Peak color, most of the stand5 OctAim for 4 to 7 Oct
In the forest today, Sep 25Starting to turn
willow and black cottonwood
bigleaf maple and vine maple, peak Oct 21
Peak color should arrive around 28 Sep for the willow and black cottonwood, and around 21 Oct for the bigleaf maple and vine maple.
Higher ground turns first, so the slopes above the road lead the valley by a few days.
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 Gifford Pinchot National Forest Skamania County holds most of the forest and is starting to turn today. Lewis County, to the northwest, is 1 day behind. Klickitat County, to the southeast, is 4 days ahead.By elevation The forest runs from about 978 to 5,668 feet. That’s 25 days of season between the top and the bottom: the high stands peak around Oct 1, the low ground holds until about Oct 7, and the color comes downhill in between. The date at the top of this page is the 0 to 2,000 foot band.
4,000–6,000 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 124%
2,000–4,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 1252%
0–2,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 720%
SepOctNov
Height off 3DEP inside the forest’s own boundary; each band carries the date our model gives that elevation, corrections and all. The percentage is how much of the forest stands in it.
That’s 1 day earlier than our model alone would say. This September has been running cool, which shifts peak color.
Set the days you can be here. Everything under them answers for those days, not for peak.
Sunday 4 October to Monday 5 October
You’ll find it just past peak up high, nearly peak lower down.
Up at 4,000 feet the stands peak around Oct 1; down at 2,000 feet they hold on until about Oct 7. Pick your elevation for the day you come.
4,000–6,000 ftJust past peakpeak Oct 1
2,000–4,000 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 12
0–2,000 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 7
Where to drive
Historic Columbia River Highway, about 46 miles · Mountain Loop Highway, about 127 miles · McKenzie Pass Scenic Byway (Route 242), about 135 miles
What turns
willow, black cottonwood, bigleaf maple, vine maple, red alder
What turns, and when
willow44%
black cottonwood17%
bigleaf maple16%
vine maple11%
red alder10%
red-osier dogwood2%
Also named across Washington, outside what the canopy read measures here: Western Larch.
Vine maples turn scarlet in the Cascade understory, bigleaf maples go gold in the lowlands, and the western larches in the Okanogan and Wenatchee forests turn amber on the high slopes.
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
