Seven rules for a safety guide

1. 1. Safety facts come from public agencies The research file lists nineteen documents: six from the National Park Service, six from the National Weather Service, three from the US Coast Guard and four from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of them by its occupational health institute. Two of the park pages are written by single parks, Great Smoky Mountains and Isle Royale, and a guide using one says so, since a park writes for its own ground and climate. Gear makers, outfitters, blogs, forums and social media posts are never the basis of a safety statement.
2. 2. A blocked source is not quietly replaced The US Forest Service and the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics both turned away automated requests during research. Neither is cited directly. The seven Leave No Trace principles are taken from a National Park Service page that reprints them with credit, and the Forest Service appears only as Park Service pages describe it.
3. 3. Every number has an owner A water temperature, a boiling time, a camping distance from a stream or a lightning death count is stated only if a cited document gives it, and the text names that document. Celsius values are either the source's own or a conversion from its Fahrenheit figure, rounded to one decimal place. When the agencies give no figure, the guide explains the idea and says it has no number to offer.
4. 4. Key statements were checked by machine, not by a person On 2026-10-26, the date each guide shows as "last reviewed against sources", a script opened each of the nineteen pages once and searched it for 146 short phrases and figures the guides depend on. Every page loaded, and 145 of the phrases turned up. The one miss, a line about warm air and cold water on the Weather Service's cold-water page, is in the page; the script tripped over how the apostrophe was encoded, and the stored text confirms the line without a second request. The record still logs it as a miss. The script did not judge the guides' own explanations, the order of advice or the worked examples, which are the site's wording.
5. 5. AI drafting is disclosed, and so is the missing review An AI system wrote the guides from those documents. No human editor and no outdoor safety professional has reviewed them, and until one does the pages say so. The drawings are SVG line art made for the site.
6. 6. General guidance, never a personal plan Medical content stops at what the agencies tell the general public, with nothing on individual conditions or medicines; that is a doctor's job. Skills that need hands-on teaching are pointed to a course rather than described as if reading were enough. Examples are marked as examples and depict no real person, group, trip or company.
7. 7. No one pays, no one is promoted The site answers to no agency, park, outfitter, tour company, gear brand or outdoor group, nor to anyone who ran this address before. Kit is described by type. Sources are named in the text without links for now; any link added later will be there for the reader, and a paid one would be marked.

When the guidance moves

Agencies revise their advice, and parks change passes and permit systems. Here is where that leaves these guides:

• The nineteen pages were matched against the guides on a single day, 2026-10-26. No second pass is on the calendar, and nobody is watching those pages for edits.
• So any of them may have moved on since. Before a trip, the land or water manager's current page is the one to trust, and where it parts ways with a guide here, follow the manager.
• The site has no contact route, so a reader who spots a slip has no way to say so, and an error could sit here unnoticed.
• Any fix made to a guide shows its date on the guide.