Legal

Last updated: 14 October 2026. This page covers nerangMTB: the trail map at nerangmtb.com (including Park Nav, the trail pages and guides) and the articles site at articles.nerangmtb.com. Please read it before you rely on anything here. By using the site, you agree to these terms.

Mountain biking is dangerous

Mountain biking is a dangerous recreational activity. Its risks are obvious and inherent: falls, collisions with other riders, walkers, horses and wildlife, loose and changing surfaces, steep drops, washouts and fallen trees, heat, storms, bushfire and smoke, getting lost, equipment failure, and being a long way from help with patchy phone reception. Any of these can cause serious injury or death.

You are responsible for your own safety and for deciding whether a trail, route or set of conditions is right for you. Ride within your ability, look at unfamiliar features before you ride them, wear a helmet and suitable protection, carry water, food, tools and a charged phone, and tell someone where you are going. Nothing on this site tells you that a trail is safe.

In an emergency, call 000 (or 112 from a mobile). The Emergency+ app can tell you your location. Nerang National Park has numbered orientation markers (NG 15 to NG 30); give emergency services the nearest one.

An independent site, not an official service

nerangMTB is an independent, rider-made map and guide. It is not run, endorsed or checked by Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service (QPWS), the City of Gold Coast, the Gold Coast Mountain Bike Club, the Gold Coast Cycle Centre or Trailforks, and it does not manage the park or maintain its trails. Park rules, signs at the trails, closure notices and directions from rangers and emergency services always come first. Check current information with Queensland Parks before you go.

The trail map and trail information

Trail lines are traced from GPS and other sources and simplified for display. They can be metres out, can follow an old alignment, and can miss new trails, reroutes, closures and rehabilitation. Trail names may be informal. Distances, climbing, gradients, elevation profiles and ride times are estimates worked out from the map lines and a terrain model; real riding times vary widely with fitness, skill, bike, traffic and conditions.

Trail grades (Green, Blue, Black and Double Black) are nerangMTB’s own guide for comparing trails. They are not an official classification and don’t describe every obstacle, and difficulty changes with direction, weather, erosion and maintenance. Where QPWS publishes its own classification for a trail, that applies.

One-way directions on the map come from the official QPWS trail map and local knowledge, and may be incomplete. Always follow the direction signed at the trail.

Unsanctioned and illegal trails

The map sorts trails into three groups. Sanctioned trails are, as far as we know, designated for mountain biking by the park manager. Unsanctioned trails exist on the ground but are not designated, built or maintained by the park manager; they can be closed and rehabilitated at any time, and riding them may not be permitted. Illegal trails were built or are used without authority; where they are shown at all, it is so they can be recognised and avoided, and Park Nav never uses them.

Showing a trail on this site is not permission to ride it. Riding where it isn’t permitted, or building or changing trails, damages the park and may break the rules for national parks and state forests, which carry penalties. It is up to you to check that you’re allowed to ride a trail. Park Nav only uses unsanctioned trails if you switch that option on.

Trail status, closures and conditions

Closures and trail status come from official notices and from reports to nerangMTB, and are updated by hand, so they can be late, incomplete or wrong. A trail that isn’t marked closed is not necessarily open. The trail conditions estimate is a model based on recent rainfall, not an inspection. Stay off soft, wet trails during and after rain, and never ride a closed trail.

Weather, fires and smoke

Weather forecasts come from Open-Meteo’s weather models and can be wrong. The fires and smoke layer shows planned burns and wildfires reported by QPWS and incidents from the Queensland Fire Department’s public feed. That information can be delayed, incomplete or out of date, and the smoke plume drawn on the map is a rough estimate from the wind, not a measurement. nerangMTB is not an emergency warning service. For bushfire warnings, use the Queensland Fire Department, official alerts and emergency broadcasters, and follow directions from emergency services. If you see a fire that may not have been reported, call 000.

Park Nav, routes and random loops

Park Nav works out routes automatically from the mapped trails. They are suggestions, not instructions or turn-by-turn navigation. A route can include a trail that is closed, overgrown, under works, wrongly mapped, too hard for you, ridden against an unmarked one-way direction, or busy with other park users, and its distance, time and climbing are estimates. Most challenging deliberately looks for the hardest trails and can take the long way round; it is meant for confident, experienced riders. Surprise me loops are random and can turn out longer or harder than you expect. Look over a route on the map before you ride it, and turn back if it doesn’t suit you or the conditions.

Phones, GPS and mobile coverage can fail in the park, and the location shown on the map can be tens of metres out. Don’t rely on this site as your only way to find your way out.

Getting there

Driving and parking directions are a general guide: roads, exits and parking can change during works. Follow road rules and signs. Links to Google Maps take you to Google’s service, under Google’s terms.

Content, data and fair use

The map, trail data, photos, articles and design are © nerangMTB unless credited otherwise. You’re welcome to use the site for your own riding and to share links to it. Please don’t copy, republish or sell its content or data, or collect it with scrapers, bots or AI training tools, without written permission. Articles and trail descriptions reflect the information and opinions available when they were written.

Other websites, businesses and services

Links to other websites, clubs, businesses (such as cafés) and services are there for convenience. nerangMTB doesn’t control them and isn’t responsible for their content, products, services or privacy practices, and mentioning a business isn’t a guarantee of its quality.

Saying thanks

“Say thanks” contributions are voluntary gifts towards running the site, processed by Square under its own terms and privacy policy. A contribution doesn’t buy any product, service, membership or say in how the site is run, and it isn’t a tax-deductible donation.

Data sources and credits

Elevation, climbing and the 3D terrain: Geoscience Australia 5 m LiDAR Digital Elevation Model, © Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia) 2025, CC BY 4.0; SRTM-derived terrain tiles (AWS Terrain Tiles) where no LiDAR is available.
Weather: Open-Meteo, CC BY 4.0.
Fires: QPWS fire advisories (Queensland Government open data, CC BY 4.0) and the Queensland Fire Department’s current incidents feed.
One-way trail directions: checked against the Nerang National Park mountain bike trail map, © State of Queensland (Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service).

These providers don’t endorse nerangMTB, and their data is used as supplied, without warranty.

Privacy

You can use nerangMTB without an account. The map has no advertising, analytics or tracking cookies.

Server logs. Our hosting providers record ordinary request details (IP address, browser, the pages requested and the time) for delivery, security and troubleshooting, and keep them under their own retention practices. To stop abuse, the map’s data services count requests in hourly counters keyed by a hashed form of your IP address.
Your location. If you choose “My location” or “Use my location” and allow it in your browser, your browser sends a location fix to the nerangMTB server, which converts it to a position on the map and sends that back. The fix isn’t stored and isn’t written to our logs, because it travels in the body of the request rather than the address. You can refuse or withdraw location permission in your browser or device settings.
Shared route links. A Park Nav link contains the route’s start and finish as positions on the map. If you started from your own location, the link shows roughly where you were (moved to the nearest trail), so share it thoughtfully.
Your browser. The map keeps your light or dark theme choice in your browser’s local storage. It isn’t a cookie and doesn’t leave your device.
Other services. Our server fetches the weather, fire and trail data, so your browser doesn’t contact those providers. The articles site loads its fonts from Google Fonts, “Say thanks” goes to Square, and directions links open Google Maps; those services handle your information under their own privacy policies. WordPress may set essential cookies while an administrator is signed in.

We don’t sell personal information or use it for advertising or profiling. For privacy questions or requests, contact the nerangMTB site operator through the contact channel published for this website.

Liability

The site and its information are free and provided “as is” and “as available”. We take reasonable care, but we don’t promise that maps, grades, routes, measurements, forecasts, fire information or trail status are accurate, complete, current or always available. To the extent the law allows, nerangMTB and the people who run it are not liable for any loss, damage, injury or death arising from using the site, relying on its information, or riding any trail or route. Nothing here excludes, restricts or modifies a right or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded, including guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law.

Changes and governing law

These terms may change as the site and its services change; the date at the top of the page shows the current version. They are governed by the laws of Queensland, Australia.