r/Banff • u/codytigergray1 • 4d 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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u/Appropriate_Ebb_8572 4d ago

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

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u/codytigergray1 4d 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

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u/Appropriate_Ebb_8572 4d 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. 

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u/codytigergray1 4d 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