Privacy

HikeAlong is a static website: every page is built ahead of time and served as a file, with no accounts, logins or database behind it. This page lists everything the site collects, keeps in your browser or loads from elsewhere, and what happens when you follow a link off it. Updated October 17, 2026.

Analytics and advertising, only if you say yes

On your first visit a notice at the foot of the page asks whether the site may use Google Analytics and Google's advertising tags. If you choose Accept, the site loads Google Tag Manager, which runs those tags. They set Google's cookies and tell Google which pages were read, for how long, and how you arrived, which is how we learn which trail guides people find useful. From then on Google's privacy policy applies to that data, and Google explains how it uses information from sites that use its services. If you choose Decline, or choose nothing, nothing from Google loads.

What your browser keeps

Your answer to that notice is kept in your browser's local storage under the name hal-consent, so the notice does not ask again. It never leaves your browser. The wake-up calculator keeps your minutes and the last place you picked there too, under hal-wake, so it remembers them next time; that never leaves your browser either. The site stores nothing else there and sets no cookie of its own; Cloudflare, which hosts it, may set a short-lived security cookie to tell people from bots.

Change my cookie choice

The button clears your answer and shows the notice again. Cookies Google set while you had accepted stay in your browser until they expire or you clear them in its settings.

Server logs

The site is hosted on Cloudflare. Cloudflare keeps standard server logs (IP address, requested page, browser type, time of request) for security and performance, under Cloudflare's privacy policy. HikeAlong does not build visitor profiles from those logs.

The contact form

The contact form sends your name, email address and message to us by email through Cloudflare's email service, and we use them only to reply. The form's page loads Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks that you are not a bot, under the same Cloudflare policy.

The wake-up calculator

The calculator works the sun out in your browser. When you search for a town, the name you typed goes to this site, and our server asks Open-Meteo's place search for it and passes the matches back, so Open-Meteo sees the name and our server, not your address. Nothing about the search is logged or kept, though Cloudflare may cache the answer for a day under the name alone. If you choose "Where I am now", your browser asks your permission and gives the position to the page, which uses it on your device and never saves or sends it. Directions to a trail's lot open Google Maps, under Google's privacy policy.

Buy links

Gear and the audiobooks on the site link to Amazon through /go/ on this domain, which sends you straight on. Once you arrive, Amazon's own cookies record that you came from here, which is how an Associates commission is paid, and Amazon's privacy notice applies; see the affiliate disclosure. The /go/ address is built to count those clicks without a cookie or your IP address (the item, the destination, where the link sat on the page, the page it came from and your browser's name). That count is not switched on; this page will say so if it ever is.

Audiobook covers

The audiobooks page, each book's own page and each series page under /books/series/ show the book's cover straight from Amazon's image server, m.media-amazon.com. Opening one of those pages, your browser fetches the covers from Amazon, so Amazon sees that request (your IP address and your browser's name, as with any image), under Amazon's privacy notice. The pages ask your browser not to tell Amazon which page you were on. Nothing else on the site loads from Amazon: a hike page names the audiobook without its cover.

Embedded videos and maps

Trail reviews and hike pages show YouTube videos, and trail reviews Google Maps, behind a placeholder. Nothing loads from Google until you tap to play a video or load a map. Videos then load from YouTube's privacy-enhanced domain, youtube-nocookie.com, and from that point Google's privacy policy applies.

Links to other sites

Links to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, iStock, Adobe Stock and other sites take you to services with their own privacy policies.

Photos and location

Published photos have their embedded metadata removed. The camera settings shown on a page are chosen fields republished from the log, not the original file. Route maps show public trails.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent through the contact page.