After a busy few months of summer work, distance training, and the hubbub of fall recruitment, I set out on my final solo trip of 2024, a weeklong hiking and photography tour of Colorado’s Western Slope, specifically focusing on Gunnison National Forest, the San Juan Mountains, and the wilderness areas in between. It’s a beautiful part of the country that I have just barely touched the periphery of (having come as close as Cortez, CO during our Four Corners trip in 2022), but have never visited truly. I’ve timed my trip fairly well for autumn foliage - those few weeks each year when mountainsides of quaking aspen and riverways lined by cottonwood transform the entire state into a colorful bonanza - a natural “gold rush,” as they say out West. Although by the end of my time in Colorado the forests in many areas are becoming windblown and barren, and the entire trip’s photographic conditions are generally plagued by empty blue skies more often than not, I manage to come away with some beautiful landscape images, and a week of memorable adventures on foot.
My trip starts with an early morning transfer via Denver to the small regional airport in Gunnison, CO; from the air, we pass over the Continental Divide and the bulk of the Rocky Mountains, their jagged granitic peaks and broken scree slopes mostly free of ice at this time of year. The land falls away to a series of faults and ranges, the basins between which are covered by mixed conifer and hardwood forests. From above, the aspens groves are a sea of gold and orange hues - mesmerizing, inviting. In Gunnison, I pick up my rental (a Ford Escape that escapes nicknaming the entire trip) and head out on the road after a pit stop for groceries at the local Safeway. My driving playlist, again retooled toward the calm acoustic and folk tracks of autumn, blares over the tinny speakers of my fifteen-year-old iPod Nano - a device so geologically ancient that it has apparently grown increasingly incompatible with USB connections in rental cars (note to self: aux cable next time, sigh). Following the highway north out of town, I soon turn off onto Ohio Creek Road, which winds its way along cottonwoods toward Ohio Pass. My objective for the afternoon is to explore two passes to the north of Gunnison - Ohio and Kebler Passes - before making my way to Crested Butte, where I’ll be based for the first half of the week. Along the way, the road cuts along the edge of the West Elk Wilderness, and tantalizing mountain-and-forest views begin to reveal themselves at every turn. I make frequent stops by the side of the well-graded gravel road, taking plenty of a long and panoramic shots with my polarizer on.
Nearing the botton of Ohio Pass, the road winds into the foothills below the Anthracite Range, which has been steadily looming to the north. Here, I enter the aspens in earnest, the ghostly trunks rising up on both sides of the road. Mid-afternoon, I stop at a trailhead to hike the half-mile up and half-mile down to a series of beaver ponds nestled beneath the mountains. It feels wonderful to be finally exploring on foot after a few hours of (albeit very slow and relaxed) driving and roadside photography; I climb into the aspen forest, thrilled by the beautiful canopy of golden leaves, which cast a surreal, warm hue on everything below. The pale white trunks of the aspen trees, especially, make for compelling subjects against the backdrop of colorful foliage, and it seems I can hardly help but stop every few feet to shoot into the dense forest. Worth noting, too, is that the slender, straight trees afford much cleader compositions than I’ve become used to in the jumble of New England’s mixed deciduous forests (or more recently, in Cascadia’s old-growth rainforests). For a woodland photographer like myself, this is such a treat! On my way back down the trail, I sneak a few choice aspen leaves off the forest floor and press them between the bills in my wallet; I’ll wind up bringing them all the way home to Boston, to add to my collection of pressed leaf specimens.
Moving on from the Beaver Pond Trailhead, I briefly return downhill to photograph the view from the foot of Ohio Pass, before turning the car around and proceeding to the top of Ohio Pass. Here, beneath a scree slope, there’s a festive crowd of gathered foliage viewers and photographers admiring the expansive panorama to the south and west, which sweeps over many miles of forested wildernes and several mountain ranges, most notably the peaks of the West Elk Wilderness to the southwest, including the distinct rock minarets known as the Castles. I set up my tripod to take the first of many timelapses on this trip, while hand-holding my main camera to make panoramas and zoom shots of the amazing landscape. It’s a high traffic situation on this balmy Saturday afternoon above Ohio Pass’s golden aspens — multiple parked cars barely pulled over onto the scree slope, SUVs trying to pass each other on a steep dirt road, narrowly avoiding the human conga line. I exchange pleasantries with another photographer and a drone operator, and help a family of four (the teenage daughters treating Mom and Dad with complete and utter disdain) take a family portrait before my timelapse finishes. I relinquish my spot, moving on to the top of the pass and down the other side, to the north.
To the north, the road intersects Gunnison’s County Road 12, which runs between Crested Butte to the east and Paonia to the west, passing through Kebler Pass in the middle. I’ll be returning this way after sunset on my way to Crested Butte, but first, I take a left turn and proceed into Kebler Pass, intending to scout as much of it as I can before selecting a sunset spot for my first day in Colorado. Just as in Ohio Pass, I seem to have chanced upon pretty good foliage conditions here at the tail end of September. The east end of Kebler Pass (the area between Ruby Peak and the Beckwith Mountains, and the aspen groves leading to the west) is carpeted with color, and there is a wonderful blend of golden, orange, and red leaves strewn across the hillsides. Further to the west, the gravel road continues through a several-mile stretch of aspen forest, some of the densest and oldest clonal aspen forests I’ll see during the entire trip. The western part of Kebler Pass, beyond the forest, opens into a mixture of ecotones - in many places the landscape is almost tundra-like in appearance, and in other places it is covered in scrub oak and patchy hardwood groves. Though it’s stark, expansive, and beautiful, the west side of the pass is also in worse photographic condition; the aspen groves beneath Marcellina Mountain have clearly been stripped bare of their leaves, while other places are not yet at peak color. After driving all the way to the west end of the pass and taking a quick photo at a dirt overlook above the road, I turn the car around and head back east for sunset. The falling sun and its illuminating sidelight through the aspens is utterly magical.
Having scouted a few different roadside perspectives along the eastern part of Kebler Pass, I ultimately settle on a spot near Horse Ranch Park, from where I can shoot the play of sunset colours on Ruby Peak and the adjoining aspen groves rising up above the valley to the north. After a tough bit of setup (to avoid including road, parked cars, and a few camper/RV setups with quite a bit of verticality), I manage to shoot a timelapse of Ruby Peak while again working panoramas and detail comps with my main camera. Although I did not know it yet, this first sunset wound up being one of the better-lit and more colorful ones of the entire trip (and one of the very few golden hours with any clouds…). The results (below) are some of the more print-worthy landscape photos I have taken in some time.
After sunset, I join the procession of cars leaving Kebler Pass. It’s only a twenty-minute drive eastward to Crested Butte, but it’s pitch-dark by the time I arrive in town, and it takes me some time to locate a good parking spot for my guesthouse (the innkeepers kindly suggest that I park in a secluded spot in the back of the building, which becomes my designated park-up for the next few days). After settling in, unpacking, enjoying complimentary homemade cookies, and making myself a hotel-room dinner (the usual noodle setup), I go to sleep early in anticipation of an active day ahead.
