest point, you can see Death Valley, the lowest and hottest place. Massive 12 inch deep lakes in the middle of the Death Valley had people kayaking the desert! It's just amazing.

I have experience with both hiking in the US and in Europe. In my opinion, people in Europe don't truly understand what the wilderness is, and they try to turn the wilderness into cities with their restaurants and huts. I go to nature to get away from civilization, not to just have 'civilization with trees'.

Hiking in western and middle Europe is less a sport and adventure but more a thing you do with your friends, family or even with your colleagues from work. It also is a pastime for older people. One reason is, that many people make winter sports like skiing and snowboaring in the same areas. So there is a good infrastructure. Also Europe is much more than western Europe and the Alps.

Europe is now again full with wolves. No deadly attacks on humans recorded. Sheperds struggle but now in the pyreneans the more dangerous animals gor hikers are the huge white shepherd dogs the Patous. There havr been Moose reported to cross the Oder between Poland and Germany. In Poland and Ukraine you can cross wild bisons. If one day our russian brothers and sisters will come back to their minds we can be happy to have huge wildlife. For sure in Europe we dont have the tropics like Florida

The best treks are in balkan and east hills and mountines. Try Romanian and Slovenian.

Hiking in USA vs Europe...I live in the UK but I grew up in Slovakia and I wouldn't dare to compare hiking culture in these two countries, never mind the USA vs Europe. Slovakia and the UK have nothing in common when it comes to hiking, and I'm not saying that one is better than the other (I enjoy both), they are just very different, so it amazes me how you've managed to generalise ''Europe'' based on a very small part of Europe. A knife that many hikers carry in Slovakia can get you in trouble (jail for up to 4 years) in the UK and that's just one example of how dangerous these generalisations can be. There are very different laws, rules, permits, equipment needed, transportation options, marking, wildlife, landscape, culture around hiking etc. depending on where you are in Europe and I'm sure there are differences in the US, too.

I lived in Germany for three years and I have hiked extensively through Western Europe. I think this video did a very good job of explaining the positives of both Europe and the United States. I am someone who is a bit navigationally challenged, so I really like how well marked the trails are. Trails in Europe are much better marked than in the United States. There was only one time when I got lost hiking in Germany. It was in the black forest. I do love the different hostels and beer gardens in Germany, Switzerland and Austria. That said, I love the remoteness of hiking in the United States. I have hiked a large amount of the Appalachian Trail and I have hiked all over Colorado, Utah and Idaho. Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park in Utah are an absolute must for anyone who has a passion for hiking. Being in those two parks is almost a spiritual experience.

As an American not being able to setup a tent in the mountains is ridiculous, it's the mountains, I can do what I want to an extent.

I’ve tried Australia and boy that was something different than Europe. The preparedness that was required in Australia is unmatched in Europe

3:05 love Scotland being mentioned

2:00 what?! Have you ever heard anything about wilderness in Europe?

Yeah the reindeer are owned. But not the deer or moose or elk and so on. And your see a lot of wild animals in sweden when our hiking. But yes, as a swede thats done the PCT.... everything is bigger in the US 😉 And thruehike in the us os a different thing

Generally good comparison but you missed one point. In Europe within an hour or two you can hike on the cliffs of a shore or in true alpine country. There is a lot of diversity not far away. In the states you need to travel quite a few thousand km to see change. If course a cold beer is seldom more than a day's hike away in Europe, except Scandinavia or Spain. The remoteness is not like in the States.

I couldn´t make it across the 3-minute mark. The video is awfully cut and feels like YT-short but over 10 minutes long. For a hiking-related content, at least me, I cannot watch it the way it is. Also, I believe, the comparison is obviously highly biased and does not presents a representative picture of the hiking culture in Europe. For instance, the best hiking grounds in the north of Europe are completely neglected. But these are, in my opinion, among the best of the world. Not sure if mentioned later, as I couldn´t get through the video, in the north of Europe, you have the "everyman´s right" which means complete freedom to roam. You may want to look that up. It is a huge difference to what I experienced in the US and the rest of Europe; and also a substantial game changer when it comes to hiking and experience nature.

Don't think the call about Americans being more obsessed with long-term remote hiking trips is quite accurate- that element may be more prevalent here but if you ask any hiker who lives nearby hiking spots if they more often go on multiday trips vs short few hour long trips I think you'll find that the vast majority of American hikers go on shorter day hikes.

So many complaints in the comments...didn't realize Europeans were so touchy 😋 Their video focuses on western Europe. Make your own video if you feel your country is under-represented. Obviously not all countries are equally well-known, for many reasons.

Got to experience Tout Mont Blanc last year - yes it is very different, unique. Note there are even signficant differences between Canada and the US backpacking parks. Here in BC the major trails tend to be a lot less manicured and more rough than those in the US. But the US parks tend to favour dispersed camping while in Canada most have specific designated campsites. The campsites in BC tend to have more development on them, outhouses, tent platforms and bear bins. WA and California parks tend to want you do disperse camp, no sites no outhouses no bear bins nor platforms. Also in BC rangers will universally recommend carrying bear spray while parks like Yosemite strongly prohibit bear spray. WA and Calif parks require bearproof canisters but nowhere in Canada are they required.