quaking aspen and Rocky Mountain maple
western larch, peak Oct 11
Before you drive inA vehicle reservation is required on Going-to-the-Sun Road and some other corridors. The season's end date moves each year and the road closes with the first hard snow, so check the park's page before you drive up. The park’s own page on it.
Peak color should arrive around 27 Sep for the quaking aspen and Rocky Mountain maple, and around 11 Oct for the western larch.
Higher ground turns first, so the slopes above the road lead the valley by a few days.
Weather Wind to 37 mph Friday. Color may come down before it turns.
Weather Hard frost Sunday night. Peak may come early and go fast.
No new reports from the ground here this week.
- 7,000–8,000 ftFadingpeak Sep 615%
- 6,000–7,000 ftJust past peakpeak Sep 1424%
- 5,000–6,000 ftJust past peakpeak Sep 2128%
- 4,000–5,000 ftNearly peakpeak Sep 2725%
- 3,000–4,000 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 38%
Height off 3DEP inside the park’s own boundary; each band carries the date our model gives that elevation, corrections and all. The percentage is how much of the park stands in it.
That’s 1 day later than our model alone would say. This September has been running warm, which shifts peak color.
The place
They call it the Crown of the Continent, and for once the nickname undersells the place. Glacier National Park sits on 1,013,572 acres of northwestern Montana where the Northern Rockies make their last violent stand before the Great Plains flatten everything east to the horizon. The mountains here look unfinished. Aretes so sharp they could cut paper. Cirques scooped out like someone took an ice cream scoop to granite. Waterfalls pour off every hanging valley in July, fed by snowpack that can top 80 feet on Logan Pass in heavy years. We have photographed more than 60 national parks, and Glacier still makes us set up the tripod more often than anywhere else.
Established 1910. About 3.1 million/year visitors.
If you can only come on certain days
Set the days you can be here. Everything under them answers for those days, not for peak.
Sunday 27 September to Monday 28 September
You’ll find it leaves down up high, peak color lower down.
Up at 7,000 feet the stands peak around Sep 6; down at 5,000 feet they hold on until about Sep 27. Pick your elevation for the day you come.
- 7,000–8,000 ftLeaves downpeak Sep 6
- 6,000–7,000 ftFadingpeak Sep 14
- 5,000–6,000 ftJust past peakpeak Sep 21
- 4,000–5,000 ftPeak colorpeak Sep 27
- Where to drive
- Going-to-the-Sun Road, about 3 miles · Seeley-Swan Highway (MT 83), about 89 miles
- What turns
- quaking aspen, Rocky Mountain maple, serviceberry, huckleberry, black cottonwood
- Entrance
- $35
What turns, and when
- quaking aspen43%
- Rocky Mountain maple10%
- serviceberry10%
- huckleberry10%
- black cottonwood9%
- western larch7%
Also named across Montana, outside what the canopy read measures here: Paper Birch.
Montana's fall is a two-act show: aspens and cottonwoods turn gold around 27 Sep, then western larches steal the finale around 11 Oct, turning entire mountain slopes amber before dropping their needles.
This forecast is built from the species that stand here, their elevation and this September’s weather, and corrected in season by cameras, foresters and our own crew. Out here we score it against NASA's satellite record of when the canopy shuts down, read inside each unit’s own boundary: two dates in three land within 12 days of it. How this map is made