The Southern Hiker desk
Editorial, Southern Hiker
Southern Hiker is written and edited in-house. Pages are organised around trails and the towns you start from, because that is how the decision is made: nobody searches for a county, they search for Alum Cave. A trail gets a page when there is something specific to say about it - a closure, a permit, a parking problem, a hazard that the standard write-up omits - rather than to complete a list. Permits, quotas, parking tags and closures are checked against the National Park Service and the relevant national forest, and seasonal road status against the agency that closes the road. Where a trail has changed - the Chimney Tops pinnacle has been shut since the 2016 fires, which most older guides still describe as open - the page says so and says when. Where something has not been verified, the page says so rather than repeating a claim we cannot stand behind.
Editorial standards
- No paid placements. We do not accept payment for a placement, a ranking or a favourable review. Where a link earns a commission, the page carrying it says so.
- No untested claims. We do not say we have tried something we have not. Prices and plan details supplied by a provider are labelled as indicative rather than presented as our own findings.
- No page for the sake of a keyword. A destination gets a page when there is something specific to say about it. That is why the site is small.
- Corrections are made in public. A factual fix is applied to the page and the update date changes with it.
