Autumn alert: Changeover to fall colors is happening quickly in northern Minnesota
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If you’re thinking of a trip to Minnesota’s North Shore to catch the vibrant leaves this fall, don’t dawdle — the changeover to fall colors is well underway.
While leaves right along the Lake Superior shore and State Highway 61 were still largely green this week, many of the higher-elevation hills and ridges just inland were already at or near peak color.
Oberg Mountain
This is one of the most popular hikes on the North Shore. The parking lot was half-full on a recent weekday, and it overflows on a fall weekend. But for good reason: Oberg delivers stunning views, especially at this time of year.
The trail climbs a few hundred feet to the top of the mountain, that’s more like a plateau. Once up there, a loop trail takes hikers to one panoramic view after another, in all directions. (There are steep drop-offs, so use caution.)
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Looking inland from Oberg Mountain on a sunny day this week, away from Lake Superior, the ridgetops were glowing with red, yellow and orange leaves of maple trees. The warm colors contrasted beautifully against the green leaves and evergreen needles lower on the hillsides.
The maples on ridges away from Lake Superior are among the first to change over to fall colors, thanks in part to early-season frosty nights.
The show at Oberg Mountain will continue for at least a couple weeks, as maples and other deciduous trees at lower elevations slowly make their transition to fall colors. And on the mountain itself — the maples and other trees were only just starting to show fall colors this past week.
Heartbreak Ridge
You don’t have to go on a hike to enjoy early-season fall leaves on the North Shore. Several roads offer a chance to get immersed in the color.
One is the Six Hundred Road, near Tofte. It’s a gravel forest road that branches off the Sawbill Trail, a few miles inland from Lake Superior.
The road traverses what’s called Heartbreak Ridge. The U.S. Forest Service says the ridge got the name decades ago, from hills that were so steep that loggers’ horse teams couldn't move logs up them — leaving the loggers heartbroken.
And it’s those same hills that are crowned with the maple trees that are among the first to show colors each fall. As of earlier this week, there were a lot of trees showing spectacular reds and oranges. The maple branches form a canopy over the narrow road.
Elsewhere in the state
As of Thursday, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ Fall Color Finder showed leaves quickly changing across much of the northern half of the state.
Up to half of trees were reported to be showing color in northwestern and north-central Minnesota, along with areas from Little Falls east to Mille Lacs Lake and Hinckley.
The map is a helpful guide and starting point for planning fall color viewing — but it depends on reports from state parks, and can’t capture every local variation in between. That’s why it wasn’t showing any peak color on the North Shore this week, even though some of the inland ridges had reached that point.
Will the warm weather affect fall colors?
Earlier this month, the DNR predicted a particularly vibrant fall color display across the state this season, thanks to favorable weather in the spring and summer.
Then the state saw a stretch of unseasonably warm, summer-in-September weather. Will that change the fall color outlook?
The DNR says probably not, especially in the northern part of the state.
And the warm weather isn't likely to change the timing much, either. Generally, peak color starts in late September for the north, early October for central Minnesota and mid-October for the south, with a lot of local variation.
And on either side of “peak” — whenever that happens — there are still many days with plenty of vivid fall color to enjoy.
