Here are the bravest of the brave in 2016. Weve gathered some of the finest images showing daredevils taking their lives into their own hands and going to the very brink this year. Whether they are perched hundreds of feet up on a high wire, courageously clinging to a rockface or taking on a volcano, these adventurers take the breath away. Here: Morgane Choquet and Samuel Cobb relax in a vertical campsite on the slopes of El Capitan, Yosemite National Park. (Photo by Alexandre Eggermont/Caters News)

A member of Viradouro samba school performs during the first night of Rio's Carnival parade at the Sambadrome Marques de Sapucai in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on April 22, 2022. (Photo by Carl de Souza/AFP Photo)

Natalia Grossman of the United States competes in the women's boulder lead climbing final at the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, Tuesday, October 24, 2023. Six new venues were built for 30 sporting events, an investment of $507 million. (Photo by Esteban Felix/AP Photo)

This photograph taken on June 20, 2021 and received courtesy of Radchadawan Peungprasopporn via her Facebook account on June 22, 2021 shows an elephant searching for food in the kitchen of her home in Pa La-U, Hua Hin. (Photo by Radchadawan Peungprasopporn/Facebook via AFP Photo)

Mural of wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill wearing stockings and suspenders and giving the “V” sign by illusive local artist who goes by the name Horace, on the side of the Sandpiper guest house in Brighton on November 22, 2020. (Photo by Gareth Fuller/PA Images via Getty Images)

Zurab Gurielidze, a director of the Tbilisi Zoo, speaks to the media while standing next to a hippopotamus named Begi at the zoo in Tbilisi, Georgia, September 13, 2015. Tbilisi zoo, which was partly destroyed and some 300 animals escaped or died in the floods that also killed at least 19 people in June, was reopened on Sunday. (Photo by David Mdzinarishvili/Reuters)

A devotee of the Chinese Ban Tha Rue shrine walks with guns pierced through his cheeks during a procession celebrating the annual vegetarian festival in Phuket, Thailand, October 17, 2015. The festival, featuring face-piercing, spirit mediums and strict vegetarianism celebrates the local Chinese community's belief that abstinence from meat and various stimulants during the ninth lunar month of the Chinese calendar will help them obtain good health and peace of mind. (Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)

An actor plays an injured passer-by during Exercise Strong Tower, the scene of a mock terror attack at a disused underground station in central London, Britain June 30, 2015. London police held their biggest-ever terrorism drill on Tuesday, pitting the emergency services against a group of marauding attackers, nearly 10 years since four young British Islamists killed 52 people in suicide bombings on London's transport network in July 2005. (Photo by Peter Nicholls/Reuters)