Higher ground turns first, so the slopes above the road lead the valley by a few days.
Weather Hard frost Saturday night. Peak may come early and go fast.
1 report came in from San Juan County this week, 1 of them patchy color. Our date held. See the county on the map.
That’s 3 days later than our model alone would say. This September has been running warm, which shifts peak color.
Plan this tripIf you can only come on certain days
Set the days you can be here. Everything under them answers for those days, not for peak.
Friday 2 October to Saturday 3 October
You’ll find it peak color.
That's the day our forecast puts peak color here.
- Where to drive
- Million Dollar Highway (US 550), about 10 miles · Last Dollar Road, about 21 miles · Dallas Divide (CO 62), about 27 miles
- What turns
- quaking aspen, narrowleaf cottonwood, willow, thinleaf alder, water birch
What turns, and when
- quaking aspen74%
- narrowleaf cottonwood11%
- willow7%
- thinleaf alder4%
- water birch4%
Every one of these turns yellow or gold here. The shades only tell the species apart.
Also named across Colorado, outside what the canopy read measures here: Gambel Oak, Rocky Mountain Maple.
Colorado aspens are the main event, turning entire mountainsides gold and amber while Gambel oaks add russet and orange at lower elevations and cottonwoods line the rivers in yellow.
Across Colorado as a whole: Mid-September at 10,000 feet, late September at 8,000 feet, early October in the valleys.
This forecast is built from the species that stand here, their elevation and this September’s weather, and corrected in season by cameras, foresters and our own crew. Out here we score it against NASA's satellite record of when the canopy shuts down, read inside each unit’s own boundary: two dates in three land within 12 days of it. How this map is made