# When booked BC Parks campsites come back: the first eight days

Parks Open, report 1, published 2026-09-10. Observation window 2–9 Sep 2026 (Pacific days). Aggregates CSV: https://parksopen.ca/reports/bc-parks-reopenings-2026-09/data.csv

A reopening is one campsite night that changed from booked to available between two of our readings of the official BC Parks reservation system. We do not know why it changed (a cancellation, a changed booking, or an expired hold), so we say reopening rather than cancellation.

## Totals
- 16,551 reopenings in 8 days; 12,128 distinct site nights at 3,640 sites in 105 of 145 reservable campgrounds.
- 57.4% were for a stay night within the next 7 days; 6.3% for the same day.
- Of 9,198 reopenings later seen booked again: 29% within an hour, half within 4 h 39 min, 76% within a day (quartiles 44 / 279 / 1398 minutes).
- 39.9% of reopened nights were a Friday or Saturday; at 1,780 sites both nights of one weekend came back during the window.

## Lead time to the stay night
- Same day: 1,038 (6.3%)
- 1–3 days: 4,750 (28.7%)
- 4–7 days: 3,714 (22.4%)
- 8–14 days: 3,323 (20.1%)
- 15–30 days: 2,748 (16.6%)
- 31+ days: 978 (5.9%)

## By hour of day (Pacific)
00:254 · 01:144 · 02:54 · 03:97 · 04:26 · 05:95 · 06:297 · 07:568 · 08:879 · 09:1097 · 10:1069 · 11:1147 · 12:1154 · 13:1027 · 14:1052 · 15:1021 · 16:1022 · 17:1017 · 18:844 · 19:1013 · 20:872 · 21:814 · 22:566 · 23:422

## Per day (Pacific)
- Wed 2 (2026-09-02): 2,846
- Thu 3 (2026-09-03): 2,987
- Fri 4 (2026-09-04): 2,305
- Sat 5 (2026-09-05): 1,627
- Sun 6 (2026-09-06): 1,621
- Mon 7 (2026-09-07): 1,980
- Tue 8 (2026-09-08): 2,118
- Wed 9 (2026-09-09): 1,067 (partial, to 17:05 PT)

## Parks with the most reopenings
- Golden Ears: 1,201
- Cultus Lake: 933
- Rathtrevor Beach: 675
- Bear Creek: 661
- Alice Lake: 615
- Shuswap Lake: 518
- Porteau Cove: 506
- Miracle Beach: 456
- Fintry: 419
- Herald: 391
- Sasquatch: 364
- Sx̱ótsaqel / Chilliwack Lake: 358

## Method and limits
Excluded: status changes from closed or not operating to available (11 in this window) and a site's first-ever observation. Lead time is to each stay night; one site can count several times. Eight days is short and includes a long weekend; reading cadence got faster for busy parks on 7 Sep, so time-to-rebook is coarser early in the window; anything that opened and was taken between two readings was never seen, so true counts are higher, not lower. Counts of what we observed, not the chance a site opens for you.

Cite as: Parks Open, When booked BC Parks campsites come back: the first eight days, September 2026, https://parksopen.ca/reports/bc-parks-reopenings-2026-09
Licence: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Use, quote and build on the numbers, charts and CSV; credit Parks Open and link to the page.
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Page: https://parksopen.ca/reports/bc-parks-reopenings-2026-09 · Every number above is read from the official reservation system and stamped with the time it was observed. Parks Open never books on anyone's behalf. Tools for agents: MCP https://parksopen.ca/api/mcp · REST https://parksopen.ca/openapi.json · index https://parksopen.ca/llms.txt
