FAQ
FOR INDIVIDUAL USERS
What is this? Why does it exist? How is it different?
PROFILE, MATCHING, DISCOVERY
How do profiles & matching actually function?
MYMCO is an all-in-one app for the entire mountain community. Guides and agencies use it to manage trips, teams, participants, bookings and payments, as well as reach new customers; adventurers use it to build their mountain profile – logging past and future trips, planning future adventures, building a wishlist, and finding partners and guides for their next trip.
Most platforms are built around trips, listings or availability: someone posts where they want to go, others respond, and the main question becomes who is free at the same time?
MYMCO is people-first.
Every connection starts with understanding who the person behind the profile actually is — their experience, skills, goals, pace, ambitions and mountain background. That means you can look beyond availability and understand who you might actually be heading into the mountains with.
For individuals, that means finding compatible partners, documenting your experience and building a trusted mountain network that grows with you — rather than starting from zero every time you plan something new.
And when joining an organized trip, you can understand more than just the destination and itinerary. MYMCO is designed to give you a better picture of who you’ll be sharing the experience with.
For guides and agencies, the same people-first approach works from the other side: reach relevant mountain people, understand applicants and participants, build better groups, and manage trips and guide teams in one platform.
So MYMCO isn’t just another place to find a climbing buddy or book a mountain trip.
We’re building the infrastructure that connects mountain people, professionals and adventures — with people and compatibility at the center.
MYMCO currently supports climbing, mountaineering, hiking and ski touring. You can book guided trips and expeditions with verified guides, or create your own independent activities, trips, indoor climbing sessions and social events to meet other members.
In the mountains, being available at the same time doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a good fit.
Differences in experience, pace, goals, expectations and approach can affect everything from group dynamics to how smoothly a trip runs.
MYMCO helps make those differences visible before you head out. Compatibility is based on factors such as experience, skills, pace, goals and other profile information, helping individuals find better-aligned partners and giving guides and agencies more insight into the people joining their trips.
Because the more you know about who you’re going with, the fewer surprises you leave for the mountain. We believe that people make or break the trip.
MYMCO uses a familiar, matching-style interface because it makes the app easy to learn and quick to navigate. Familiar design means faster onboarding – people instinctively understand how to browse profiles without needing instructions.
However, the purpose behind this design is completely different.
MYMCO functions much more like a sports or networking app. It removes the grind of constant searching and outreach, endless group posts by automating partner matching in a way that’s personal, intuitive, and purpose-built for mountain sports.
Matches are based on skills, goals, grades, experience, fitness, availability, location plans, and trust signals – not romance or appearance. Swiping is simply an easy way to move back and forth between profiles, and you can revisit anyone at any time. So you will get high-quality, compatibility-ranked mountain partner suggestions designed for safer, better-aligned trips.
In conclusion, we have intentionally borrowed the best parts of intuitive app design, not the dating mechanics, and applied them to the mountain community so you spend less time learning a new platform and more time finding people you actually fit with.
But of course… if someone ends up finding not only their dream expedition team, but also a romantic partner along the way, we’ll count that as a bonus, not the purpose.
Our algorithm considers multiple factors to determine compatibility, including:
- main and secondary activities
- goals and experience level
- grades
- fitness level
- goals
- plans and availability
- wishlist and aspirations
- languages
- your climbing portfolio
You’re not only connected with people who share your availability, but with people you’re compatible with.
That said, the algorithm remains a core focus for us, and we’re continuously refining and expanding it. While it doesn’t calculate every profile parameter just yet, we’re working to make it increasingly comprehensive. That is one of our biggest priorities.
Reliability tells you how much profile information a compatibility result is based on.
The more relevant information someone has added — such as their experience, skills, goals, fitness, pace and availability — the more data MYMCO has to calculate compatibility.
A higher Reliability score means the compatibility percentage is based on a more complete profile and can therefore give you a more informed indication of fit. A lower score simply means there is less information available, so the compatibility result should be interpreted with more caution.
Reliability does not rate how trustworthy or dependable a person is. It shows how much confidence you can place in the compatibility calculation based on the information available.
Yes! MYMCO is designed for all levels. Whether you’re planning your first peak or preparing for a technical climb, the algorithm pairs you with people whose skills and goals align with yours.
Yes! You can update your profile at any time and your suggestions will automatically adjust based on your new preferences.
In fact, we recommend keeping your profile up to date. Your skills, goals, fitness, and plans evolve and when you update your profile, your matches adapt with you.
The more you share, the better and more accurate the recommendations we can give you.
Yes. MYMCO is global by default, so you can discover and connect with mountain people wherever they are in the world.
Your Connect recommendations are shaped by the information in your profile — including your experience, interests, goals and other compatibility factors — helping surface people who may be a better fit for you. You can also use filters to narrow your search when you’re looking for something more specific.
Whether you’re looking for people close to home or building connections for adventures elsewhere in the world, MYMCO isn’t limited by where you currently live.
More people shouldn’t mean more profiles to scroll through. It should mean a better chance of finding the right connections and opportunities for you.
MYMCO uses your Mountain Profile — including your experience, skills, interests and goals — to help surface more compatible people.
But you don’t need to have your next trip figured out. Your Wishlist and the places and activities you follow also help shape what you discover. Interested in a particular mountain, hiking region or climbing area? MYMCO can surface people who share those interests, as well as relevant activities and opportunities around them.
You can also use filters whenever you want to narrow things down further.
The more MYMCO knows about what you do and where you want to go, the more relevant your mountain world becomes.
HOW TO USE THE APP DAY-TO-DAY
What can you actually do in the app?
Not at all. In fact, the goal is the opposite.
MYMCO is designed to help you build your own mountain network over time — people you’ve connected with, climbed with, met through shared goals, or want to adventure with in the future.
Instead of starting from zero and searching through strangers every time you plan something new, your network grows alongside your mountain journey.
Find your people once. Keep building from there.
Absolutely. You don’t need a big trip planned to start using MYMCO.
Build your Mountain Profile, connect with like-minded people, create a Wishlist of mountains and places you’d love to explore, or join and create activities — from indoor climbing sessions and local hikes to social events and bigger mountain adventures.
It’s a way to meet people, do things together and build your mountain network over time. Sometimes that starts with a climbing session or a coffee. Sometimes it starts with a shared dream of a mountain neither of you has planned yet.
The trip doesn’t have to come first.
Once you connect, you can start a 1:1 chat to get to know each other, compare goals, share ideas and talk about what you might want to do together.
From there, a connection can turn into anything from an indoor climbing session or local hike to a social meetup, training partner or future mountain adventure.
You can also create or join activities and start turning shared interests into actual plans.
The goal isn’t just to collect connections — it’s to help those connections become real-world mountain relationships and adventures.
If you already know what you want to do, you can create an activity on MYMCO and find people to join you — whether it’s a climbing session, hike, weekend adventure or bigger mountain objective.
People can see the activity, learn more about who’s organizing and joining it, and connect through their MYMCO profiles rather than responding to an anonymous trip post.
And if you don’t have a specific trip planned yet, that works too. Add mountains, regions and places to your Wishlist or follow the ones you’re interested in to discover people who want to explore the same places, along with relevant activities.
You can start with the plan or start with the people — MYMCO helps you bring the two together.
Yes. MYMCO supports both 1:1 and group chats.
You can message individual connections or create your own group chats. When you create or join an activity — whether it’s an indoor climbing session, social event, mountain trip or paid guided adventure — a dedicated group chat is automatically created, bringing everyone involved into the same conversation.
That means you can meet the group, coordinate plans and stay connected before, during and after the activity — all in one place.
Trip Notes help you keep important planning details organized without losing them in the chat.
Anyone in a conversation can add notes for things like routes, dates, gear, transport, accommodation, meeting points, safety information or to-dos. Instead of scrolling back through messages to find what was agreed, key details stay easy to find in one place.
They’re especially useful when planning with a group, where decisions and important information can quickly get buried in conversation.
Chat is for the conversation. Trip Notes are for the things you don’t want to lose.
No. MYMCO is free to join and use for the core community experience. You can build your Mountain Profile, discover and connect with people, grow your network, and create or join free community activities without a subscription.
If you book a paid activity offered by a guide or agency, you’ll pay the activity price plus a non-refundable MYMCO Admin Fee, which covers the services provided through the platform.
We may introduce optional premium features in the future, but the core MYMCO experience will remain accessible for free.
SAFETY, ROADMAP, FEEDBACK
Safety in the mountains ultimately depends on the people involved, their decisions, conditions and many factors outside any platform’s control. MYMCO cannot guarantee the safety, qualifications or conduct of any user, guide or business — but we’re building tools to help you make more informed decisions about who you connect and head into the mountains with.
These include profile and experience information, compatibility insights, reporting and blocking tools, and verification measures designed to improve transparency across the community.
For professional accounts, MYMCO also reviews guides and agencies and verifies relevant qualifications, certifications and/or business information where applicable. Verification means that the information or documentation submitted has been checked; it is not a guarantee of a guide’s performance or the safety of an activity.
We’ll continue developing MYMCO’s trust and safety features as the community grows.
Safety and trust are especially important when you’re meeting someone new to climb, hike or head into the mountains with.
MYMCO was founded by a woman, and the challenges women can face when looking for outdoor partners were part of the motivation behind building the platform. Open groups and social platforms can offer very little context about who is responding, their experience or their intentions — and can sometimes lead to unwanted or inappropriate interactions.
MYMCO is designed to give you more information before you decide to connect or meet. Detailed Mountain Profiles, experience information, compatibility insights, reporting and blocking tools, and greater visibility into who you may be heading out with are all designed to support more informed choices.
No platform can guarantee that another person is safe or trustworthy, so we always encourage everyone — especially when meeting someone for the first time — to use their own judgment and take appropriate precautions.
Absolutely. MYMCO is continuously evolving based on how the mountain community uses it and what helps people connect, plan and adventure together more effectively.
A major ongoing focus is improving Connect — including compatibility, recommendations and how we surface the most relevant people and activities for you. We’ll also continue improving profiles, activities, communication, trust and safety, and the experience for guides and agencies.
And we want to build it with you. If something is missing, could work better, or there’s a feature you’d love to see, tell us. Your feedback helps shape what we build next.
I might even add a real CTA immediately underneath rather than burying it in the paragraph:
Have an idea for MYMCO? → Share feedback help@mymcoapp.com.
We would love to hear from you! Send feedback (bugs, feature requests, improvements etc) directly via the app or email us at help@mymcoapp.com
FOR GUIDES & AGENCIES
Everything you need to know about listing activities, reaching customers and running your trips with MYMCO.
GETTING STARTED
MYMCO is open to independent mountain guides and outdoor adventure agencies running guides activities and trips — whether you guide solo under your own name or run a team, you can apply for verification and get your own professional dashboard.
MYMCO brings distribution, bookings, community and trip management together in one platform.
You can create and publish paid activities, reach relevant mountain people, manage applicants and confirmed participants, communicate with your groups, manage guides, and keep track of bookings and payments.
Mountain Profiles also give you more context about the people joining your trips — helping you understand their experience, background and goals before you head out together.
From reaching customers to managing the trip, MYMCO keeps the people around your business connected.
Once your professional account is set up and the required information has been verified, you can create a paid activity directly on MYMCO.
Add the essential trip information — such as dates, destination, itinerary, requirements, price, available places and what’s included — and publish it to the MYMCO community.
From there, you can manage applicants, participants, communication, bookings and payments around the activity from your professional dashboard.
MYMCO isn’t designed to replace your website.
Your existing channels work well for customers who already know your business. MYMCO connects you with a wider network of mountain people who are discovering places, building Wishlists, meeting people and looking for future adventures.
It also adds something traditional booking systems usually don’t: the people layer. Mountain Profiles, participant insights and group visibility help you and your customers understand more about who they’ll be sharing the experience with.
At the same time, MYMCO brings participant management, communication, guide coordination, bookings and payments around the activity itself.
Your website can sell the trip. MYMCO connects the people around it.
REACHING CUSTOMERS & BUILDING GROUPS
MYMCO isn’t just another place to list a trip. It’s a network of mountain people building profiles around what they do, where they want to go and what they want to achieve.
Your activities can be discovered across MYMCO and surfaced to people based on relevant signals such as their interests, Mountain Profile, Wishlist and the places and activities they follow.
That means your trips become part of a wider ecosystem connecting people, places and adventures — helping you reach customers beyond your existing audience.
Yes. MYMCO is designed to work with the community you already have, not replace it.
You can invite existing customers to join your activities on MYMCO, bringing participants, communication and trip information together in one place.
As participants complete their Mountain Profiles, you also gain a clearer picture of the group you’re taking into the mountains.
For your customers, MYMCO continues to be useful beyond that single trip — they can connect with other mountain people, document their experience, discover future adventures and keep growing their own mountain network.
MYMCO isn’t designed to replace your website.
Your existing channels work well for customers who already know your business. MYMCO connects you with a wider network of mountain people who are discovering places, building Wishlists, meeting people and looking for future adventures.
It also adds something traditional booking systems usually don’t: the people layer. Mountain Profiles, participant insights and group visibility help you and your customers understand more about who they’ll be sharing the experience with.
At the same time, MYMCO brings participant management, communication, guide coordination, bookings and payments around the activity itself.
Your website can sell the trip. MYMCO connects the people around it.
Mountain Profiles give you more context about the people applying for and joining your activities — including relevant information about their experience, skills, interests, goals and mountain background.
You can review applicants and confirmed participants, see relevant profile information and better understand the composition of the group before departure. That means better-aligned groups and fewer mismatches once you’re on the mountain.
MYMCO’s compatibility and group insights provide additional context, but they are designed to support your professional judgment, not replace it. The guide or activity provider remains responsible for determining whether a participant is suitable for a particular activity.
MANAGE YOUR BUSINESS
Yes. Agencies can invite guides to their team, manage their guide network and assign guides to activities.
This gives agencies a clearer overview of who is guiding each trip while keeping guides connected to the activities and participants they’re responsible for.
Independent guides can also use MYMCO and run their own activities without belonging to an agency.
Every activity automatically has its own group chat, keeping the people involved in the same conversation.
Guides and participants can use it to get to know the group, ask questions, share updates and coordinate before the activity. MYMCO also supports 1:1 chats and independently created group chats when a separate conversation is needed.
This means communication can stay connected to the people and activity it belongs to rather than being scattered across different platforms.
A customer applies to join your trip; you approve or decline the application; once approved, they pay securely through MYMCO’s checkout, and the booking is confirmed. No payment is taken before you’ve approved someone.
Depending on the time the activity is being booked, there will be an option for full or split payment, with a 30% deposit followed by the remaining 70% balance.
Your professional dashboard gives you an overview of bookings, payment status and available balances, while MYMCO helps manage payment collection and relevant payment reminders.
Payout timing and other payment terms are explained before you start accepting bookings and are covered in our applicable terms. Learn more from the Terms & Conditions, and Bookings & Cancellation Policy.
There are no upfront fees to create your professional presence and start listing activities on MYMCO.
We charge a 10% commission on each booking, calculated on your trip price.
Customers also pay a separate MYMCO Admin Fee when booking a paid activity. This is charged to the customer for services provided through the platform and is separate from the price you set for your activity.
MYMCO collects customer payments through the platform and keeps your payment and payout status visible from your professional dashboard.
For bookings paid in full, the provider payout is released according to MYMCO’s payout schedule after the activity begins. For split payments, the booking deposit and remaining balance are handled according to the applicable payment schedule.
Exact payout timing, deductions and payment terms are set out in the relevant Terms & Conditions page.
Paid bookings are subject to the cancellation and refund policy shown to the customer when they book.
The amount a customer may be refunded depends on how far in advance they cancel. The MYMCO Admin Fee is non-refundable.
If an activity is cancelled by the provider, different refund rules apply.
For the exact refund amounts, deadlines and exceptions, please refer to the Booking & Cancellation Policy.
VERIFICATION & RESPONSIBILITY
Professional accounts go through a verification process before receiving the relevant verified status on MYMCO and access to professional dashboard.
For guides, this can include reviewing relevant professional qualifications, certifications and other required documentation. For agencies, verification can include business registration, relevant licences and other business information required to operate their activities. Where applicable, MYMCO may also require evidence of valid liability insurance.
Verification means that MYMCO has reviewed the information or documentation required for that account. It does not guarantee the performance of a guide or agency, participant safety, or the outcome of an activity.
You do.
MYMCO can provide information to help you make that decision — including the participant’s Mountain Profile, experience, skills and other relevant information, along with compatibility and group insights where available.
But MYMCO does not determine whether someone has the necessary ability, experience, fitness or other requirements for a specific activity.
Once MYMCO confirms a booking, the trip contract is directly between the guide or agency and the customer.
The guide or agency operating the activity remains responsible for assessing participant suitability and making the final decision about who can participate.
Activities listed by independent guides and agencies are provided and operated by the professional or business identified as the activity provider.
The provider remains responsible for planning and delivering the activity and for matters within their professional responsibility, including participant assessment, guiding decisions, safety procedures and compliance with applicable professional and legal requirements.
MYMCO provides the platform and related services that help connect customers and providers and facilitate areas such as discovery, communication, bookings and payments.
MYMCO does not operate or guide activities offered by independent providers.
The full allocation of responsibilities is set out in the MYMCO Terms & Conditions.
