If you've timed this for the fall, you already know why you came — and here's the why behind the why. These mountainsides are covered in exactly the trees that put on the best show: sugar maples going scarlet and flame-orange, birches and beeches turning pure gold, all mixed with the dark evergreen of spruce and fir for contrast. And the Adirondacks add a special twist: elevation.
Because color comes on with the cold, and it's colder up high, the fall works its way DOWN the mountains. The tops of the High Peaks turn first, in mid-to-late September, while the valleys are still green — so for a few weeks you can watch a tide of color roll downhill, and if you catch it right, you'll see summits already bare, mid-slopes blazing, and valley floors just beginning to turn, all in one glance. Peak in the valleys around here usually lands at the very start of October. It's one of the earliest, highest, and most dramatic fall displays anywhere in the East. You picked a good mountain to watch it from.
Photo: Anne LaBastille · Public domain
