Sometimes the plan needs to reach someone who isn't in your pack — a friend asking how you did the trail, a club forum, the person who talked you into it. A public link publishes a stripped-down, read-only copy of your hike that anyone with the address can open, without giving them an account or a way into your trip.
The link is unlisted: we don't list it, link to it or promote it anywhere, and we ask search engines to leave it alone. It is still public to anyone who has the address, and it can be forwarded — so the flow is built around one idea: you read the whole thing before it goes live.
What Goes Out, And What Never Does
The shared copy is built from your hike but is deliberately much smaller than it.
It includes the hike's name and overview, how many days it runs, the routes and their elevation profiles, sections, camps and huts, points of interest, water sources and mobile reception spots, food-drop locations, web links, zero days, and your route map.
It never includes:
- Any date. Days are shown as "Day 1 of 12", never a calendar date — so a shared plan never says when your house is empty.
- Anyone's identity. No members, no Pack Shadows, no avatars, no "applies to" tags, no emails or phone numbers. Not even a member count.
- Expenses, food plans and meals, gear lists, backpack weights, or the hike chat.
- Anything from Emergency — no contacts, PLB registrations, safety briefs or check-in settings.
- What's inside a food drop. A drop shows where it is, not what you packed in it.
- Flights and accommodation. Those entries are dropped entirely, because a flight number and a hotel booking say where a named person will be on a named night. Transport and drive entries are included — they carry real trailhead logistics — which is exactly why you can switch off their pick-up and drop-off places individually.
- Your own background photo. If you uploaded a photo for the hike it stays private; one of Pack Hiker's stock backgrounds is shown instead.
You appear as a first name only — "Shared by Dave" — or anonymously, your choice.
Reviewing Before It Goes Live
Choose Share on the hike's Overview, then Prepare a draft to review. Nothing is public at this point and no address works yet.
You'll get the whole page exactly as a reader will see it, and beneath it every piece of text that goes out, in the order it appears on the page. Each one has an eye button that removes it from the shared copy.
This matters because free text is the one place something personal can hide. Pack Hiker doesn't read your descriptions for you and won't quietly remove anything — but it does flag entries worth a second look, highlighted in red, when it spots:
- a name belonging to someone in your pack
- something shaped like a home address
- a booking reference
- a phone number
- an email address
These are hints, not judgements — a note reading "meet the ranger at the gate" is fine, and one reading "key is under the pot at 14 Ellis St" is not. You decide. There are bulk controls for descriptions, links and places, plus one for everything flagged, and the preview updates the moment you switch something off.
When you're happy, press Take the link live. That's the step that publishes.
Expiry, Revoking And Updating
Every link expires — 1 month, 3 months, 6 months or 1 year, your choice. After that, anyone opening it lands on the Pack Hiker home page instead. You can extend or shorten that at any time.
- Stop sharing kills the link and deletes the shared copy from the server.
- Regenerate link issues a new address and kills the old one immediately — useful if a link travelled further than you intended.
- Update snapshot pushes changes you've made to the hike since publishing.
Stopping isn't final for the hike, only for that address. The share screen keeps showing you the page and everything you'd switched off, so you can share the hike again whenever you like — Share again on a new address takes a fresh snapshot and issues a new link. The old address stays dead, so anyone still holding it gets nothing.
That last one is worth understanding: the shared page is a snapshot, frozen when you publish. Editing your hike doesn't change what readers see until you say so, so a plan you share can't quietly change under someone who is relying on it. The share screen tells you how many entries have changed since.
Honest limits. Revoking a link stops new views — it cannot un-read a page someone has already opened, or recall a screenshot. Treat a public link the way you would treat anything else you put on the web.
Who Can Share
Only the hike owner can publish, revoke or regenerate a public link. Co-admins can invite people into the hike, but sending the plan outside it is the owner's call.
Once it's live, though, everyone in the pack can pass it on. Every member has a Share button on the Overview, opening a short summary of what the page carries and what it leaves out, with the link ready to copy. Nobody but the owner can change or stop the link from there.
Before the owner takes it live, that same button explains that the hike hasn't been shared and that only the owner can share it — the address itself is never handed out early, so a draft can't be circulated before it's been read.
It's available on every account, free or Pro.
Tip: Want to give someone the full plan rather than a stripped-down one? Invite them to the hike instead — see Members and permissions — or send them the PDF export, which includes everything.