The larch's most spectacular attribute is the brilliant yellow-gold it turns in fall, at times almost illuminated when hit by the angled autumn sun.

"You get that blue sky and golden larch, throw in a little new snow and bright red huckleberry leaves, and that is a hard scene to beat, " says Gary Paull, a U.S. Forest Service trails coordinator who has studied the larch. "  It's a unique tree in that it drops its needles in fall and turns this incredible color right before it does.