← Colorado Conditions

Chasing Fall Color From Summit County to Leadville (With Two Highway Closures In Between)

After coming back from camping in Marble last week, I could tell fall was coming fast to Summit County. I had to come back up this weekend just to start soaking it in.

I set my alarm for 4:45am, planning to start at the Old Dillon Dam Trail for sunrise and see where the day took me from there. Everything was going great until near the bottom of Floyd Hill, when I saw brake lights. Then police. Then fire trucks and ambulances. They shut the highway down completely. 5:30 came and went. Then 6:30, right as the sky started lighting up on what would have been a beautiful sunrise if I'd actually gotten to where I wanted to be. Around 7am the highway finally reopened and I continued on. By the time I got there, I'd missed sunrise and a lot of the clouds had already burned off — but it was still a beautiful morning.

The leaves are changing, though not as vibrant as some years — there's a lot of brown from the drought mixed in. Still, I managed to snag some good shots before heading back to the car to keep chasing color.

From there I headed toward Leadville to check conditions, swung by Turquoise Lake to see how it was looking after the fires, and explored some back roads. I'll say this: there are more bright red aspens this year, in nice big pockets, than in some other years I remember.

Found some genuinely beautiful landscapes out there — but eventually it was time to head home. I smiled passing all the traffic heading up from Denver while I was on my way down.

Then I got through the tunnel to a familiar sight: brake lights again. Another accident, another closed highway, another hour and a half of nothing. I eventually made it home, but I spent a good chunk of that day sitting dead stopped on a closed highway. A good reminder that no matter how early you start or how well you plan, life has its own way of throwing surprises at you.