The Aspens Are At Peak Color On Boreas Pass

I drove up to Breckenridge from Denver yesterday afternoon, and from there to Boreas Pass Road to take some photographs of the aspens. The mountains had their first significant snowfall of the season on Tuesday, and I suspected that the trees, now at their peak color, would be fading at that altitude pretty soon. A few years ago, I made the mistake of driving up there at the beginning of October and didn't find a single leaf in sight. Boreas Pass is my favorite spot to take photographs in the fall because, in addition to so many colorful aspens, there are numerous places you can actually pull off the road and get out of the car, instead of having to take those photos on the fly out your car window. 

The most popular spot for "leaf peeping" in the central Colorado mountains is Guanella Pass, which is accessed from Georgetown, Colorado on its northern end. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of visitors take this route when the aspens hit their peak color, and traffic is a nightmare. Slow-moving traffic and illegal parking plagued the road last fall. It is a two-lane road, with nowhere to park except along the shoulders, which makes navigating your car through that mess very difficult. That does not make for a pleasant afternoon.

But I must say I was surprised by the number of cars on Boreas Pass yesterday, considering it was a weekday afternoon. I guess great minds think alike. God knows what it will be like this weekend. In any case, there were still plenty of places to pull over and not obstruct traffic, and so it made for a very pleasant day. To be honest, most of the photographs I take on Boreas Pass probably look the same as the ones I took last year. Roddy, my old photography professor, says that he doesn't like aspen photographs because they do indeed all look the same to him. But still, they are pretty, and it just feels great to wander among those trees on a sunny fall day. And best of all, down in Breckenridge, the trees have not yet turned, and so in a week or so I can head back up there and take even more fall photographs. Perfect!