Barry Bogart wrote:
>
> What IS the best time of year to ride the GDT (North to South)?
>

There isn't a single answer to that question, but I'll share our
thoughts. We started in Banff on August 5 and reached Antelope Wells
on Sept 27. When we take this trip again (some day) I think we would
start in Banff some time between Aug 5 and 15. My comments are based
on only one trip - and we may have had a weird year.

I did a fair bit of research using the historical weather records on
wunderground.com to figure out rain patterns - and essentially decided
that there wasn't a reliable enough pattern to pick our dates in order
to avoid rain.

Mosquitoes can be a problem and I believe they are worst in June and
July. I'm not an expert about mosquito timing in BC/MT/WY/CO because
I don't live there - so I'm basing this on the GDR and CDT trip
reports I've read, and on my experiences in the Sierra Nevada and the
mid-west. I just hate being around mosquitoes, they make me nutty, so
we chose to go later in the year to try to avoid them. We were
successful - we really didn't have any mosquito problems until we got
into NM.

The reason the mosquitoes were gone is that the temperatures had
dropped far enough below freezing to kill them. I didn't keep notes,
but I think we had 8-10 mornings with frost in our first 20 days of
riding, with night-time low temps during those first few weeks
generally between 25 and 30. So you have to decide if you dislike
mosquitoes more than you dislike cold weather.

NM gets most of its rain during the monsoon season in July and August.
It is hottest prior to the monsoon - I think May and June are the
hottest months. The rains cool things off a little. We had
relatively pleasant weather in NM - about 85 degrees, but I don't know
if that is typical for late September or if we were just lucky.

I prefer cold weather over hot weather - and I'd rather have 30 degree
mornings and 70 degree days than 50-90 degree ranges. But, if you
stretch too far into September or October then you risk snow in
southern CO. I don't mind if it snows a few inches so long as it is
still early enough in the season that I know it will melt off in a day
or two, I just park in your tent and wait it out. But you certainly
wouldn't want to be up on a high pass in mid October and have a foot
of snow that stays the winter.

The aspen autumn colors are another factor we considered. We were
hoping to be there when the colors were in their glory, but we were
too early.

And another factor to consider is whether you want to be out in the
hunting season. The benefit is that you don't need to worry about
being stranded on a remote road without access to help, the downside
is that there is more traffic - I would guess 40-70% of the traffic we
saw on most USFS roads would not have been there but for the hunting
season. We found that the hunters we talked to were kind and
generous, and typically were polite drivers, but it does reduce the
sense that you are "out there" in a remote place.

And the last factor was estimating how long our trip would take. We
guessed it would take 70 days, and it took only 54 days - so we were
in CO earlier than we expected and that might be why we missed the
aspen colors. We calculated our start date so that we would be
crossing from CO into NM on about Oct 1st (we actually crossed a few
weeks before that).

If you have the flexibility to have an open-ended finish date I'd
recommend taking that approach -- the people we met on the trail who
had to arrive at Antelope Wells on a particular date were driven by
that, and couldn't freely choose when to stop and when to have rest days.

Other folks who've ridden the GDR, or are more familiar with the
weather patterns on the route, should chime in.

- Amy