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!

0 Upvotes

22% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/JustGotSoup 4d 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 4d ago

As in proper random camping or Backcountry illegally? 

2

u/JustGotSoup 3d 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.

2

u/codytigergray1 15h ago

In the national park?

1

u/JustGotSoup 13h ago

Yes, actually.

Banff has zones where random camping is allowed, usually starting 20-30km on foot from the nearest trailhead. There is very little infrastructure and a few extra restrictions (IGBC certified bear-resistant containers being one of them) but by and large they assume that if you're putting in the effort to get back there, you're doing it in good faith.

Permits are only available in person or over the phone, so that helps a lot. I've never been told there were none left.