As we enter mid-October, color is slowly but surely progressing at our elevation of 2,300 feet above sea level, inside Pisgah National Forest east of Asheville, NC. Mother Nature is using a mostly-yellow color palette at the moment.
The official start to fall is just six weeks away, but who’s counting? OK, we admit it. We are! After a hot and dry July, we’re so ready for the cool and crisp autumn mountain air that we know and love. This post will highlight what to expect when you visit the Asheville, NC, area during the fall season.
| The Inn on Mill Creek B&B in late October |
“Peak week” for fall color has arrived in our neck of the woods, between Black Mountain and Old Fort, NC (2,300 feet in elevation). The Inn on Mill Creek B&B is situated two miles inside Pisgah National Forest, and with so many different tree types, we are seeing large bursts of varying color all around!
| Color has reached 2,500 to 3,500 feet |
This week brings more color to our elevation (2,300 feet), and it looks like peak color at elevations around Asheville and Black Mountain, NC, will be happening over several days through the very end of October. As usual, we are still waiting on the oak trees! Gah! However, other tree types, such as sugar and red maples and sassafras, are beginning to change more rapidly. As it stands, this year’s predominant fall color is velvety gold, with birch, beech, hickory, sassafras and others providing different shades of yellow, bronze, and yellowish-orange. Early changers, such as sourwood, dogwood and sourgum are still showing color (mostly red hues) while tall tulip poplars are now bare after a rainstorm on October 14th caused their brown-tipped yellow leaves to drop.
Into week 3 of our fall color reports we go, on this rainy Tuesday! While not very common in October around these parts, the rain is actually doing a bit of good “clean up” duty, sending some of the early, dull-colored leaves to the ground and making way for the stars of the fall color show that are just starting to shine.
| Fall colors are beginning to show at the Inn on Mill Creek B&B |
We’re in the second week of the “fall foliage” season here in Western North Carolina near Asheville, and the best color so far remains at high elevations, including peaks along the Blue Ridge Parkway. In particular, we recommend checking out Graveyard Fields, a valley that’s more than 5,000 feet above sea level, surrounded by tree-covered mountains. It’s a neat landscape that’s unique to the area. Graveyard Fields is named for tree stumps that dotted the valley after a devastating storm many, many years ago. The tree stumps are no longer there, but the fields are covered in early-changing shrubs, which you can traverse using boardwalks. The trails, which underwent upgrades this year, are pretty awesome at Graveyard Fields, with a waterfall hike included.
| Early fall color at the Inn on Mill Creek B&B |
Exciting news! Fall has most definitely arrived in the mountains of North Carolina. You know what that means…time to begin our annual tradition of weekly fall foliage reports for our area around Asheville, Black Mountain, Old Fort, Pisgah National Forest, and the Blue Ridge Parkway between Mt. Pisgah and Grandfather Mountain! Each Tuesday through the fall season, we’ll let you know which trees are changing and the best places to capture great fall color.
Don’t know about you, but summer is flying by here in the mountains of western North Carolina! Our guests are enjoying this year’s ridiculously pleasant weather (high of 75 degrees on July 31, ahhhhhhh), and the fresh mountain and forest air.
Welcome to our seventh and final weekly Fall Color Report for the North Carolina Mountains around Asheville, Black Mountain, and Old Fort. It makes us a little bit sad to know that this is our last report on fall foliage for the year, but we still have some color on the trees and before we know it, spring will be here. Guess we do have to get through winter first. But until then…
