How Far verifies its data

Trail routes

Route geometry comes from OpenStreetMap contributors via the Overpass API (open data, licensed ODbL). Way members are stitched into one ordered line, simplified, and distance is computed as the great-circle length of the full-resolution line — not a hand-typed figure. Where a published distance exists (e.g. a guidebook or AllTrails' listed mileage), it's used only as a cross-check against the real geometry, never copied directly.

Named water sources, campsites, summits, and hazards on trail guide pages are real OSM features snapped onto the route — Far does not generate or infer points of interest that aren't in the source data.

Elevation

Elevation gain/loss is computed from real ground-elevation lookups (the Open-Meteo Elevation API) along each route, not estimated or interpolated from a low-resolution source. If that lookup fails, Far omits the elevation figure rather than showing a guess.

Camps

This is separate from the trail guide pages above: when you plan a real trip, the camp you pick is its own record, carrying one of four confidence levels — imported from OpenStreetMap with no further verification, verified by a human curator, matched to an official park/agency record, or flagged for review after a low-confidence match. A camp's confidence only ever moves up, from a human check or an official match — it's never silently downgraded.

Permit and reservation requirements per camp are matched to Recreation.gov facilities by distance alone — never by name, since a name match can attach the wrong permit to a similarly-named camp. A facility within 500 m is labeled confirmed; anything farther is labeled nearby, not confirmed, and automatically queued for a curator to check by hand rather than left to sit as an unverified guess.

Gear catalog

Every catalog item carries one of five confidence levels, shown next to its weight in the app: verified against a manufacturer spec, verified against a retailer listing, sourced from community submissions, seeded by AI with no independent verification yet, or flagged for review after a source conflict. AI-seeded weights are never presented as more certain than they are — that label stays visible everywhere the item appears.

Catalog items

333

Manufacturer/retailer verified

152

Community submitted

18

AI-seeded, unverified

159

Flagged for review

4

Live count, updated automatically as items are verified — not a fixed number. As of 2026-09-02.

Weather and trail alerts

Forecasts come from Open-Meteo. Official trail alerts and closures come from the National Weather Service (US), the National Park Service, and Parks Canada — real government sources, checked directly, not summarized secondhand. Far also surfaces AI-inferred hazard notes for trails it has specific knowledge of; those are labeled separately and are never counted alongside official alerts. An AI guess cannot change an official alert count or trigger a "new alert" notice — that distinction is enforced in code, not just in copy.

What Far will not do

• Far never renders a go/no-go judgment on whether to take a trip — data, source, and what changed since you last checked, not a verdict.
• Far never presents an AI estimate with the same visual weight as a verified figure.
• Far never fabricates a rating, review, or price for a product that doesn't have one.