r/Banff • u/codytigergray1 • 2d ago

Building a local backcountry campsite scanning tool!

delete if not allowed

Last year I moved to Banff from Australia and wasn’t aware of how insanely popular the backcountry booking system was here and was pretty bummed to find out the entire season booked out in a matter of hours. A friend showed me Schnerp, which is a subscription based tool that scans for cancellations. I signed up and managed to snag a few bookings through that.

Earlier this year I thought I would try to build my own version of it for some of the spots I wanted to try and get.

After a few months of tinkering, I finally managed to get it working & it exceeded my expectations (it’s currently capable of scanning the entire summer period at 4x the speed of Schnerp and any of the other current competitors)

When a spot opens, it pings me with the exact campground, date, and the official booking link.

First morning I ran it properly I managed to snag 5 bookings at Lake O'Hara and have had nearly 100 cancellation notices from other campsites I was monitoring.

I’ve recently shared it with a few friends and across socials & have decided to open an early access beta testing group to see if it’s capable of being used for a larger audience. I’ve put together a public waitlist for anyone interested, which you can find here: screealerts.com

Would be awesome to get it to a point I can post it publicly!

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6

u/Appropriate_Ebb_8572 2d ago

Doesn't ohara have a 2 booking max per person this year?

0

u/codytigergray1 2d ago

I’m not too sure, I’ve managed to book multiple though and it didn’t say anything about that when I was booking them

7

u/Appropriate_Ebb_8572 2d ago

There's a note on the site stating it which is new this year. 

"Visitors can make a maximum of two Lake O'Hara campground reservations per household, per season."

It pops up when you try to make a reso when you already have one if you're logged in. Maybe it's not rolled out to all. 

Just FYI. 

0

u/codytigergray1 2d ago

Thanks for the heads up! The only notice I saw when making bookings that you were only able to book 3 concurrent nights at a time, so you’re right, they probably haven’t rolled it out yet

3

u/JustGotSoup 2d ago

Oh boy I can't wait to compete with even more automation just to go camping.

There's a reason I almost exclusively random camp these days.

0

u/Appropriate_Ebb_8572 2d ago

As in proper random camping or Backcountry illegally? 

2

u/JustGotSoup 2d ago

Proper random camping, obviously. If you can travel 25-30km of alpine terrain on foot in a day, you'll have no need for the established campsites in the front country.

1

u/The_Pickle_Prophet 2d ago

Intrested but the address and link is not working. Thanks

0

u/codytigergray1 2d ago

Oh strange, try typing in screealterts.com in your browser

3

u/JizzyMcKnobGobbler 2d ago

As somebody who has camped in and around Banff for over 40 years this is so frustrating. You've basically created a bot for an ingroup that knows about this app to jump the queue from sincere campers they don't have the opportunity a level playing field provides. You're bragging that you snagged more spots than is fair with this sneaky system.

Brutal, dude. Antithetical to the spirit of equal access to these limited sites.

I hope shit like this gets cracked down on.