Happy hikers: New website tracks day pass availability for BC Parks

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The summer season means plans for day trips and camping around BC’s parks are at a peak, but that also means fighting for your life for a day pass.

Not anymore. A new website, BC Parks Scanner, has just made booking your day pass a whole lot easier with its live-tracking system of day pass availability.

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While the BC Parks website added a new notification feature to its reservation service, this tracker was set up independent of the government by an unlucky hiker who wanted to help out fellow visitors.

Vadim Yakhin developed the website after his own struggle with booking a pass to Joffre Lakes. He explained in a Reddit post that even though he logged on to the booking site early, the passes were sold out within seven minutes.

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BC Park passes become available at 7 am two days before your planned trip, but as experienced by Yakhin, they usually sell out within minutes. Then, hopeful hikers have to constantly refresh the page to see if any cancellations come up.

Luckily this will no longer be a struggle, as the BC Parks scanner live tracks the cancellations for Garibaldi Park, Golden Ears Provincial Park, and Joffre Lakes.

Simply select what park you want to visit, and the website will display the day passes available for the following two days for the different sites within each park.

Screenshot from bcparksscanner.ca

The website breaks down the availability for day, morning, or afternoon passes with a colour-coded system. You can easily view whether there are no spots, few spots, some spots, or many spots available.

Even though the new tracker will make viewing the availability of passes easier, a lot are still sold out so you will have to be quick in booking one when you see it become available.

Check out the scanner and book your day pass for a wonderful summer in BC with some killer park views.