This autumn, the color display across the San Juan Mountains is turning out to be something from a storybook, with peak change still around the corner.
Colorado’s famed aspens are putting on a brilliant show. Mountainsides are forming a striking patchwork of vibrant yellows against the deep-blue conifers, and their shimmering leaves appear like paint strokes.
Along Colorado Highway 145 and through Montezuma, Dolores, San Miguel counties, the bursts of color are eye-catching, a display that draws travelers to the mountain highways and trail heads to catch the fleeting fall show — or even paint it.
David Casey, a supervising forester with the Dolores Ranger District, said the vivid gold that aspens are known for will grow bolder and more sweeping early next week.
“We are set up for a vibrant peak year,” Casey said. Key places to visit, he noted, include the Roaring Fork area accessible through Bear Creek, Cayton Campground and Trout Lake, a local favorite famous for its “mirror effect” when golden aspens reflect in the water in the morning.
Spectacular places to drive for prime viewing include stretches along Colorado 145 near Lizard Head Pass and north toward Telluride where high-elevation aspens pop in gold against darker, surrounding pines.
“Things are slowly changing, with an abrupt change around Matterhorn Campground outside Telluride. From there, the leaves are at least a week ahead of the stuff to the south,” Casey said. “Individual aspen clones are going off, but we are about a week to 1½ weeks out from peak.”
The Dolores River corridor adds its own layer of color. Gambel oak are popping in red. Bright golden narrowleaf cottonwoods line the bends of the river, their leaves flickering in the wind before falling in heaps on trails and streams.
Casey said bursts of color aren't always guaranteed.
Each year, the display hinges on an intricate mix of weather and the long-term health of trees. For instance, a weak snowpack and a warm, dry spring stressed many aspens and other trees in parts of the state, dulling their usual glow and leaving the leaves looking browner.
Lately, early fall showers and late summer rain have been ideal conditions in the San Juans and Uncompahgre National Forest, keeping soil moist for aspens and reducing stress to allow the forest to stay healthy.
“There’s been a couple years where it's been dry all summer. We didn't get the late summer rains or very little monsoon. That’s going to transpire into leaves falling off earlier or to dry up earlier,” Casey said.
Even in good years, fall color can be cut short by sudden storms – early snow, heavy rainfall or high winds – that strip the branches before the peak or leave hillsides looking ragged.
There’s the longer-term picture that is more sobering. Foresters have been tracking aspen decline since the early 2000s. This is especially apparent at lower elevations and on southern-facing slopes where soil dries out faster, Casey said. Prolonged drought, hotter summers and shrinking snowpacks are all contributors to tree stress, leaving the trees more susceptible to pests, uncharacteristic fires or slow regeneration.
“Areas that are lacking water – lower elevations and southern-facing slopes – those aspens are declining faster. I’m seeing low-elevation clones declining to the point where they’re not growing back,” Casey said.
Casey said those shifts alter the very characteristics of mountainsides, as aspens or pine trees die off and are replaced by brushy Gambel oak. This complexity, attributed to weather and climate change, remains a focus for foresters at the San Juan National Forest Service, Casey said, where journal articles and recent drought studies direct priorities involving land management and research.
At Trout Lake on Sunday, a bride’s white dress sharply popped against the darker rocks and slate-blue waters. The air smelled of pine, cool and clean. Under clear blue skies, travelers moved steadily along Highway 145, turning at pull-offs to take in the fall colors with their eyes, cameras and easels.
The couple, one from Dolores and one from Telluride, decided to marry Sunday along the scenic route as a homage to both places and their “chance meeting.”
A little farther up the highway, at a San Juan Mountain Scenic View pull-off, people touted wide-lens cameras to get panoramic views of rain sweeping across Mount Sneffels before the last of the good light dimmed. Racing to capture the glowing landscape in oil, Grand Junction artist Monica Esposito kept being pulled from the canvas by her barking dog to quiet him before resuming her strokes.
“The whole point is to come and study the light. I knew the colors were good this weekend, so I came out,” Esposito said.
Lee Xu, a retired financier from New Jersey, said he meticulously researched and planned a two-week vacation during this time to take in fall colors in its full glory. A photography enthusiast that prefers to capture animals, he was mesmerized by the look of fall in the morning light.
“After rain, the color reflects itself in the water. I’ve been to quite a few places, Telluride, Ouray, and the leaves are changing rather quickly,” Xu said. “I saw a moose near a stream in Silverton.”
He said gets up every morning and rushes outside without bothering to have breakfast.
