This game sends people to real places in New Zealand, some of them a long way from help. Read this once, properly, and then judge each pin yourself.
Whether a pin is safe for you today is your call, and only yours. We do not know your fitness, your experience, your gear, who is with you, or what the weather will actually do. We publish where the pin is, how far you walk in, how much you climb, how far it is from the nearest building, and the forecast. Nothing on this site is an assessment that a trip is safe, and no pin is a recommendation to go.
If the honest answer is “I am not sure I am up to this today”, leave it. The pin does not disappear. It will still be standing tomorrow, and the week after, until somebody reaches it.
Some pins are a serious day out and the page says so in plain words when they are. For those, go only if you are experienced enough and properly equipped. That means, at minimum:
A track that is a pleasant walk in February can be a serious alpine trip in August, and the reverse is also true: plenty of famous New Zealand days out are perfectly sensible in winter for people equipped for winter. We don't judge your fitness or the season, and we are not going to pretend to make that judgement from a laptop. We show you the conditions and trust you to be an adult about it.
We do respect official warnings, the same as any event does: during a MetService Red Warning or high avalanche danger for a pin's area, the day is held and the pin waits. Nobody can take it while it is held, and the days it spends waiting are added on to its fortnight, so there is nothing to be gained by going anyway.
Take somebody. Better company, and a great deal safer if one of you turns an ankle two hours from the car. The game is built so that it costs you nothing: film one each, side by side, upload within the fifteen minute band, and you both take the day. If only one of you filmed, say up to four names aloud in the one video and everybody named gets the find. The band is there so nobody hurries, and so the person you walked in with is never the person you are beating.
Noon is when the pin appears. It is not a countdown, and the pin does not expire at dusk. Every pin page carries a daylight line: what time you would be finishing if you left now. If that time is after dark, read it as the page telling you to go in the morning instead. Leaving it until tomorrow morning costs you nothing at all, and the pin will still be standing.
It is a forecast, from a public weather service, for a point on a map. It is not a mountain forecast, it can be hours out of date, and it knows nothing about the wind in a particular saddle. Check MetService mountain forecasts and, for anything in a national park, DOC's know before you go.
Before a spot is ever put in the queue we read the Department of Conservation's own alerts for the nearest track, automatically, and a closure disqualifies the spot outright. Alerts that read as a caution rather than a closure are shown on the pin's page. That check happens when the spot is confirmed, so look again on the day: a slip does not wait for our queue.
The fifteen minute photo-finish band exists so that driving faster cannot win you a day. Film your proof, walk out, and upload when you are somewhere safe and stopped. Do not film, check the site, or upload while driving.
Call 111 and ask for the police, who coordinate land search and rescue. If you have no cell coverage, that is what the beacon is for. Do not spend an hour walking towards signal instead of activating it.
If somebody goes missing on the way to a pin, we are the easiest search in the country to help. Every pin page carries the exact coordinate, the track in and the walking time, in public, so nobody has to wait on us for the basics. Police and LandSAR can also have any pin frozen with one message, day or night, to jhustler@me.com, and it is held until they say otherwise.
Plenty of pins are fine for a family walk and some are absolutely not. Check whether dogs are allowed where you are going, because much conservation land does not allow them and there are very good reasons for that.
You take part at your own risk. We are not your guide, we are not checking on you, and nobody here knows you have gone out. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for what happens on a trip you chose to make. That is not us dodging: it is the honest description of a game that tells you where a spot is and nothing more.