Best time to visit the Blue Mountains on a tour: month by month

If you can pick a month for a Blue Mountains tour, pick one of these three. Winter rain has filled the waterfalls, the plateau is green, and the air over the Jamison Valley is as clear as it gets. Echo Point at ten in the morning shows Mount Solitary in sharp relief.

Temperatures on the plateau run from about ten degrees in the morning to the low twenties by afternoon, which is walking weather. The Giant Stairway and the Scenic Walkway are at their best, and the wildlife parks are busy with joeys.

The trade is people. October is the start of the busy season, and the small-group listings sell out a week ahead on weekends. Book the earlier pickup and the queue at the Railway is shorter.

Autumn gives the stillest air on the plateau, and still air is what the views depend on. The haze sits lower, the light is softer, and the afternoon lookouts, Wentworth Falls and Lincoln’s Rock, are at their best.

Leura is the reason people come in April: the village gardens and the avenues of European trees turn gold and red, and the Leura Gardens Festival runs in the first half of the month. Katoomba is quieter, and the cafés have tables.

Mornings cool through May, and by the end of the season the plateau can start the day at five degrees. Bring the layer, and the rest of the day is warm enough.

Summer on the plateau is warm rather than hot; it is the plains on the way out that reach thirty degrees. The days are long, the light lasts past eight, and the sunset listing earns its name at Echo Point.

Two things to plan around. Afternoon storms build on some summer days and can close the Skyway for an hour; and the walks are best in the morning, which is another argument for Echo Point before lunch. Carry water on the Giant Stairway.

The school holidays in January fill the coaches and Scenic World. The small-group listings are the way round the queues, and they book out first.

Winter is the quiet season and the cold one. Mornings on the plateau start near freezing, the frost sits on the Echo Point railings, and the light is low and clear once the mist moves.

The mist is the thing people ask about. On some winter mornings the Jamison Valley is full of cloud when the first coaches arrive, and the Three Sisters stand above a white sea. It usually lifts by late morning, which is why the operators keep Echo Point before lunch and the rides after; and when it does not lift, the Skyway crossing above the cloud is its own kind of view.

Katoomba and Leura run Christmas in July through the season, with the hotels doing roast dinners by the fire. It is the one time of year a Blue Mountains tour feels like a different country from Sydney.

Spring and autumn give the clearest air and the mildest days on the plateau, and they are when a Blue Mountains tour shows the Jamison Valley at its best.

Summer is warm and long, and the sunset listing comes into its own. Winter is cold, quiet and occasionally misty, and the mist usually lifts by late morning.

Every listing here runs all year from $142. Book the earlier pickup in the busy months and the queues are shorter.