Pacific Northwest: When is the best time to visit?

When is the best time to visit the

As you head closer to sea level, even if you're visiting the Columbia River Gorge as well as the coastal regions, there's a chance that cold Winter storms can accumulate snow here and thus cause you to put on chains.

While you certainly have less of a concern about waterfalls drying up, it does happen on quite a few of them (especially those with smaller drainages).

So given all these considerations, when is the best time to visit?

Well, some friends and relatives who live (or have lived) in the Seattle area have told me that, by far, the best season to come is the Summer. Even though you do get the odd storm or cloudy days with drizzle, for the most part, you do get pleasantly sunny skies and comfortable temperatures - the perfect kind of weather for going into the mountains for a good hike. If you're at the coast, clear weather might yield spectacularly colorful sunsets. Similarly, if you're in Seattle, you could see Mt Rainier, while if you're in Portland, you could see Mt St Helens, Mt Rainier, Mt Adams, and Mt Hood, among others. Indeed, the vistas expand tremendously without clouds blocking the view.

Generally, the window of opportunity here is the classic June through September time frame. Obviously, this is also the most expensive time to visit (both due to the weather as well as schools being out).

Now it's quite possible that snow accumulations from a harsh winter and a cooler-than-normal (even stormy) late Spring/early Summer may still make a trip in June or early July frustratingly restricted due to road closures or hazardous conditions from snow and ice. On a recent trip to Washington in 2011, we were getting July-like conditions at the end of August! We could only imagine how difficult travel here would've been had we come to the mountains in June or even July!

If you come in the Autumn, you'll get gorgeous fall colors (especially juxtaposed with waterfalls in the Columbia River Gorge and Silver Falls State Park), but you also might get caught in some early Winter storms that might start showing up in the September-October time frame. Thus, you might have to be willing to be flexible and wary of road closures, especially in the mountain areas.

Likewise, if you come in the Spring, you could get (as we did) late Winter Storms that either maintain or augment the snow accumulations as well as make for a rather cold and soggy experience out in the bush. So once again, road closures become an issue as well as ice on both the roads (especially black ice) and the trails (watch out if the trail has dropoff exposure). There might even be patches of snow on the trails, which can be bad news on a trail with dropoffs. On the flip side, this is also the season of snowmelt so water volume are typically the greatest in the May-June timeframe (especially if the falls is fed by melting snow).

Then, there's Winter time. I'm sure photographers and locals love the lack of crowds at the popular attractions and some really nice photo ops from the variable weather conditions that occur this time. But if you're visiting on limited time and budget, this isn't the time to go waterfalling unless you're also here to do some skiing or ice climbing.

Finally, we have to say something about Alaska. And the basic message is this. Alaska is even rainier and harsher than the Pacific Northwest of the lower 48 states. If you can imagine places like southeastern arm of the state getting about 300 days of rain a year, you can appreciate that the Summers here are very short.

We had a park ranger non-chalantly tell us that Summer was over two weeks ago, and we happened to be in the Glacier Bay area on the next to last day of August! So based on that comment, the short Summer is basically between July through mid-August, which is also the most expensive time. Come outside this time and there's a higher likelihood that you'll have to deal with the elements though as I said earlier, even their short Summer is no respite from bad weather.

So there's our take on waterfalling seasons in the Pacific Northwest. We hope you find it useful when planning your trip out here.

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