Catskills Fall Foliage Report

Camp Catskill Mountaintop Color Report for the week of September 24: color is just starting on the Tannersville mountaintop

UPDATED MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 21

We are at 1,900 feet on Main Street in Tannersville, near the middle of the northern Catskills. This page is our own read on where the color stands up here, and we update it every Wednesday through late October.

It is not a statewide average. It is what we can see from here.

This week

We are at the very front edge of it. Walk Main Street and you will catch a few branches turning, a scattered yellow or orange here and there. The hillsides are still green.

Give it another week or two of cool nights and that changes fast.

When it usually peaks

Up here the color usually gets going the last week of September and holds through the third week of October. The weather that year moves it either direction by a week.

Peak fall color across the mountains south of Tannersville, New York, with a white farmhouse and tall spruces below the ridge under an overcast October sky

The mountains south of town at peak. That is a few weeks out from where we are today.

Elevation matters more than the calendar. The high trails turn before the valley does, so if the view from the road still looks green, go up.

Where to go look at it

If you would rather not hike. North-South Lake is a drive-in state campground with the color right at the water. You can park and be looking at it in two minutes.

Hunter Mountain runs its Scenic Skyride on fall weekends. It is an eleven minute ride to 3,200 feet without climbing anything.

Colgate Lake is a quiet one. Open water with the mountains behind it, and an easy walk.

If you want a short walk to a big view. Sunset Rock looks down the length of both lakes, and it is the view that put these mountains on canvas in the first place.

Boulder Rock sits on the same escarpment, a little farther along, usually a little quieter.

If you want to earn it. Huckleberry Point looks straight out over Platte Clove, and the clove holds color in a way that is hard to explain until you see it.

Making a day of it? We keep a running list of everything else worth doing in town while you are up here, from where to eat to what is open when. Things to do in Tannersville

Before you come up

It is colder here than it is down in the valley, usually by ten degrees or so, and the wind on an open ledge makes it feel colder still. Bring a layer you can take off.

Leaves get slick when they are wet, especially on rock. Give yourself more time than the distance suggests.

We are on Main Street in Tannersville, open Thursday through Monday. Stop in and we will tell you what is actually turning right now, which is usually more useful than any map.

We also follow the New York State fall foliage report, published weekly by I LOVE NY. Our read above is our own, from here.