Who we are
The OutsideAtlas Team is a small team that builds outdoor-recreation tools we wanted to exist. We come from a mix of backgrounds — backcountry hiking, data engineering, former park-volunteer work, and consumer product design — and we share an opinion that public-data outdoor information should be free, machine-readable, and accurate.
We don’t pretend to be the world’s top mountaineers. Most of us are recreational hikers and weekend campers — the same audience this site is built for. When we recommend a trail, we’re drawing from the same data anyone can verify against OpenStreetMap and Recreation.gov, plus the kind of practical context that comes from actually being on these trails when we can.
How we work
- Data over opinion.Trail facts (distance, elevation, surface, difficulty) come from public OpenStreetMap and Recreation.gov data. We don’t make up numbers, and we link back to the source on every trail page.
- Honest about limits.When we don’t have enough data to rank or recommend, we say so rather than fill the page. Every ranked list discloses its methodology and filter rules.
- Safety, not opinion, on safety topics.When we publish gear recommendations or trip-planning advice, we cite the established sources (NOLS Wilderness Medicine, The Mountaineers’ Freedom of the Hills, official land-manager guidance) rather than relying on our own preferences.
- Updated when needed. Trail data refreshes weekly. Evergreen guides are reviewed at least annually and stamped with a Last updateddate. Major changes get a fresh publish date so readers know what’s current.
The full methodology is on the methodology page and our data sourcing is documented at data sources.
Editorial standards
We follow a short set of editorial rules we’d expect from any outdoor publisher:
- No undisclosed paid links. Any sponsored content is clearly labeled and uses
rel="sponsored"per Google’s guidelines. See our sponsor page for partnership options and disclosure rules. - No affiliate-pressure rankings.We don’t rank trails or parks based on what pays us. The site’s revenue comes from display ads and occasional sponsorships, not from steering hikers toward specific products.
- Conditions can change. Every trail and park page carries a safety banner reminding hikers to verify current conditions with the official land manager before they go. The disclaimer covers the full legal framing.
- Corrections welcome. If something on the site is wrong, email us at hello@outsideatlas.com with the URL and the issue. We aim to acknowledge within 3 business days and fix substantive errors within 30 days.
What we publish
The byline you see across the site covers four kinds of content:
- Trail and park detail pages — auto-generated from public OpenStreetMap and Recreation.gov data. The editorial layer is the page structure, FAQ generation, packing-list logic, and the safety framing.
- State and county ranked lists — programmatically generated from filtered data, with state-specific context written for each of the 51 states + DC.
- Evergreen guides — long-form articles on safety, gear, booking strategy, and beginner topics. These are hand-written and reviewed annually.
- Regional pillar pages — long-form regional overviews covering multiple states under one topical umbrella (Pacific Northwest, Mountain West, etc.).
Contact
For corrections, partnership inquiries, press, or general feedback, reach us at hello@outsideatlas.com or via the contact page.
Press and journalists looking for outdoor-recreation data stories — we’ve indexed over 500,000 trails and 15,000 federal campgrounds and are happy to provide custom data pulls for stories. Use the press contact above.