Peak color, most of the stand20 OctAim for 19 to 22 Oct
In the wilderness today, Sep 25Still green
bigleaf maple and black cottonwood
vine maple, peak Oct 29
Peak color should arrive around 17 Oct for the bigleaf maple and black cottonwood, and around 29 Oct for the vine maple.
Higher ground turns first, so the slopes above the road lead the valley by a few days.
Weather Wind to 44 mph Friday. Color may come down before it turns.
No new reports from the ground here this week.
Still greenStartingNearly peakPeakPast peakNo fall canopy we forecastInside the line, each band of elevation is painted on its own date.
Around Mount Jefferson Wilderness Linn County holds most of the wilderness and is starting to turn today. That’s the county as a whole, which peaks 8 days earlier than the wilderness’s own stands: the wilderness is still green. Jefferson County, to the east, is 6 days behind. Marion County, to the northwest, is 10 days ahead.By elevation The wilderness runs from about 3,590 to 6,167 feet. That’s 20 days of season between the top and the bottom: the high stands peak around Sep 24, the low ground holds until about Oct 14, and the color comes downhill in between. The date at the top of this page is the 3,000 to 4,000 foot band.
6,000–7,000 ftPeak colorpeak Sep 247%
5,000–6,000 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 236%
4,000–5,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 745%
3,000–4,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 1411%
SepOctNov
Height off 3DEP inside the wilderness’s own boundary; each band carries the date our model gives that elevation, corrections and all. The percentage is how much of the wilderness stands in it.
See it now PhenoCam Network, US-ME4 camera, 20 km away, captured Sep 25.Plan this trip
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.
Monday 19 October to Tuesday 20 October
You’ll find it fading up high, just past peak lower down.
Up at 5,000 feet the stands peak around Oct 2; down at 4,000 feet they hold on until about Oct 14. Pick your elevation for the day you come.
5,000–6,000 ftFadingpeak Oct 2
4,000–5,000 ftFadingpeak Oct 7
3,000–4,000 ftJust past peakpeak Oct 14
Where to drive
McKenzie Pass Scenic Byway (Route 242), about 23 miles · Historic Columbia River Highway, about 70 miles
What turns
bigleaf maple, vine maple, black cottonwood, red alder, willow
What turns, and when
bigleaf maple29%
vine maple24%
black cottonwood20%
red alder17%
willow8%
red-osier dogwood2%
Also named across Oregon, outside what the canopy read measures here: Western Larch.
Vine maples turn vivid scarlet in the understory of Douglas fir forests, bigleaf maples go gold with enormous leaves, and the Columbia Gorge frames it all against waterfalls and basalt.
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
