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Methodology

Sourced or blank

This site publishes data, not opinions. Here is exactly where each kind of fact comes from and what the labels on a page mean.

The rule

Every factual field on a trail, station, or rule page carries a link to its source and the date we last checked it. If we do not have a source, the field shows Not yet verified or a dash. We never fill a blank with a guess or an average.

Sources we use

  • Distance, elevation gain, route type, closures: the managing agency, chiefly NYS Parks hiking guides, NYS DEC, the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. Distances published in miles are converted to kilometres and rounded to one decimal.
  • Trail lines: OpenStreetMap, fetched by relation or way id, which is shown on every map. Where a hike follows a long trail such as the Appalachian Trail, we clip the line to the hike area and say so. Data © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL.
  • What is drawn on the map: each trail in its blaze colour, read from the OpenStreetMap route tags and named in the legend; a marker every mile, computed along the line; on a verified loop, arrows in the direction the park describes; and summits, viewpoints, ruins, shelters, parking, toilets and water within 394 ft of the line, from OpenStreetMap with the object id behind every name. The live map loads OpenTopoMap tiles and switches to USGS Topo by itself when they fail; the printed map stays on screen until real tiles have drawn.
  • Elevation profiles: the USGS 3D Elevation Program point query service, sampled every 164 ft along the line. Gain and loss use a 9.8 ft threshold so sensor noise on flat ground does not inflate totals. Where we have an official gain figure from the agency, that figure is shown instead.
  • Stations and timetables: MTA station pages and the current Metro-North and NJ Transit timetables. We link to the timetable; we do not compute schedules.
  • Walk time from the platform: only when an official source states a distance or says a trail starts at the station. Distances are converted at 20 minutes per mile. If no source states a distance, the walk time is left blank. The dashed line on a hike map is the shortest walk from the platform to the trailhead over OpenStreetMap footways and streets, computed by us and labelled with its length; it illustrates the way, and the stated walk time remains the fact.
  • How you get there: a hike is marked “by train” only where an official source describes a walk from a named station to the trailhead; every other hike with a sourced trailhead is marked “by car”. The Hikes-by-Train tool lists only the first kind.
  • Weather: the National Weather Service forecast for the trailhead grid point (api.weather.gov, public domain), refreshed hourly, with the office and issue time shown. Sunrise and sunset are computed with the NOAA solar algorithm and say so.
  • Photos: Wikimedia Commons files under CC0, public domain, CC BY or CC BY-SA only, chosen by a person for each hike; the photographer, licence and file link appear under every picture.
  • Trail traffic: there is no clean public dataset. Where we compare trails we show raw counts and a stated popularity tier, never a rate, and we say “most reported”, never “most dangerous”.

Sources we do not use

We do not scrape or copy AllTrails, blogs, or any site whose terms prohibit it. We do not write narrative trail descriptions. A named contributor may add a short note; it is labelled as such.

Re-checking

Rules and closures are re-checked automatically every week. A rule whose official page changed or whose check is older than 45 days shows a “Re-checking” badge until a person confirms it.

Line checks

Before a map line is allowed to produce a number, it has to pass checks a reader can repeat on the map. A loop must end where it starts, within 492 ft, and its climbing must match its descent within 10 percent. Where an agency states a distance, the drawn line must be within 15 percent of it, or of half of it for an out-and-back drawn one way. A line that fails any check is labelled “under review”: the map stays, but distance and gain from that line are withheld and the reason is printed under the map.

Elevation gain for an out-and-back drawn one way is the outbound climb plus the outbound descent, because the return leg climbs what the way out descended. Gain is only published when the route type is known; otherwise the profile shows the drawn line’s own totals and the fact reads “Not yet verified”.

Corrections

Every tool page has a correction form. Submissions go to a review queue; we change a fact only when a source supports the change, and the page shows the new verification date.