One of the earliest fall colors to enjoy in California’s mountains is red.
Though if you seek it, look downward. As, the red of which I write is crawling along the ground.
In the Shasta Cascade, it is the Crimson Knotweed that carpets volcanic slopes above 7,000′ in the Northern Sierra and Southern Cascade.
In the Sierra Nevada, Dwarf Huckleberry or Sierra Bilberry (Vaccinium nivictum) grows in subalpine fir forests and alpine fell fields usually between 8,000 and 12,000′, John Hunter Thomas and Dennis R. Parnell write in Native Shrubs of the Sierra Nevada.
Naturalist David Senesac hiked up into the 20 Lakes Basin of the Hoover Wilderness (Eastern Sierra) in early September to find ruby Dwarf Bilberry (Vaccinium caespitosum), “a turf height species of the blueberry family” blushing near timberline elevations in the weeks before autumn.
This plant is often red-purple in color, but ignites when backlit with light, adding vermillion vibrance and verve to its otherwise austere environs. 
Peak (75-100%) – Bilberry and Knotweed
