Handy tips for backcountry permit scanning

You probably already know that you can use Campnab to scan parks in the United States and Canada for backcountry permit cancelations. If you’re unfamiliar with our service, here’s the story: Essentially, our service checks the booking systems for permit availability. So, if someone cancels a (backcountry, wilderness, river, timed entry, etc.) permit that matches your Campnab scan, we alert you of the opening.

Using our service doesn’t mean you automatically win the permit reservation you’re after. We don’t book, hold, transfer, or resell permits. We only let you know if a permit becomes available. It’s up to you to act on that permit before someone else does. (A custom ringtone can help.)

Hikers, rafters, and other explorers have used Campnab for years to notify them when there are permit cancellations. In that time, we’ve learned a bit about permits, their many quirks, and some scanning limitations for these openings. Following is a list of some notes you might find helpful:

Scanning for permits is tough

Lotteries, entry points, and group sizes complicate scanning for permit cancelations. Also, some booking systems use different systems to manage their different parks/regions. We do our best, but there are some quirks with permits.

The Minimum Number of Nights setting doesn’t affect permits

The last step in scan creation allows you to filter out shorter openings. This setting is intended for campsite scanning and doesn’t impact permits. Our system defaults to “1 or more” for all permit scans.

Availability flickering produces false alerts

Recreation.gov sometimes toggles permits momentarily from unavailable to available and back again on rec.gov’s back-end. Our system spots such changes (as it should), triggering an alert, but the permit would not be available if it were a flicker. FWIW, we generally don’t see this behavior on other booking systems.

Enchantment permits cause a lot of false alerts

These false alerts are a real drag and result in a fair bit of unnecessary clicking. Real openings do come up there, but the number of false alerts can be quite bothersome. You can read more on Enchantment permits in this post.

Group size matters

Rec.gov can be confusing as it hides availability if your group size doesn’t match the available permit. So when you’re on that booking site, you might want to vary the group size to see what’s available.

We can’t help with every permit

Some areas offer permits via lottery. Also, some parks only offer canceled permit reservations to those on-site at the park on the arrival date. Obviously, we can’t help with permits handled in these ways.

Some permits are in *very* short supply.

Some areas only offer up a few permits a day (unlike campsites, of which there are often hundreds). For this reason, we see relatively few cancelations for some permits—especially river permits.

The above is probably a bummer to read. The truth is that permit scanning isn’t as good as we’d like. That said, our members have found many permits by using Campnab to scan for cancelations.

I’m sure we’ll spot more backcountry booking quirks in the future. So, I’ll return to this post periodically to add new notes and tips as they arise.

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