When is peak fall color at Olympic National Park?

Our forecast puts peak color at Olympic National Park around 4 Oct. The four days to aim for are 3 to 6 Oct. We publish our error rate.

Olympic National Park Fall Foliage: 2026 Peak Color Forecast

Q: What trees turn color at Olympic National Park?

Vine Maple, Bigleaf Maple, Black Cottonwood, Red Alder, 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.

Peak color, most of the stand4 OctAim for 3 to 6 Oct

In the park today, Sep 25Starting to turn

black cottonwood and willow

bigleaf maple and vine maple, peak Oct 13

Peak color should arrive around 20 Sep for the black cottonwood and willow, and around 13 Oct for the bigleaf maple and vine maple.

Roadsides and wetland edges turn first, and the woods behind them run a few days later.

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 Olympic National Park Clallam County holds most of the park and is starting to turn today. Jefferson County, to the east, is 1 day behind. Grays Harbor County, to the south, is 3 days behind.

By elevation The park runs from about 272 to 5,223 feet. That’s 15 days of season between the top and the bottom: the high stands peak around Sep 20, the low ground holds until about Oct 5, and the color comes downhill in between. The date at the top of this page is the 3,000 to 4,000 foot band.

5,000–6,000 ftJust past peakpeak Sep 207%
4,000–5,000 ftNearly peakpeak Sep 2714%
3,000–4,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 417%
2,000–3,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 723%
1,000–2,000 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 221%
0–1,000 ftStarting to turnpeak Oct 517%

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 earlier than our model alone would say. This September has been running cool, which shifts peak color.

The place

Three ecosystems that have no business sharing a zip code. Olympic gives you temperate rainforest soaking up 12 feet of rain a year, 73 miles of driftwood-strewn Pacific coastline, and glacier-capped peaks pushing 8,000 feet. You can stand in a moss-dripping old-growth forest in the morning and be watching waves pound sea stacks by lunch. No other park in the system covers this much range.

Established 1938. About 3.5 million/year visitors.

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.

ArrivingLeaving

Saturday 3 October to Sunday 4 October

You’ll find it just past peak up high, peak color lower down.

Up at 4,000 feet the stands peak around Sep 27; down at 1,000 feet they hold on until about Oct 5. Pick your elevation for the day you come.

4,000–5,000 ftJust past peakpeak Sep 27
3,000–4,000 ftPeak colorpeak Oct 4
2,000–3,000 ftNearly peakpeak Oct 7
1,000–2,000 ftPeak colorpeak Oct 2
0–1,000 ftPeak colorpeak Oct 5

Where to drive: Mountain Loop Highway, about 97 miles
What turns: black cottonwood, bigleaf maple, red alder, willow, vine maple
Entrance: $30

What turns, and when

black cottonwood25%
bigleaf maple24%
red alder18%
willow14%
vine maple12%
red-osier dogwood6%

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

All of Washington