Friday September 30th.  I left work early in order to get out of town before the weekend traffic rush hit highway 285.  Even though it takes about 4 hours and change to get to Crested Butte from the Denver metro area, it goes by quickly.  Crested Butte remains a secluded Colorado mountain town, which also sits at the base of Kebler Pass, which is a favorite stretch of road for   

I love driving up 285 in the summer and fall.  Really, I just like to avoid the mess of I-70 and the crazies that clog it up every Friday night and Sunday afternoon.  I also decided to take the more scenic route by ‘cutting the corner’ and driving over Cottonwood Pass.  I briefly stopped at the top to take a look around again, as I had been there earlier in the summer with my friend Scott to take some shots of the Milky Way with car trails coming around the final turns below the summit.  You can check out that photo in the ‘Night Photography’ gallery or the blog post I wrote about that trip.  While it is cool to see in the day, the shots we got in the middle of the night were much more exciting.

Although I had been to the top of Cottonwood Pass, I don’t know that I had driven between the summit and the West end which ends in Almont, which is just South of Crested Butte.  I was actually surprised by how different the East and West legs of the pass are.  From Buena Vista to the summit, it is mostly paved, and pretty good road quality.  However, on the West side, between the summit and Almont, very little of it was paved.  There wasn’t anything too rough, but there was quite a bit of ‘washboarded’ road.  Oh well.  Along that route, you pass Taylor reservoir, which was very low at the time because it was so late in the season.  The valley just outside of Almont was beautiful though, with tons of turning cottonwood trees along the road.

Eventually I made it to Crested Butte and my hotel for the evening, which was right next to the ski mountain.  After I checked, I went back down into town and got some quick food, because I wanted to see if I could get some cool blue hour shouts from above Crested Butte looking over the city.  However, when I got to the road that I had scouted on Google maps which leads to a great looking point above the city, I found that the road was gated off for private access only.  Buzz kill.

Wanting to make use of every opportunity I had, I quickly turned towards Kebler Pass and raced towards a spot that I thought may work for another blue hour or night shot.  In record time, i got to that spot, which is a little overlook near the top of the pass, which always has some good views, and in particular, it has a few patches of aspens that turn more orange/red than yellow.  This spot is a little tricky to get to when you are driving a 2WD sedan, because you have to go down a side road that is single car width, muddy and rutted, and it had just snowed several days before so it was really muddy.

Unfortunately, the photos from that night were pretty much duds.  I guess I didn’t give those shots a chance though, because I quickly got frustrated by another group of people near me when I was shooting.  They were loud and obnoxious, it was cold, muddy, and right in the frame of where I was shooting, there were people camping, including a campfire which made shooting how I wanted to impossible.  Oh well, there would be plenty more opportunities to go.  I called it a night and went back to the hotel.

Saturday October 1st.  After checking out of the hotel, I went into Crested Butte for breakfast.  Following some tips from Yelp, I got a great fresh made breakfast sandwich from a little diner operating inside of the local gas station.  Even though it took a while to get my food, it was really good.  After finishing, I headed West out of town and up Kebler Pass…..again.

Heading over the pass during daylight hours, it donned on me that I should have listened learned from last year’s photo trip and visited this area the week before.  Just as last year, many of the aspens at the hot spots along Kebler were past prime or had already dropped their leaves. regardless, it is a very beautiful drive, and I was able to get a few good shots, mainly towards the West end of the pass.  

 The picture above is of Mount Marcellina, which is along Kebler Pass.  I have always loved taking photos of this mountain whenever I go over the pass.  It has such cool rock features, and the whole mountain just sticks out by itself so predominantly.  However, you can see in the bottom of this photo that the leaves have already fallen from many trees.  Some of that was hastened by a snow storm that came through this area the week before.  I’ve been kicking myself since then, because if I had heeded my own advise from last year, I would have been there for that storm, which I bet would have made for some really cool shots.  Maybe next year I will learn.

I’ll leave it there for this post.  In the next post, I cover the rest of that Saturday, which ended up being perhaps my favorite day of shooting photos that I have ever had.  Stay tuned….