How to find the perfect trails for fall colors

Every year in September and October, a lot of people across the country get in their cars and go looking at trees. In New England might mean Kancamagus and Franconia Ridge and out west it’s the aspens at Maroon Bells and Kebler Pass, with entire mountainsides in gold. It’s the bright yellow larches on the Maple Pass Loop in the North Cascades, and the maples on Minnesota’s North Shore. Americans spend millions of dollars each autumn on hotels, rental cars, and gas chasing a few days when landscapes light up in shades of yellow, orange, and red.

This year, we built a new fall foliage overlay to help you find the best places to hike, at the right time. But first, let’s dig into a bit of how leaf peeping got started in the first place.

A bit of history

For as long as people have been chasing fall colors, they’ve been trying to find better ways to predict the best times to go. For most of that time, the best predictions were basically an average. The Old Farmer’s Almanac has been printing foliage guidance since the 1790s. Every region has its own rules of thumb. Columbus Day in the Green Mountains. Third weekend of October on the Parkway. The last week of September for larches.

Eventually, technology became a part of the process and state tourism offices started running foliage hotlines. You could call 1-800-VERMONT and a recording told you where the color was this week. Pennsylvania had 1-800-FALL-INPA, and there was even a national Forest Service one for a while. New York still has more than 85 volunteer leaf spotters across the state filing every week, and Vermont still has a volunteer “Leaf Squad.”

More modern, map-based versions of the almanac tend to focus on predictions. They combine accessible datasets with historical averages, weather trends, current weather models, altitude, etc. These maps are featured on state websites and other apps each fall, hoping to give the best info to folks looking to plan travel or time their weekend road trip.

For the towns near popular foliage areas, that visitation has a huge economic impact. Asheville gets almost a third of its annual visitors in the last three months, most of them there for the Blue Ridge Parkway, which pulls in almost 2 million people in October alone. It’s estimated that foliage tourism in New England brings in $8 billion a year across the region, and Vermont’s fall visitor spending has grown from $374 million in 2010 to more than $600 million today. All of it depends on people showing up in the same few weeks, but nobody knows in advance which weeks are actually the perfect times to be there.

Everything about “leaf peeping” season hinges on timing. Fall colors happen every year, but when the “peak” actually happens is never on a fixed schedule. Peak season can shift by weeks from one year to the next depending on summer rain, September weather, drought, wind, and other factors. Show up late and the trail might be beautiful in a different way, with lingering leaves on branches, but most of the  vibrant foliage you drove four hours for is already on the ground. It’s easy to miss a very narrow window.

Meet the AllTrails Fall Foliage overlay

This year, we’re trying something new at AllTrails. Every fall, members on AllTrails take millions of photos over the course of September, October, and November. They’re added every day, in every region, and a lot of them are attached to a review that says what the person saw and when.  With a bit of clever engineering, we’ve got ourselves a massively distributed version of the foliage hotlines, one that works at a more specific geography and trail-level.

What’s been missing from a lot of existing maps is that trail-level detail. Once you’re a week out, or a day out, what can you expect on the exact trail you’re planning to hike? AllTrails Plus members can use the new fall foliage overlay for a fine-grain view of what colors are doing and are expected to do–and pair that with exact trail routes. This level of detail can help you figure out exactly where you want to hike to see the best colors, since colors can shift rapidly and peak at different times for different elevations.

Every photo you add from a hike this fall gets folded into the layer, so that AllTrails community members planning next weekend or next year might get a more accurate answer than you did. And that’s not just true for fall foliage–every bit of helpful information you add to AllTrails is something that might make the next person’s hike that little bit more informed and pleasant.

So if you’re headed out to do some leaf peeping this year, take a look, find that trail, and get those golden shots.