Data and freshness

An official figure is read from the issuer's own page first. A secondary source is labelled Reported. An approximate or computed value is provisional. Where no source exists, the cell stays blank. How we verify.

As of 2026-10-23: 149 permit rows checked on 99 trails. 50 of 82 permit trails have a row read from the issuer's own page. This is a count of our checking, not a claim that the catalog is complete.

A permit marked official was read from the issuer, with a link and a date. Reported comes from a source that is not the issuer, and the page says so. Unverified means we do not have an official source yet. That cell stays empty rather than a guess.

Official permit and fee figures are re-checked within 12 months. A figure whose verified date is older than 12 months shows a note that it may have changed. The note is not a claim that it did.

Membership never gates a fact or a safety field. Distance, ascent, descent, high and low point, grade, season, water, permits, fees, and hazards are public whether the source is official or reported. A reported fee is labelled reported. Login is an account, not a paywall. A membership, if one is sold, can cover saved trails, change alerts, offline sync, export, higher API limits, and a supporter contribution. It cannot hide a number a trekker needs before they go.

Geometry is ODbL — OpenStreetMap contributors. That licence covers the line and the GeoJSON, not the prose. Editorial text is a citation request: trail name, canonical URL, and the verified date. It is not a licence. Permit tariffs stay the issuer’s.

A signed record covers the published distance, ascent, descent, high point, low point, the permit rows in the payload, and the geometry source. Ascent and descent are null in that payload when the line is too coarse. The signing key is the build environment variable for the catalog signer. It is not in the repository, and it is not a reader login. A changed fact changes the signature. The check on /verify loads the record and the public key from this site and verifies them in the browser. It is not an offline check, and there is no separate snapshot file to verify without contacting the site.

Freshness windows already used on the site. A stale note means the date is old. It is not a claim that the issuer changed the figure.

The scorecard also counts figures verified in the last 90 days and the last 12 months. DEM samples are not re-verified on a permit cadence, but a stored date past 12 months can still surface the same stale note.

A wrong signed number is replaced and re-signed. The old signature then fails. Say so on /corrections.

The canonical record is signed with an Ed25519 key (keyId 3ad491a01aea; public key at /.well-known/provenance-key.json, in-browser check at /verify). That record is the published distance, ascent, descent, high point, low point, the permit rows, and the geometry source — the value, its source, and its verified date — not our editorial prose, and not season or hazard notes. The private key is held only as a sealed production secret and never appears in our code or previews.

What a valid signature means: these exact figures left The Hiking World unaltered. It is not a warranty that the real-world figure is still current — see Freshness.

We rotate the signing key on any suspected compromise and on a 12-month schedule. Retired public keys will be published in an archive so older signatures still verify.

Geometry: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL. Any derivative database we distribute stays ODbL-compliant.

Editorial text: The Hiking World's own. Citing us (the trail URL and the verified date) is encouraged — it is not a licence to reuse the editorial text.

Facts and API: the cited free tier is open and generous; no fact, official or reported, is ever paywalled. The commercial tier is support and higher limits, not different or hidden data. The feed licence payload says the same thing: geometry is ODbL from OpenStreetMap contributors, and editorial text is a citation request, not a licence.

Bulk / derivative-database licensing: contact us.