High altitude affect grilling?

Hi all, I am at my moms house and she is at 6700 feet and I live at sea level. We grilled T-bone steaks last night and they were very dry, especially for being medium to meduim rare. I would expect well done to be this dry.

Does high altitude affect this? If so, how can I adjust for this? I am cooking on my newly aquired Jumbo Joe.

Perhaps somebody else will chime in who knows more... my mom's at about 7500 feet, and we've discussed cooking differences, but it's all second hand.

At 6700 feet water boils 200 at instead of 212. So if you were using some kind of wet cooking it's going to take a little longer. And even for something like roasting a turkey, the moisture leaving is keeping things a bit cooler and she has to add some time. But the results are fine - if she cooks to the right temperature it's not dried out or anything, no more than her turkey is anyway (hah! sorry Mom).

That being said, for a steak, unless it's just taking some crazy amount of time, as long as you're hitting the desired temperature I'd be really surprised if it was really noticeable. If it's taking much longer than normal I might try a longer sear step but I'm just guessing here.

Anybody else care to chime in?

I got a little more information - the drying effect *is* noticeable even with grilling. It's just really easy for the moisture to leave. And the only solutions I know of are to...

1. Make sure you're doing normal stuff like resting the meat.
2. You should try brining with chicken and leaner pork cuts, and you might even try it with some non traditional meats but I wouldn't start with an expensive cut! At some point this is very experimental...

"On the other hand, since water evaporates more quickly at high altitudes, meats cooked on the grill will tend to dry out more quickly than when cooked at sea level. Note that the temperature isn't affected, just the moisture content of the food. So a grilled steak might be more dry at high altitude than at sea level — even if it's not overcooked temperaturewise."

From - About.com High Altitude Cooking

Also - USDA Food Safety High Altitude

I live at 6000 feet in golden, CO and when my steaks are ~126 degrees when I pull them from the heat and then let them rest, they're medium rare and not dry at all.

At high altitude (over 4500 ft), I agree with Dave, pull your meat 5 degrees or even 10 degrees lower using an instant read. At altitude I don't find the temp rises after removing from heat.

i always rest steaks ON A RACK rather than on a plate for 5 minutes. Got this from a chef and i don't know why but I swear it make the meat more juicy.