The JournalMost people drive right past this mountain — it's a ski resort in disguise most of the year, and fall is the one season it turns into something else entirely.
Most people drive right past this mountain — it's a ski resort in disguise most of the year, and fall is the one season it turns into something else entirely.
Everyone who chases fall foliage in the Poconos ends up at the same handful of well-known overlooks. Almost nobody thinks to drive up Camelback Mountain, and it's easy to understand why. For most of the year, that's exactly what it is — a working ski resort, known for lift lines and snow-making crews, not scenic drives. But the summit itself belongs to something else: Big Pocono State Park, a 1,305-acre park that sits directly on top of the mountain, jointly maintained by PA DCNR and Camelback Ski Corporation. It's an unusual arrangement for a state park, and it means that once the lifts shut down for the season, the mountain quietly reverts to public land.
The access point is the same 1.4-mile paved summit drive that skiers use to reach the resort in winter. In fall, it becomes a straightforward route to the top — no hiking required, no technical terrain, just a paved road leading straight to a summit view that stretches into New Jersey and New York alongside Pennsylvania. It's a rare vantage point in the region: three states' worth of ridgeline visible from a single overlook.
For visitors who want more than a drive-up view, the park holds 8.5 miles of hiking trails winding across the summit. They trace the same terrain through peak foliage, offering a slower, quieter version of the view from the overlook — the kind of place where you can walk a dappled, empty path on a mountain that, in a few months, will be packed with skiers.
That contrast is really the whole story here. In winter, this summit is crowded and commercial. In fall, it's nearly empty. And the window to see it that way is short — Big Pocono State Park closes for the season from early December through the first week of April, which means fall is one of the last chances to stand on that summit before it turns back into a resort. It's not a hidden location. It's not hard to find. It's just that everyone already thinks they know what it is — and for a few weeks each fall, they're wrong.