When should we hold the next Sleeping Princess Trail run? 11/25/12, 12/27/12, early March 2013 or early November 2013?
The way I see it there are three main considerations, Temperature, Precipitation and Holiday weekend traffic.
Weather: Lets face it, in the summer Laughlin gets hotter than #&!!. Personally, I'd prefer to avoid dates that have a high probability of getting over 90F. If you look at the following :link: you'll see that in the last 18 years the average number of days where the temperature exceeded 90 (>=90). January 0.0, February 0.1, March 2.5, April 11.1, ... October 18.6, November 0.2, December 0.0. This is why we choose early November for the date of the last run. Based solely on Temperature, I think the best times of the year for SP are early November and early March. Although late November and December would be OK also.
Precipitation: Sleeping Princess is a very arid area, but the trail follows the streambed, so water flowing in the stream could make it much more difficult. We should also be aware of the remote possibility of a flash flood. Looking at the following :link: you can see the amount of rain fall by month. January and February are two of the wettest months (although still very dry), followed by March. Another thing to look at are the columns labeled # days with >= 0.01 in, >= 0.1 in, >= 0.5 in and >= 1.0 in. These columns indicate the number of days in each month that got more than that amount of rain in a day between 1988 and 2006. The probability of getting rain is very low in both the Spring and Fall, but slightly higher in the Spring. The Sleeping Princess trail is maintained by Bullhead 4 Wheelers Inc. :link: so I contacted their president and asked about doing SP in March. Here is her reply, "There usually is no time that it is not passable. We get hardly any rain. March is a good month for everything. Let us know and if possible can take you to extra credit."
Holidays: When we di SP 11/3/12 we encountered a fair amount of traffic. We were barely started when a group of 6 Jeeps came up behind us. Later we were passed by 3 Jeeps and after that we meet two UTV's. Sleeping Princess is pretty narrow and it is difficult for large groups to pass. I assume Holiday weekends would have more traffic than non-holiday weekends. OTOH if we choose a Holiday weekend more people would have time off. The holidays in the Spring are 1/21/13, 2/18/13 and 5/27/13. Fall Holidays are 9/2/13, 10/14/13, 11/11/13, 11/28/13 and 12/25/13.
The way I see it there are three main considerations, Temperature, Precipitation and Holiday weekend traffic.
Weather: Lets face it, in the summer Laughlin gets hotter than #&!!. Personally, I'd prefer to avoid dates that have a high probability of getting over 90F. If you look at the following :link: you'll see that in the last 18 years the average number of days where the temperature exceeded 90 (>=90). January 0.0, February 0.1, March 2.5, April 11.1, ... October 18.6, November 0.2, December 0.0. This is why we choose early November for the date of the last run. Based solely on Temperature, I think the best times of the year for SP are early November and early March. Although late November and December would be OK also.
Precipitation: Sleeping Princess is a very arid area, but the trail follows the streambed, so water flowing in the stream could make it much more difficult. We should also be aware of the remote possibility of a flash flood. Looking at the following :link: you can see the amount of rain fall by month. January and February are two of the wettest months (although still very dry), followed by March. Another thing to look at are the columns labeled # days with >= 0.01 in, >= 0.1 in, >= 0.5 in and >= 1.0 in. These columns indicate the number of days in each month that got more than that amount of rain in a day between 1988 and 2006. The probability of getting rain is very low in both the Spring and Fall, but slightly higher in the Spring. The Sleeping Princess trail is maintained by Bullhead 4 Wheelers Inc. :link: so I contacted their president and asked about doing SP in March. Here is her reply, "There usually is no time that it is not passable. We get hardly any rain. March is a good month for everything. Let us know and if possible can take you to extra credit."
Holidays: When we di SP 11/3/12 we encountered a fair amount of traffic. We were barely started when a group of 6 Jeeps came up behind us. Later we were passed by 3 Jeeps and after that we meet two UTV's. Sleeping Princess is pretty narrow and it is difficult for large groups to pass. I assume Holiday weekends would have more traffic than non-holiday weekends. OTOH if we choose a Holiday weekend more people would have time off. The holidays in the Spring are 1/21/13, 2/18/13 and 5/27/13. Fall Holidays are 9/2/13, 10/14/13, 11/11/13, 11/28/13 and 12/25/13.
