Last weekend was spent camping in the mountains. Heading towards Gunnison, I turned onto the Ohio Creek road to check the fall colors of the Cottonwood trees along the creek. It was too late to find some decent fall colors in this area — the previous week would have been a better choice for visiting. I did find this Halloween decoration at the entrance to Mill Creek Ranch. This ranch always seem to have fun with bales of hay close to Halloween.
Continuing on, I took the road that followed the Cimarron River. The late afternoon light cast long shadows on the river banks. I made several images near the river, when I noticed one deer grazing along the banks.
After camping the night at Ouray, I headed up towards Yankee Boy Basin to find some Aspen trees. Very soon, I found many trees that had dropped their leaves for the season. Heading back to Ouray, the morning sun had just started to light up the valley to reveal Aspen forests down below.
I headed out of Ouray following the same roads that I had traveled the previous day over Owl Creek Pass. The Cottonwood trees along the creek had started to turn to the fall colors.
The western slopes of the mountain had aspen trees in various stages for fall color. In this image, the aspen colonies had dropped most of their leaves to reveal the pale gray trunks.
Along the roadside, there were still plenty of aspen with their yellow-green fall colors.
I like this image where the morning sun lit up the aspen trees in a dark corner of the mountain road.
I stopped farther up the road to make this image of the aspen trunks with a hint of yellow fall colors lurking in the background.
Last week brought the first major snow of the season to the mountains. The cold weather and the winds had accelerated the fall of leaves from the forests. However, while driving through Kebler Pass, I found one spot where the aspen still had yellow leaves, with snow on the ground.
This was one the last images that I made on the return trip home.