Mud season is the best season, and almost nobody knows it

Every valley that lives on tourism has a season it apologises for. Ours is April and May, when the snow goes patchy, the ski lifts stop, the rafts are not yet running and half the restaurants in town close for three weeks so their staff can go to Mexico.

Locals call it mud season and say it with affection, because it is the six weeks of the year when the valley belongs to the people who live here. I have been trying to talk guests into visiting in May for twelve years, with mixed success. Here is the argument, one more time.

The park road opens to bicycles first

This is the single best thing that happens here all year and hardly any visitor knows about it. The Teton park road between Taggart Lake and Signal Mountain stays closed to cars until the first of May, but the plough goes through in April and the road opens to cyclists, walkers and skaters.

So for roughly three weeks, you can ride twenty miles of perfect asphalt with the Cathedral Group two miles to your left and not a single car anywhere. There are usually more moose on the road than people. We keep eight bikes at the lodge and lend them out for nothing.

Moose calving in the willows

Cow moose drop their calves in late May, and they choose thick willow along creek bottoms to do it. Fish Creek, which runs below our cabins, is exactly that habitat. We have had calves visible from the creek path in five of the last seven years.

A word of caution that I give every guest in May: a cow moose with a new calf is the most dangerous animal in this valley, more so than any bear. They charge without much warning and they do not bluff. Watch from the path, keep a building between you and them if you can, and never let a dog off a lead.

You can get a table

In February, dinner in town needs booking ten days ahead. In May you can walk into almost anywhere, sit at the bar, and talk to a chef who is not running at capacity and is glad to see you. It is a completely different town.

The same is true here. Our rooms in mud season run at about half the February rate, there is no minimum stay, and the staff have time to sit down with you and plan a week properly instead of doing it in four minutes at a busy front desk.

What you give up

Honesty matters more than a sales pitch, so: the skiing is over, the high trails are still under several feet of snow, the rivers run high and brown with melt so the fishing is poor, and it rains. Some days it does all four at once.

If your trip depends on hiking to an alpine lake or catching a cutthroat, come in July. If you want an empty valley, easy wildlife, absurdly good cycling and a rate that makes a longer stay possible, come in May. I would take May over July, and I live here.