Last updated: October 9, 2026
These terms cover your use of wildernessexperts.com. The short version: our guidance is published in good faith to help you prepare, but the backcountry is inherently risky, conditions change, and the decisions you make out there are yours. Read the sections on safety and on maps carefully.
Who we are
Wilderness Experts (“we,” “us,” “our”) publishes wilderness skills, safety guidance, and gear reviews at wildernessexperts.com. You can reach us through our contact page.
Accepting these terms
By using this site you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the site. If you use the site on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you have the authority to accept these terms for it.
Our content is information, not professional advice
Everything we publish is general information for a general audience. It is not professional instruction, medical advice, search and rescue guidance, or a substitute for hands-on training, certified courses, or the judgement of a qualified guide, physician, or local authority.
We cannot know your fitness, your experience, your equipment, your group, or the conditions on the day. Techniques that are sound in one situation can be wrong or dangerous in another. Always seek qualified instruction before relying on a skill in the field, and follow the direction of park staff and emergency services over anything you read here.
Wilderness activities carry real risk
Hiking, camping, paddling, climbing, winter travel, and backcountry travel of every kind involve inherent and significant risks, including serious injury and death. Those risks cannot be eliminated by preparation, equipment, or information.
You are solely responsible for assessing conditions, judging your own limits, and deciding whether to proceed. By using this site you accept those risks and agree that you use our content entirely at your own risk.
Maps, coordinates, and third-party data
Our maps, park pages, and trip planning tools draw on third-party data, including OpenStreetMap, the U.S. National Park Service, Parks Canada, and magnetic declination models. We surface that data as a planning aid.
This data may be incomplete, out of date, mislocated, or simply wrong. Coordinates shown for a park generally describe the park as a place, not a road-accessible entrance. Points of interest such as trailheads, ranger stations, campgrounds, and visitor centres may have moved, closed, or never existed. Declination values change over time.
Never navigate from this site alone. Carry a current official map and compass, know how to use them, and confirm access, closures, permits, and conditions with the managing park or agency before you travel. We do not warrant the accuracy of third-party data and are not responsible for it.
Trip plans and itinerary emails
Our trip planner lets you build an itinerary and email it to a contact you choose. This is a convenience for telling someone where you are going. It is not a monitoring, tracking, check-in, or emergency service.
We do not watch for overdue parties, we do not contact authorities on your behalf, and we cannot guarantee that any email is delivered, delivered on time, or read. Email delivery depends on networks and providers outside our control. Never rely on this feature as your safety plan. Tell a responsible person your plan directly, agree a check-in time and what they should do if you miss it, and carry an appropriate emergency communication device.
Gear reviews and affiliate links
Our gear reviews are our editorial opinion. Ratings reflect our own assessment and are not aggregated customer scores. Specifications, availability, and prices change without notice, and we do not guarantee that any detail is current or that a product is suitable for your intended use. Always read the manufacturer’s instructions, warnings, and weight or load ratings before relying on any item, particularly safety equipment.
Wilderness Experts is reader-supported. Some links, including links to Amazon, are affiliate links, and as an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. This costs you nothing extra and never changes what we recommend or what we say about a product. We do not sell products, and we are not responsible for the goods, transactions, or policies of any retailer.
Member features and accounts
Some features, such as saved trip plans and packing lists, let you store information with us using an emailed sign-in link. Keep that link private, since anyone with it can access your saved data. You are responsible for the accuracy of anything you save and for activity that occurs under your access. We may change, suspend, or remove these features, or delete stored data, at any time. Our handling of personal information is described in our Privacy Policy.
Photos you share with us
Signed-in members can send us their own photos of the parks and places we cover. Sending a photo is optional, and these terms apply when you do.
The photo must be yours. By sending a photo you confirm that you took it, or that you own the rights in it, and that you are free to license it. Please do not send a photo that belongs to someone else, or one in which an identifiable person is the subject unless you have their consent.
You release it under CC BY 4.0. You keep the copyright. By sending a photo you license it under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. That licence lets Wilderness Experts and anyone else copy, share, and adapt the photo for any purpose, including commercially, as long as they credit you. We credit you under the name you give us when you send it.
The licence cannot be taken back. A Creative Commons licence is permanent, so once a photo has been published, people who have already reused it may go on doing so. If you would like us to stop showing a photo of yours on this site, ask us through our contact page and we will take it down.
We choose what appears. We look at every photo before it goes on a page. We are not obliged to publish a photo, we may resize it to fit the page, and we may remove it at any time.
We keep a record. We keep the photo you sent and a record of who sent it, the name to credit, and when you agreed to the licence, so that the credit and the licence can be shown to be genuine. We keep that record even if you later close your account.
If you believe a photo on this site is yours and is being used without your permission, tell us through our contact page and we will look into it promptly.
Acceptable use
Please do not use this site to break the law, to interfere with its operation or security, to scrape or bulk-download our content, to misrepresent yourself, or to submit another person’s details without their consent. We may restrict or withdraw access if you do.
Our content belongs to us
The text, photographs, illustrations, and design on this site are owned by Wilderness Experts or used under licence, and are protected by copyright. You may read, print, and share our pages for your own personal, non-commercial use, and you may quote a short extract with clear credit and a link. You may not republish, sell, or use our content to train machine learning models without our written permission. The exception is a photograph credited to its author under a Creative Commons licence or as public domain, which you may reuse on the terms of that licence. Product names and logos belong to their respective owners.
Links to other sites
We link to retailers, agencies, and other resources for your convenience. We do not control those sites, we do not endorse everything on them, and we are not responsible for their content, accuracy, or practices.
No warranty
The site and everything on it is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement. We do not warrant that the site will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, or that any information on it is complete or current.
Limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, Wilderness Experts, its owner, and its contributors will not be liable for any injury, death, loss, damage, or expense of any kind arising out of or connected with your use of this site or your reliance on anything published on it, including indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages. Where liability cannot be excluded by law, it is limited to the greatest extent that law allows.
Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions or limitations, so parts of this section may not apply to you. Nothing in these terms excludes liability for fraud or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.
Indemnity
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Wilderness Experts, its owner, and its contributors from any claim, loss, or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising from your use of the site, your breach of these terms, or your violation of the rights of another person.
Changes to the site and these terms
We may add to, change, or discontinue any part of the site at any time. We may also update these terms; when we do, we will revise the “last updated” date above. Continuing to use the site after a change means you accept the revised terms.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of British Columbia and the laws of Canada that apply there, without regard to conflict of law rules. The courts of British Columbia will have jurisdiction over any dispute, except where the law of your home jurisdiction gives you the right to bring a claim locally.
Contact
Questions about these terms? Use our contact form and we will get back to you.