HIKINGFILES — ACCURACY AND EDITORIAL STANDARD
October 28, 2026

The deliverable is a useful maintained guide, not a stream of generated articles. AI may assist with research organization and drafting. It does not establish that a trail is open, that a fact is current, or that a writer has visited a place.

FACT CHECKING
1. Give every route a specific start, destination/turnaround and distance basis: one-way, roundtrip or loop. Do not combine figures from different starts.
2. Use the land manager's current notices for closures, access and restrictions. Check route pages separately for stable facts. Link both and record the actual review date.
3. Retain a claim-to-source map for distance, pets and published notices. Unknown elevation stays unknown. Do not invent drive times, accessibility claims, parking availability or local knowledge.
4. If an official page contradicts itself, withhold the affected route from matching until resolved. Grotto Falls is currently withheld because its NPS page lists both 2.6 and 4 miles. Laurel Falls is excluded because it is closed.
5. Absence from a closure list is not confirmation of an open or safe trail. Describe the source finding precisely and point guests to departure-day conditions.
6. Label walking times and difficulty as editorial estimates. They exclude travel to the trailhead and depend on pace, stops, terrain and weather. Never imply a guarantee or an official classification.
7. Source dates expire after four days for matching in this POC. Expired or missing dates suppress route matches; they are never silently refreshed. Published historical closure/conflict notices retain their date and source link.
8. Preserve critical route notes and trailheads in print. A shortened card must not discard information that changes the suitability of the outing.

WRITING
Lead with details that change a guest's decision: distance, surface, where to turn around, pet rules, parking/access limitations. Use short, direct sentences and names that match the source. Avoid generic travel promotion such as hidden gem, breathtaking escape, perfect for everyone, or something for every adventurer. Do not claim that staff recommend a route or that anyone walked it unless documented. Keep useful distinctions instead of forcing every trail into identical praise.

EXAMPLE
Prefer: Follow Alum Cave Trail for 1.4 miles to Arch Rock, then return the same way. Stone steps pass through the arch. Continuing to Alum Cave Bluffs makes a longer outing.
Avoid: Discover a breathtaking hidden gem that offers an unforgettable adventure for hikers of all abilities.

RELEASE CHECK
Before paid guest distribution, a responsible editor must approve the selected routes, live source checks, factual claims, brand permissions, print output and mobile presentation. Source checking performed during this proof of concept is desk research; no local field inspection or independent human editorial approval is claimed. Browser rendering and print output still require visual review because the browser-control infrastructure was unavailable.

SOURCE CHANGE PROCEDURE
Log the affected claim, source URL, retrieval date, source publication/update date when available, old wording, new finding, editorial decision and reviewer. A detected webpage change is a prompt for review, not permission to publish. Preserve the previous record for comparison. For conflicts, withhold the affected suggestion rather than manufacture certainty.