The 5 Most Beautiful Hikes In Acadia National Park For Fall Foliage Hues, According To Hikers

If you're planning a road trip to see the most iconic national parks on the East Coast this fall, make sure to visit Acadia National Park in Maine when the autumn leaves are at their most brilliant. National parks can be awe-inspiring in the fall, and Maine's gorgeous coastal park is among the very best. On travel blogs, photography websites, and review sites like AllTrails, enthusiastic hikers who visited Acadia for the explosion of seasonal color recommended the easy Jordan Pond Path, the slightly trickier Cadillac South Ridge Trail and Cadillac North Ridge Trail, and the seriously challenging Beehive Loop Trail. Then there's the Precipice Trail for the absolute best views in the park.

If you want to admire the brilliant bursts of red, orange, and yellow spreading out over Acadia's mountains, make sure to come at the right time. How impressive the leaves are depends on the weather, but in general, you'll find the best displays in mid-October. For precise planning, you may want to check out Maine's official foliage tracking website, which can help you decide the perfect time to lace up your hiking boots and hit the trails.

The tremendously popular Jordan Pond Path is an easy, fun, 3-mile route which takes you around the shores of the pond. It only takes around an hour to hike, and it provides you with some of the best postcard-worthy scenery in Acadia National Park, with little streams and waterfalls all around you, and sweeping mountain views across the pond. In the autumn, hikers on this trail will be rewarded with an even more beautiful view than usual thanks to the brilliant fall foliage. In fact, it's ranked by AllTrails as one of the best fall foliage hikes in the entire United States.

While many U.S. national park trails are only for experienced hikers, hikers on AllTrails reported that the first third of this trail is actually a raised board path, and the rest remains relatively level. While you may have to deal with some rocky areas, in general, this is a good trail for people with a wide range of hiking abilities. At its fall peak, many of the trees burst into shades of yellow, orange, and red, emerging from between the dark pines and reflected back in the rippling water. From the water's edge, you can see the twin rounded mountains known as The Bubbles — which are known for their beautiful fall foliage themselves.

"Could catch such beautiful fall foliage when we went there on last week of October. It was surreal. Fog closing and opening up leading to breathtaking views," one hiker wrote on AllTrails. If you're looking to have an adventure in Acadia National Park, the Beehive Loop may be the perfect fit. Not only does it allow hikers to get incredible views of the bay, but the forest between the cliffs and the coast can transform into a blanket of autumnal colors spread out below you.

This hike is even among those trails specifically recommended for leaf peepers craving the best views by Acadia's park rangers, according to the National Park Service. However, anyone hoping to take in these fall views should know that this isn't a journey to be taken lightly. Although it's a popular route in Acadia and only 1.5 miles, this hike is generally considered a hard one, because it features sections where hikers have to become climbers, pulling themselves up the cliffside on ladders and then walking up an often slippery set of granite stairs.

Cadillac Mountain is certainly the most popular place to admire the sky in Acadia National Park, with hikers making the almost 7 mile trek along the south ridge before dawn to watch the sunrise from the mountain. According to numerous hikers on AllTrails, the Cadillac South Ridge Trail is also a phenomenal place to admire the views in the fall and see the brilliant colors of the changing leaves. In fact, this particular hike was ranked among the best autumnal foliage hikes in the United States on AllTrails.

The hike begins in the forest, so you can appreciate the foliage from inside the woods, then leads you to overlooks of the forest canopy from above. This trail can be somewhat challenging, but ultimately brings hikers to the very top of Cadillac Mountain to see the park spread out below. This particular journey up along the southern ridge is longer than the other popular ways to the summit, and requires you to make your way back down the same way. Hikers on AllTrails have reported this trip taking between four and six hours in total.

While this 4.2-mile route begins in the forest, hikers who take the North Ridge Trail up to the summit of Cadillac Mountain will soon find themselves traversing a steep path along the mountainside. As soon as you ascend higher than the treeline, you'll be able to see a huge amount of the surrounding landscape, including the fall colors. As one hiker on AllTrails enthused: "The foliage on the trail and the views of bar harbor were stunning."

The top of Cadillac Mountain is among the best viewpoints of the park, and this trail will take you there quickly — if you're up for the steep ascent. According to reports by other hikers, while the North Ridge Trail provides similar views of Acadia and the water beyond from the gorgeous summit of Cadillac Mountain, this is a somewhat steeper trail than the meandering South Ridge Trail, so you can probably finish the entire hike in about two and half hours.

If you're looking for an adventure in Acadia National Park, the Precipice Loop might be for you. Champlain Mountain is not the tallest of Acadia's mountains, but its steep slopes provide incredible views of the park, the shore, and the colorful fall treetops. While it's only about a mile to the top of Champlain Mountain (the entire loop is 2.6 miles), the way up is a challenging climb that takes you more than 1,000 feet in elevation.

True to its name, this trail is on a precipice. Like some other routes in the park, you'll have to walk along a narrow wooden bridge, rely on iron rungs and ladders to hoist your own body weight up in some parts of this treacherous trail. According to hikers on AllTrails, however, if you have the skill to attempt the Precipice Loop, it's worth it for the autumn colors — though you should know that all those picturesque falling leaves can make the way up even more slippery. Just make sure to continue on the loop to get back down the mountain, as trying to go down the way you came up is very dangerous.

To select the absolute best Acadia National Park trails to enjoy an explosion of autumn color, we scoured travel blogs, photography websites, visitor guides, and the National Park Service website to find which quiet spots and breathtaking overlooks are most often recommended for fall foliage. Then, we used the National Park Service website to create a long list of trails in Acadia that would bring you to these favorite places.

From there, we sorted through thousands of hiker reviews on AllTrails, taking note of both the number of positive reviews which reference the fall foliage and the overall rating of each trail to ensure that visitors will both get their fill of autumn color and a good hiking experience in general. We did our best to include hikes that were appropriate for a wide range of abilities, and when there were multiple trails in contention for inclusion in our final ranking, we emphasized those trails recommended for autumn leaves by park rangers from Acadia via the National Park Service, since they very likely have the most experience when it comes to hiking the trails in the park.