The West Elk Mountains around Crested Butte hold the largest aspen grove in Colorado and one of the largest in North America. The massive aspen stand on Kebler Pass is just one of the nearby spectacles worth experiencing when the annual color change occurs.
From mid September through early October you can not only see, but hike and bike through a multitude of golden canopies that surround CB. Additionally, many groves transform into stunning orange and red hued landscapes unique to this area.
County Road 12 runs through the aspen grove itself for miles with trailheads and pull-offs along the way, allowing you to venture through its vast network. It significantly varies in elevation as well, from about 6,000 feet at the Highway 133 intersection to nearly 10,000 feet on the road’s high point. This extends the viewing season and duration so you can catch different stages of the change at different times.
Two of the valley’s best fall hikes start right off Kebler Pass Road: Horse Ranch Park and the Three Lakes Loop, both of them inside the aspen grove the whole way.
Leave town west on Whiterock Avenue, which becomes County Road 12, and stay on it. The pavement gives out a few miles in and the gravel that follows is wide, graded, and driven by minivans all season. It is a through route toward Paonia, so out and back to the top makes a morning and the full crossing makes a day. Go early: the light through the trunks is best in the first hours and every wide spot is a legal pullout.
A quaking aspen stand is rarely a crowd of separate trees. Most of it is a single organism that spreads by sending up new shoots from a shared root system, so every trunk on a hillside can be a clone of its neighbors. That is why whole slopes here turn at once, and why the color shifts patch by patch.
Researchers who have tested Kebler stands have found single clones covering entire hillsides. Some believe it may rival the Pando aspen stand in Utah, which currently holds the title of largest living thing on Earth. Nobody has finished counting! It is a good valley for a contest like that.
The trees are the headliner. They are not the whole show. Fall here is fewer crowds, cold mornings, warm afternoons, and a calendar that packs a summer’s worth of events into six weeks. Come for the gold and stay for the rest of it.
Most years the color runs from mid September through early October, high elevations first. It is never a single week; the live fall report tracks each area as it turns.
Kebler Pass. County Road 12 runs through the largest aspen grove in Colorado for miles, with trailheads and pull-offs the whole way, from about 6,000 feet at Highway 133 to nearly 10,000 feet at the top.
No. The gravel is wide and graded, and any car handles it in dry weather. The road closes for the winter once the snow settles in.
Aspens spread by shared root systems, so a hillside is often a single organism. Each clone turns on its own schedule, which is why the color moves patch by patch.
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