Fall Smoky Mountains hiking color report: Husky Gap Trail

Bright yellow fall colors and more can be found still in the Great Smoky Mountains national park and if you want to go for a hike there are only a few hiking trails with good fall colors left and Husky Gap is one of the best trails left.

The Husky Gap trailhead is right on Newfound Gap Road across from the quiet walkway parking area 3.2 miles in from Gatlinburg Tennessee. This area of Newfound Gap Road has the best color in the whole national park.

This trail goes for about 2 miles up before it meets with 2 other trails and if you take Husky Gap to the end it goes down to Little River in Elkmont. Since it gains in elevation it will take you through various environments which will vary in color intensity.

Since the trail starts out by the most major road in the park for the fist few minutes you will hear the traffic on Newfound Gap, but it won't take long before you will see the fall colors you came to the Smokies to see.

You will pass by a creek that runs down the side of a hollow and onto the trail but the crossing is usually dry. There are some large tulip trees here that have already turned yellow for autumn and some of the trees are already a golden brown.

You can tell there were homesteads here by how flat the land is below the trail and you can even see a stone fence unfolding beneath you.

The trail is littered with many colorful leaves here, reds, oranges and lots and lots of shades of yellow and light greens. The leaves on the trail floor swiftly change color to brown but are rapidly replenished with new colorful leaves.

Some of the large yellow leaves you will see with brown spots are on vines that reach way up into the tallest trees here in the forest are grape leaves. The deeper you go on the trail the more wild grapes you will find.

While the grapes don't really have much fruit to them, they do make up part of the diet for the forest critters here each fall. You may still see some bunches of grapes on the trail floor.

One of the critters in the Great Smoky Mountains national park who loves the grapes is our resident black bear. The hike I just did to make this report I came across to adult bear and 2 cubs from this year.

As you see in the picture one of the cubs scurried up the tree. Even though he was more than 100 feet away, he was too close for comfort. If you see a bear as I did, make noise and don't run away but keep your distance. If they don't move away go back away from them.

Further in you start to get views of Gatlinburg and Mount Le Conte through the trees. The more the leaves fall down, the better you will get a view of the mountains.

The picture below shows the golds, yellows, reds and greens that can be seen through the forest canopy to the mountain on the other side. Though the color is very intense it should still last for the rest of the week.

Further into the trail you find and area with giant rock rubble with mosses and ferns on the left and an area of smaller and medium size hemlocks that are all green.

Keep going and you will go through an area where the grapes have dropped all their leaves and there are brown leaves and skeleton vines reaching up the canopy.

Eventually the colors turn more to reddish browns and tans as you get close to the trail junction. By the time you reach the junction most of the color is gone but if you decide to go further it is a nice hike but there are really no more great fall colors.

On the way back be sure to keep looking out and you will notice through the trees a side view of Mt Le Conte with its distinctive 3 peaks.

Husky gap is a great trail year round and perfect right now to see the fall colors!

The Husky Gap Trail is less than 30 minutes from all of Gatlinburgs best cabin rentals.