Privacy Policy

The short version

• Our website has two short online forms, Join and Volunteer. We use what you share only to get back to you and coordinate trips or volunteering. There are no analytics and no tracking cookies.
• When you join a trip, we collect what we need to keep you safe, including some health information. We treat it carefully and use it only for trip safety.
• We never sell your personal information.
• Donations and guest payments are handled by Stripe. We never see or store your full card number.
• You can ask us to see, correct or delete your information anytime at hello@peakstopeace.org.

Information we collect and how we use it

1. When you email us

If you email hello@peakstopeace.org (including through the “Get in touch” link on our site), we receive your email address, your name if you include it, and whatever you write. We use it to reply, answer your questions, and help you get involved. Email sent to our address is routed by Cloudflare (Cloudflare Email Routing) and delivered to our Gmail inbox, provided by Google. Both process these messages on our behalf.

2. When you fill out our Join or Volunteer form

Our website has two short online forms:

• The Join form asks for your name, email, phone number (optional), city and state, whether you're a veteran, currently serving or a guest, your branch of service (or, for guests, the name of the veteran you'll be coming with), why you'd like to join, your outdoor experience, the activities you're interested in, how you heard about us, and your OK for us to contact you.
• The Volunteer form asks for your name, email, phone number (optional), city and state, veteran status (optional), your availability, the roles you'd like to help with, your skills or interests, any certifications (like Wilderness First Aid), a short note, and your OK for us to contact you.

We use this information only to respond to you and to coordinate trips and volunteering. Your answers are stored securely with Cloudflare, our hosting provider, and only Peaks to Peace can access them. To help keep out spam, each submission also keeps your browser type and a scrambled (hashed) version of your IP address, and we don't use them for anything else. The forms don't use cookies. We never sell your form answers or share them for marketing. We keep them only as long as we need them, and we'll delete them sooner if you ask. To correct or delete what you sent us, just email hello@peakstopeace.org.

3. When you sign up for trips

To register you and plan trips, we collect your name, email, phone number, city and state, and veteran status and branch of service (or, for guests, the veteran you're coming with), and the trips you're interested in. We may ask for simple verification of service, such as a DD-214 or VA ID card. We use this to contact you about trips, plan group sizes and logistics, and confirm eligibility.

4. Health questionnaire, waiver and emergency contacts (sensitive information)

Before you join a trip, we ask for health information that matters for outdoor safety (for example, medical conditions, allergies, medications and fitness considerations), the name and phone number of an emergency contact, and your signed participant waiver. Waivers are signed electronically, and signed waivers and health forms are stored securely in Peaks to Peace's Google Drive. Because this information is sensitive, we handle it with extra care:

• Limited use. We use it only to plan safe trips, respond to emergencies, and keep records of signed waivers. We never use it for marketing, and we never share it except as described below.
• Limited access. Only the leaders on your trip and our program lead can see your health information. Leaders bring it on trips and keep it private, so they can share it with medical responders in an emergency.
• Retention. We keep health questionnaires for 12 months after your most recent trip, and signed waivers for 5 years after your most recent trip, for legal and insurance purposes. After that, we securely delete them.

5. Donations and guest payments

Donations, and any guest trip costs, are processed by Stripe on a secure Stripe-hosted payment page and are paid to Peaks to Peace LLC. Stripe collects your payment details directly. Peaks to Peace does not receive or store your full card number. Stripe shares limited information with us, such as your name, email address, the amount and date of your payment, and partial payment details (like card type and the last four digits), which we use to keep records, match guest payments to the right trip, and thank you. Stripe's handling of your data is described in the Stripe Privacy Policy.

6. Photos, video and testimonials

We sometimes take photos on trips, and some participants share their thoughts about a trip with us. We only use photos of identifiable participants, or their quotes, on our website, social media or outreach materials with their permission, given through a separate photo and media consent. Testimonials are credited by first name and branch of service only (for example, “Justin, Air Force veteran”). You can withdraw your consent for future use at any time by emailing us, and we'll stop using those images going forward. We never use photos to reveal someone's health information.

Website visits

Our website is a simple site. Apart from the Join and Volunteer forms described above, it has no accounts, analytics or advertising, and we don't use tracking or advertising cookies. When you visit:

• Our site is hosted by Cloudflare, Inc. (Cloudflare Pages), which also provides our domain's DNS and security. Like any web host, Cloudflare automatically processes technical information such as your IP address, browser type and the pages requested, so it can deliver the site, keep it secure (including automatic checks that help tell people from bots) and diagnose errors. Cloudflare may also ask your browser to send it automatic network error reports (a standard feature called Network Error Logging) if the site fails to load. See the Cloudflare Privacy Policy.
• Our site loads its fonts (Fraunces and Roboto Condensed) from Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com), so your browser sends your IP address to Google to fetch them. See the Google Privacy Policy.
• When you click Donate, or pay for a guest spot, you go to Stripe's website, which uses its own cookies under Stripe's policies.

Our site also links to other websites (for example, the U.S. Census Bureau, UC Berkeley, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Veterans Crisis Line, Unsplash and Stripe). Those sites have their own privacy policies, and we're not responsible for how they handle your information.

If we ever add analytics, cookies, a newsletter or other online forms, we'll update this policy first.

How we share information

We do not sell, rent or trade your personal information, and we don't share it for advertising. We share information only:

• With service providers who help us operate, like our email, file-storage, e-signature, hosting and payment providers, and only for those purposes;
• With guide services and land managers when needed for a specific trip (for example, the names of participants on a guided climbing day, or health information a guide needs for safety);
• With emergency responders and medical providers in an emergency;
• With our insurance carrier or legal advisors if a claim or incident requires it; and
• When required by law or to protect someone's safety.

Children

Our website and programs are for adults. Trips are open only to participants 18 and older, and our site is not directed at anyone under 18. We don't knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has sent us information, please email us and we'll delete it.

Security

We use reasonable safeguards to protect your information. We limit access to the people who need it, keep our accounts secure, and use services that encrypt data by default, such as Google and Cloudflare. No method of storage or transmission is completely secure, so we can't guarantee absolute security. If a breach ever affects your personal information, we'll notify you as required by law.

Your choices and rights

You can email hello@peakstopeace.org at any time to:

• Access the personal information we have about you, or get a copy of it;
• Correct information that's inaccurate;
• Delete your information (we may need to keep a signed waiver or a record of an incident for the retention period above, for legal or insurance reasons, and we'll tell you if so);
• Opt out of trip announcements or other emails; and
• Withdraw photo consent for future use.

We'll respond within 30 days. We may need to confirm your identity before acting on a request.

Utah residents: The Utah Consumer Privacy Act (Utah Code Title 13, Chapter 61) applies to organizations with at least $25 million in annual revenue that also handle personal data of large numbers of consumers. Peaks to Peace is well below those thresholds, so the law likely does not apply to us. Even so, we voluntarily offer the access, correction, deletion and opt-out choices described above, and we don't sell personal data or use it for targeted advertising.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as our programs or website change. When we do, we'll post the new version here with a new effective date, and if the changes are significant, we'll let participants know by email. We'll never make a change that applies retroactively to sensitive health information without asking you first.

Contact us

Questions or requests about your privacy? We're glad to help.