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Terms of Use

Effective date: November 4, 2026
Last updated: November 4, 2026

Hiking America, LLC ("Hiking America," "we," "us") runs HikingAmerica.com, the Hiking America email newsletters and course, our shared folders in Gaia GPS, our turn-by-turn guides and GPS-ready maps, our Trail Tools, the I'm Hiking America hiker tags and profile pages at imhikingamerica.com, and the Outpost store. These terms cover all of it, which we call the Service.

By creating an account, buying a membership, or using the Service, you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you don't agree, please don't use the Service. You must be 18 or older to create an account.

The trails we cover

Hiking America builds navigation data for long-distance trails, today the American Discovery Trail and the Great American Rail-Trail. We add trails over time. These terms apply to every trail we cover, including ones added after you join.

Your safety is your responsibility

Long-distance hiking is dangerous. You can be hurt or killed by weather, heat, cold, water crossings, traffic on road walks, wildlife, falls, getting lost, running out of water, and many other things.

Our data is a planning and navigation aid, not a guarantee. Trails close, bridges wash out, businesses change their hours or shut down, water sources go dry, and roads get rerouted. Much of what we publish comes from hikers in the field, and some of it will be out of date by the time you reach it. Distances, elevations, coordinates and directions can be wrong.

Before and during any hike, you agree to:

  • check current weather and conditions with the land managers, park offices and local authorities for the places you're walking
  • follow posted rules, closures, permits, fire restrictions and local regulations
  • camp only where camping is allowed, and get permission before entering or camping on private land
  • carry the water, food, gear and backup navigation your route requires, and judge for yourself whether a route is safe for you that day
  • turn back or change plans when conditions call for it, whatever our data says

We don't give medical advice. Nothing on the Service is medical, fitness or nutrition advice. Talk to a doctor about whether a long hike is right for you, and call 911 in an emergency.

You use the Service at your own risk and you're responsible for your own decisions on the trail.

Accounts

Free and paid members sign in with a link sent to their email. Keep your email account secure, because anyone who can read it can sign in as you. Tell us at support@hikingamerica.com if you think someone else is using your account.

Free membership

A free account gets our email updates and the free Great American Rail-Trail GPX tracks (the trail, gap and hiker-alternate lines). Some ADT segment guides are free too. We can change what the free account includes.

Plans and prices. Paid membership is billed monthly or yearly. The current plans and prices are on our Pricing page and in the signup window, and the price you agree to at checkout is the price you pay.

What a paid membership includes. The Hiking America membership covers every trail in the paid product: the subscriber folders in Gaia GPS, the turn-by-turn guides, the GPS-ready maps, and the Hiker Notes.

Automatic renewal. Your membership renews automatically at the end of each month or year, and we charge the card on file through Stripe, until you cancel. We'll email you a reminder before a yearly membership renews.

Cancelling. You can cancel any time from the Account page on HikingAmerica.com (Cancel subscription, at the bottom), or by emailing us. Cancelling stops the next renewal. You keep access until the end of the period you've already paid for.

Refunds. If you buy a yearly membership for the first time and change your mind, email us within 14 days of signing up and we'll refund it in full. If you're charged for a renewal you meant to cancel, email us within 14 days of the charge and we'll refund it. Otherwise we don't refund partial months or years.

Your price is locked. If we raise a plan's price, the new price applies to new members only. You keep the price you signed up at for as long as your membership stays active. If you switch plans, or your membership ends and you rejoin later, the price at that time applies, unless a returning-member offer says otherwise.

Offers. We sometimes offer a price through a special link, such as a returning-member price for members whose membership ended because a payment didn't go through. An offer's price lasts as long as the offer says it does.

Failed payments. If a payment fails, Stripe retries it and emails you a link to update your card. If it still can't be collected, your membership ends.

When a paid membership ends. We remove you from the subscriber folders in Gaia GPS and you lose access to members-only guides, maps and pages. Your free account stays unless you ask us to delete it.

How our data reaches you

  • Gaia GPS. Paid members get our tracks and waypoints through shared folders in the Gaia GPS app. You need your own Gaia GPS account; the free Gaia plan works. Gaia GPS is a separate company with its own terms, and we don't control its app, its servers or its subscription prices. If Gaia changes its sharing features or goes offline, we'll look for another way to get the data to you, but we can't promise one.
  • No GPX downloads for the American Discovery Trail. We don't hand out GPX files of our American Discovery Trail data. You view the route in Gaia GPS, and the turn-by-turn guides carry the coordinates and elevations.
  • Free Great American GPX tracks. Anyone with a free account can download the Great American Rail-Trail GPX tracks. Services waypoints are for paid members.
  • Turn-by-turn guides and GPS-ready maps. We provide these as PDFs. The GPS-ready maps work in Avenza Maps.
  • Updates. We update the data through the season as hikers report changes. An update can add, move, rename or remove anything, and we don't keep old versions available.

What you can do with our data

Everything we make is ours: the tracks, waypoints, turn-by-turn guides, GPS-ready maps, Hiker Notes, text, photos we've licensed, Trail Tools and the way it's all put together. It's protected by copyright and other laws. Copyright © Hiking America, LLC. All rights reserved.

While your account is in good standing, we give you a personal, non-transferable license to use the parts of the Service your membership includes, for planning and hiking your own trips. That covers sharing a screenshot or a few directions with your hiking partner on the same trip.

You may not:

  • share, sell, post, upload or give away our tracks, waypoints, turn-by-turn guides, GPS-ready maps or Hiker Notes, in whole or in large parts, including the free GPX tracks
  • re-share our Gaia GPS folders, or copy their contents into another account, app, map or guide for other people to use
  • share your sign-in or membership with people outside your own trip
  • use the Service to build a competing guide, app, map or dataset
  • scrape, bulk download or copy the Service by automated means, or use it to train AI models
  • remove our copyright or credit lines

Trail clubs, outfitters, publishers or anyone else who wants to use our data beyond this: email us and ask. We say yes more often than you'd think.

Some of our map pages use map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, which is available under the Open Database License from openstreetmap.org. Nothing in these terms limits your rights to OpenStreetMap data itself.

What you send us

Hikers make this work. When you send us trail updates, waypoints, GPS tracks, notes, photos, comments or hiker-tag profile details, here's the deal:

  • You keep ownership. You give Hiking America a permanent, worldwide, royalty-free license to use, edit, combine, publish and share what you send in the Service, in our guides, maps and Gaia data, on social media and in our emails. The license continues if your membership ends, because the data becomes part of a guide other hikers rely on.
  • We credit field data. Field reports and waypoints usually carry a short credit tag in the guides and Gaia (for example, TrailName'26). Photos carry the photographer's name. Tell us if you'd rather not be credited, or how you'd like to be named.
  • We edit. We check, shorten, correct and reword submissions, and we may not use everything you send.
  • Send only what's yours to send. By sending something, you confirm you have the right to share it. Don't send data copied from other guidebooks, apps, maps or trail organizations' materials, and don't send photos that show other people's faces without their OK.
  • Comments follow our Community Guidelines. We can remove any comment.
  • Hiker tag profiles at imhikingamerica.com are public. Anything you put on your profile can be seen by anyone who scans your tag.

Other organizations

Hiking America is an independent navigation resource. This site is not authorized by, and has no affiliation with, the American Discovery Trail Society. Our routes are our own, developed and continuously verified through field research and hiker feedback. They are not the official route of the American Discovery Trail, are not derived from American Discovery Trail Society materials, and may deviate from the route marked with signage.

We are also not affiliated with or endorsed by the Rails to Trails Conservancy, Gaia GPS, Avenza, or any other trail organization or land manager unless we say so in writing. Trail names belong to their owners and we use them only to describe where our data goes.

Links. The Service links to other websites, including trail organizations, land managers, businesses and apps. We don't control them and aren't responsible for what they say or do.

Affiliate links. Some links to gear sellers are affiliate links. If you buy through one, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. It doesn't change what we recommend.

Outpost and hiker tags. Hiker tags and other products in the Outpost are sold at the price shown at checkout. A free hiker tag that comes with a paid membership is one per member.

Trail Tools

The GPX Distance Finder and Elevation Gain Calculator run in your browser. They're free, provided as-is, and their results are estimates.

No warranties

We work hard to keep the data right, but we provide the Service "as is" and "as available." To the fullest extent the law allows, we make no warranties of any kind, express or implied, including that the Service is accurate, complete, current, uninterrupted or fit for a particular purpose.

Limits on our liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, Hiking America, LLC and its owner aren't liable for any injury, death, illness, property damage, lost trip, rescue cost, or indirect, incidental, special or consequential damages that come from your use of the Service or from relying on it, even if we were told such damage was possible. If we're found liable for anything, our total liability is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or $50 if you paid nothing. Some places don't allow some of these limits, so they may not all apply to you.

Your responsibility to us

If someone brings a claim against Hiking America because you broke these terms or the law while using the Service, you agree to cover our reasonable costs, including attorneys' fees.

Ending your access

You can stop using the Service and close your account any time. We can suspend or end your account, without refund, if you break these terms, especially by sharing or reselling our data. The sections on our data, what you send us, no warranties, liability and disputes keep applying after your account ends.

Changes to these terms

We'll update these terms as the Service changes. We'll change the "Last updated" date at the top, and for any change that matters to members we'll email you before it takes effect. If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, the new terms apply. If you don't agree, cancel before then.

Disputes and governing law

Please email us first. Most problems get sorted out in a reply.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Maryland, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute that can't be settled informally goes to the state or federal courts located in Maryland, and you and we agree to those courts' jurisdiction.

The rest

These terms and our Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and Hiking America about the Service. If a court finds part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still applies. If we don't enforce something right away, we haven't given up the right to enforce it later. You can't transfer your account or these terms to someone else; we can transfer them if Hiking America changes hands.

Contact

Hiking America, LLC
Email: support@hikingamerica.com

Hiking America is an independent navigation resource. This site is not authorized by, and has no affiliation with, the American Discovery Trail Society. Our routes are our own, developed and continuously verified through field research and hiker feedback. They are not the official route of the American Discovery Trail, are not derived from American Discovery Trail Society materials, and may deviate from the route marked with signage.