Use First Chair as planning context, not as a guarantee of safety.

Operator

First Chair: Mountain Safety is operated by Wolfgang Teves, Einzelunternehmer, Elisabethstrasse 27, 80796 München, Deutschland. Contact support@getfirstchair.app for support, legal, or safety-related questions about these terms.

The app is distributed through the Apple App Store. Unless a custom license agreement is separately provided through App Store Connect, Apple's Standard Licensed Application End User License Agreement also applies to your use of the app. These terms supplement that license for safety, acceptable use, service, and website matters.

Mountain safety

Mountain travel, skiing, snowboarding, backcountry travel, glacier travel, and avalanche terrain involve inherent risks, including serious injury or death. First Chair provides planning information and visualization tools only. It does not make terrain safe, replace training, replace local judgment, or replace professional guidance.

• Always check official avalanche bulletins, weather warnings, resort notices, closures, and local authority information before and during your trip.
• Carry appropriate equipment, know how to use it, travel with competent partners, and choose terrain conservatively.
• Conditions can change faster than any app, map, forecast, alert, or data provider can update.
• In an emergency, contact local emergency services. Do not rely on First Chair to contact rescuers or determine whether rescue is needed.

No professional advice

First Chair does not provide professional avalanche, guiding, rescue, medical, weather, engineering, or legal advice. Snow-quality scores, terrain layers, slope shading, sun exposure, cliff and avalanche terrain lenses, maps, forecasts, alerts, and watch/phone indicators are estimates or visual aids. You remain responsible for every decision you make outdoors.

If First Chair information conflicts with an official bulletin, resort instruction, closure, sign, patrol instruction, weather warning, or local authority instruction, follow the official source.

Data accuracy and availability

First Chair relies on Apple services, Firebase/Google services, public and third-party map data, weather providers, avalanche bulletins, webcam providers, terrain/elevation data, and network connectivity. Data may be delayed, incomplete, unavailable, inaccurate, misclassified, or not suitable for a specific slope, route, altitude, aspect, or moment in time. Offline data can become outdated.

Third-party services, data licenses & terms of service

First Chair integrates with and relies upon third-party APIs, public geodata services, open-source mapping platforms, and satellite/elevation models. Your use of First Chair is subject to the respective terms of service and licensing conditions of each upstream resource outlined below:

1. Weather, Snow & Meteorological Data

• Open-Meteo API (Terms of Service • License): Provides weather forecasts, hourly atmospheric variables (temperature, wind, gusts, freezing level, cloud cover, snowfall), and historical climate reanalysis. Non-commercial use under CC BY 4.0; commercial use governed by Open-Meteo commercial subscription terms. Attributed as "Weather data by Open-Meteo.com".
• GeoSphere Austria Data Hub (Terms of Use): Provides high-resolution INCA precipitation nowcast radar, real-time TAWES weather station observations, and historical mountain weather data across the Eastern Alps. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
• MeteoSwiss (Legal Notice & Terms): Supplies Swiss automatic weather station network observations and current weather feeds. Open Government Data (OGD) Switzerland.
• Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) (Copyright & Terms): Provides MOSMIX prediction stations catalogue and POI current weather observations. Licensed under GeoNutzV / Open Data DWD.
• NOAA / NWS Aviation Weather Center (Data Disclaimer): Supplies METAR aviation weather bulletins for live cloud base ceiling estimation. U.S. Government Public Domain.
• Land Tirol – Lawinenwarndienst / WISKI (Portal): Provides alpine weather station plots and sensor observations across Tyrol. Licensed under Land Tirol Open Government Data (CC BY 4.0).
• Windy.com API & Webcams (Webcams API Terms): Delivers live mountain webcam imagery, panoramic thumbnails, and video player streams. Subject to Windy Webcams API Terms of Use and display attribution requirements.

2. Avalanche Safety & Regional Hazard Bulletins

• European Avalanche Warning Services (EAWS) / ALBINA / avalanche.report (avalanche.report • EAWS Portal): Standardized CAAMLv6 avalanche danger ratings, hazard elevations, and danger patterns across Tyrol, South Tyrol, Trentino, Carinthia, Salzburg, Vorarlberg, Styria, and participating European regions. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
• Avalanche.org (USFS National Avalanche Center & American Avalanche Association) (Terms of Use): Regional avalanche forecast zones, danger ratings, and advisory links across the United States. U.S. Forest Service / AAA open safety data.
• Avalanche Canada (Terms of Use): Canadian avalanche forecast regions, danger ratings, and public bulletin products. Licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada.

3. Maps, Satellite Imagery & Cartography

• OpenStreetMap (Copyright & License): Base cartography, ski runs, ski lifts, hiking paths, and alpine geographic features. Licensed under the Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0 by the OpenStreetMap Foundation.
• OpenFreeMap / Bunting Labs (Website & Terms): Vector map tiles and Liberty style rendering. Based on OpenStreetMap data and MapLibre technologies.
• Esri / ArcGIS Online World Imagery (Master License Agreement): High-resolution global satellite and aerial photography. Source: Esri, Maxar, Earthstar Geographics, and the GIS User Community.
• basemap.at (Geoland.at) (Nutzungsbedingungen): High-resolution 30 cm aerial orthophotos and official Austrian base maps. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
• MapLibre Native (Project Website): Open-source map rendering engine for iOS and web. Licensed under the BSD 2-Clause License.

4. Elevation Models & Earth Observation Data

• AWS Open Data – Mapzen / Nextzen Terrarium Terrain-RGB (Registry Listing): Global Terrain-RGB elevation tiles for on-device slope angle, aspect, and 3D terrain profile rendering. Sourced from SRTM (NASA/USGS), ETOPO1 (NOAA), and regional agencies under CC BY 4.0 and public domain licenses.
• Copernicus GLO-30 DEM (European Space Agency / European Union) (Space Data Portal • Copernicus Data Space Terms): 30-meter global Digital Elevation Model GeoTIFF tiles for offline terrain profiling. Free and open access under the Copernicus Open Access Policy (Regulation (EU) No 377/2014).
• Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem / Sentinel Hub (Terms & Conditions): Sentinel-2 multi-spectral satellite imagery for seasonal snow coverage and winter true color overlays. European Union Copernicus program.
• BEV (Bundesamt für Eich- und Vermessungswesen, Austria) (Open Government Data): 5-meter Airborne Laser Scanning Digital Terrain Model (DGM_R5.tif / EL-ALS-DTM). Open Government Data Österreich under CC BY 4.0.
• Swisstopo (Federal Office of Topography) (Terms & Conditions): Swiss digital elevation models and geospatial reference data. Open Government Data (OGD) swisstopo.

5. Platform, Infrastructure & Commerce

• Apple Developer Services & App Store (Apple Media Services Terms • Developer Terms): App Store distribution, StoreKit 2 in-app purchases, CloudKit / iCloud private sync, and Apple Push Notification service (APNs).
• Google Cloud & Firebase (Firebase Terms • Google Cloud Terms): Firebase Authentication, Cloud Firestore, Cloud Functions, Firebase Hosting, Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM), and Crashlytics.
• RevenueCat (Terms of Service): In-app purchase receipt validation, subscription entitlement management, and billing state synchronization.
• PostHog (Terms of Service): Product telemetry, feature flags, and diagnostic event tracking.
• Resend (Terms of Service): Transactional email notifications and operational alerting.
• GitHub (Terms of Service): Code hosting, automated testing pipelines, and issue tracking.

Alerts and background features

Push notifications, favorite-resort arrival alerts, powder alerts, avalanche update alerts, background location, and watch connectivity may fail or arrive late because of operating-system limits, permissions, network conditions, battery state, provider outages, or configuration changes. Do not rely on alerts as your only warning system.

Acceptable use

• Do not use First Chair in a way that violates law, third-party rights, resort rules, access restrictions, or safety closures.
• Do not attempt to overload, scrape, reverse engineer, or interfere with the app, website, APIs, Firebase services, or third-party data providers.
• Do not use the app as a sole navigation, rescue, emergency, or life-safety system.

Purchases

In-app purchases are processed by Apple through the App Store. Apple handles payment, refunds, taxes, and payment credentials according to Apple's terms. If a purchase entitlement is missing on a new device, use Restore Purchases in the app or contact support.

Prices, availability, trial eligibility, refunds, and family sharing behavior may depend on Apple App Store rules, your region, and your Apple ID settings.

Privacy

Personal data is handled according to the Privacy Policy. By using the app, you acknowledge that requested features may require processing by Apple, Firebase/Google, map, weather, avalanche, terrain, webcam, and hosting providers.

Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, First Chair: Mountain Safety and its operator are not liable for losses, injuries, damages, or claims arising from outdoor decisions, reliance on app data, unavailable services, delayed or inaccurate information, or use of third-party data. Nothing in these terms limits liability where applicable law does not permit limitation.

Changes

These terms may be updated as the app, providers, features, or legal requirements change. The effective date above shows when this version took effect.