If there's a single best time to drive this road, most folks up here will tell you it's autumn — and this descent is one of the finest places in the whole East to watch the show. Because of all that elevation you've been climbing and dropping, the fall color doesn't happen all at once here; it happens in slow motion, over more than a month, sliding down the mountain a little lower each week.
It starts up high on the crest in late September and early October, when the birches and maples at five thousand feet catch fire first. Then, week by week, the color line creeps downhill — into the oaks and hickories of the middle slopes through mid-October, and finally into the valleys around Robbinsville by early November. So depending on when you come, you can literally drive through three different seasons in forty-three miles: bare branches up top, peak blaze in the middle, and green still hanging on down low. Some folks time it and chase the color up and down the mountain for weeks.
Spring runs the same trick in reverse — green climbing UP the mountain as it warms. But autumn on the Cherohala is the headliner: mile after mile of red and gold and orange rolling off into fifty-mile blue distance. If you ever get to pick your day, pick a clear one in mid-October. You'll never forget it.
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided · Public domain
