[pct-l] Best months to hike OR and WA PCT

[Eric Lee]

John wrote:
>
My wife and I are planning on backpacking the PCT over two summers/years.
What are the best months to backpack the OR & WA portions of the PCT. We are
looking for the least snow, best weather, less mosquitoes, and time to
finish before wintry weather returns.
>

The peak of the best time is the last half of August and the first half of
September.  The bugs are dead, the weather is still fairly reliable (though
no guarantees), the huckleberries are starting to ripen, and it's still
pretty warm.

Pushing back earlier into the start of August or July, the main downside is
more mosquitoes, particularly in Oregon.  If you're out in early July then
you'll probably have significant snow patches still hanging around.

Moving later into September, the main problem is that the odds of multi-day
rainstorms starts to go up significantly.  We usually have two or three good
weather systems blow through in September, though the days between the
systems are still excellent.  If you go into October the duration of the
weather systems becomes longer, the good days between them become fewer, and
you run the risk of significant snow at higher elevations.  The end of the
hiking season comes with the first big snowstorm which can occur anywhere
between the end of September and the middle of November depending on the
year.

For hiking OR and WA in one go you'll probably want to start in southern OR
around the last week of July or first week of August and plan on being
finished by mid-late September.  That puts you on a pretty normal thru-hiker
schedule, actually.
  
Eric