The Dancing Aspens of Colorado
October 16, 2022I first heard of these curved aspen trees when a friend shot this grove and shared the photos on his blog a couple of years ago. He and seemingly everyone on the internet was keeping their location a secret. Which is a good thing, as too many people ruin things. Well, because they look cool and it required some thought to find “clues,” I wanted to see them too!
It’s easy to figure out that this spot is in the general vicinity of Telluride, CO. From Taos, that area is about a 6-hour drive. Not wanting to waste the trip up there and to take advantage of a nice drive, we went up in the fall. Through clues, I felt it must be on a road that required a 4x4, and my friend Addiel brought his Lexus GX470 and was more than eager to get it off-road. After a morning of driving and enjoying fall colors, Addiel steered us off the highway after passing through a small town around 10,000 ft. He lowered his tire pressure, engaged 4WD, and we started to climb up into the mountains.
After enjoying the slow speed of offroading and crunching rocks under the tires during our ascent, I was excited to see a valley in front of us exploding with color from many yellow aspen trees. Grey clouds rolled in, but we were determined to look. The road wound down into the aspen trees, and I figured we were close.
Knowing how lazy most people are, I imagined that these trees, while maybe not visible from the road, must not be far from it. We stopped at several places where it was obvious that vehicles had parked there before to explore lightly worn footpaths. We parked and walked down several of these, getting maybe a half mile down each one, and I kept thinking, “There’s no way so many people would have walked this far.” each time we walked back to the car.
Each time we moved on, I was worried we might have missed the trees. The clouds started to give way to more sun and blue skies, which was a good sign. I was still worried as the road didn’t go much further, according to the map, before we hit another town. We rounded a bend and saw a 4Runner parked and a well-worn footpath. From the road, I saw a guy standing behind a tripod and assumed this must be the spot.
We parked off the dirt road, Addiel and I grabbed camera stuff, and Kelly put Stella back on the leash. A few feet down the trail, you could make out the Curved Aspens easily. I made sure I wasn’t in the other photographer’s shot and started shooting my take on the trees while Stella rolled in the grass. Addiel and the photographer there before us started talking about 4x4 (they had the same model), and I got to enjoy the trees without having anyone in my shots or being in other’s shots.
After about 45 minutes of hanging out, shooting, and talking, we decided to head back up the 4x4 road and back to town. As we returned to the car, another guy with a camera happily walked down the trail, looking gleeful that he found the spot.
We finished the 4x4 road going into the small town at the end taking in the colorful sights and thinking “I could live here” before we turned around to head back the way we came. The way back was more relaxing as we had succeeded, and I wasn’t stressed about finding them. For sleeping, we brought tents and planned to camp in the San Juan National Forest near flowing water and just minutes from a town.
We claimed our site, which had a fire ring and was far enough away but a short walk from vault toilets.
From there, we went into town to enjoy celebratory pizzas and beers at a local restaurant. After finishing, we returned to the campsite, happy to see that even though the area was bursting with fall colors, the early October overnight temps in the 20s kept the site almost empty.
We enjoyed a fire, and more beers and then found our way to bed, happy to have had the opportunity to see the Curved Aspens in full fall color and to be sleeping outside after a fun day with people (and a dog) that I like.
Photos taken with an a7rIII and my go-tolenses:
Canon FD 24mm f/1.4 L
Noct-Nikkor 58mm f/1.2 AI-S