After negotiating their way down a series of steps carved into the steep rock face, explorers of the Blue Lake Grotto are faced with a deceptively deep pool of limpid blue-green water.

BBC: Livin�� la vida Bonito

Though the camp was less than 2 miles away, getting there involved hiking up more than 2, 000 feet while traversing a jumble of steep rock and ice chutes, all of which required careful handwork.

WSJ: Man Versus the Volcano

Hidden in the jungle for more than a thousand years and only accessible by a 44km trek through inhospitable terrain, visiting Ciudad Perdida gives travellers the chance to live out their Indiana Jones fantasies as they battle rock scrambles, steep ascents and numerous waterfalls along the way.

BBC: Trekking to Colombia��s Lost City

Mr. Patterson is looking away, squinting intently at another steep slope called Snow Dance that's tucked between two rock headwalls.

WSJ: Heli-Skiing in Greenland

There, mudslides and raging rivers swept away shantytowns perched on steep slopes of the lush Avila mountain and left tall buildings marooned in a sea of rock-hard debris.

BBC: News Online

Edinburgh is home to two Unesco World Heritage Sites separated by the steep-sided greenery of the Princes Street Gardens: the Old Town with its imposing Castle Rock and Royal Mile, and the New Town, just a bit younger than Old Town, with a posh Georgian grid laid out in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries.

BBC: Living in: Edinburgh