Please read before you rely on anything here

Terms, Privacy& the safety notice that actually matters

Safety notice

Climbing, scrambling, mountaineering, and backcountry hiking can kill you or leave you permanently injured. That is not a formality. Every route described on Cairn involves real hazards including rockfall, falls from height, avalanche and snow hazard, altitude illness, severe weather, getting lost, and being a long way from rescue.

You alone are responsible for assessing whether you have the skill, fitness, equipment, and judgement for any objective, and for the consequences of going. If you are not sure, hire a certified guide or go with someone who is qualified.

Terms of use

Privacy

What we store

  • Your email address or mobile number, and your display name.
  • Trips you create or join, their dates, plans, and gear lists.
  • Journal entries, photos, and route suggestions you write.

Data lives in a Postgres database with row-level security. Photos are kept in private storage and served through short-lived signed links.

Who can see it

  • Trip data is visible only to members of that trip.
  • Journal entries follow the visibility you choose: private, crew, or public.
  • Private journal notes are stored in a separate table readable only by their author. Marking an entry public never exposes them.
  • Route suggestions are visible to all signed-in users, under your display name.

Deleting your account and data

You can have your Cairn account and everything attached to it permanently deleted at any time.

  • How to request it: email privacy@thecairnapp.com from the address on your account, with the subject "Delete my account". No reason required.
  • What gets deleted: your profile, journal entries and their private notes, uploaded photos, ticks, conditions reports, route suggestions, trips you own, and your membership in trips owned by others.
  • What stays: route facts and beta you contributed to shared route pages remain, because other people rely on them, but they are unlinked from your name. Tell us if you want your contributions removed as well and we will remove those too.
  • How long it takes: within 30 days of the request, usually much sooner. We confirm by email when it is done.
  • If you signed in with Google, Facebook or Apple: deleting your Cairn account does not affect that account. Revoking Cairn's access from that provider does not by itself delete your Cairn data, so send the request above as well.

We do not sell your data, and there is no advertising. Third-party services used to run the site: Netlify (hosting), Supabase (database, authentication, storage), Open-Meteo (weather), and OpenStreetMap/OpenTopoMap (map tiles). Map and weather requests include approximate route coordinates, not your identity or location. To delete your account and everything in it, email us and we will remove it.

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