Email mecontact me

Colorado Fall Colors

The last weekend in September is usually the best time to see fall colors in Colorado. That weekend was still almost a full week from the end of the month, and because of this I think we were a little early, but that's okay because getting perfect colors wasn't really the point of this mountain excursion. We went up into the mountains to try out a couple of new lenses that we recently purchased for our upcoming fall foliage photography trip to the East Coast. Since colors were peaking in Colorado before we left for our trip, we figured we better go and shoot with our new glass so we know what to expect. I bought the Canon 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 wide-angle lens and Katie bought pretty much the exact same thing but for her Nikon, a Nikkor 10-20mm f/4.5-5.6 lens.

We picked the Silverdale Interpretive Site (just outside of Georgetown) like we had done the previous year because it was familiar and we knew it would be an easy "hike". This area has many different trails that you can make this as short or as long of a hike as you want. Since we only had the opportunity to go hiking in the evening due to other plans the rest of the weekend, it was important to not have a long or unknown hike that would have landed us in the dark as we hiked back to the car.

After a pretty lengthy drive (2+ hours), we got up to Georgetown about an hour and a half before the sun set which is typically about perfect from a lighting perspective. Unfortunately, the lighting wasn't actually perfect because of a large cloud that was covering the sun during the entire photo shoot, and even sprinkled on us a little bit. The cloud may have blocked golden hour lighting, but at least we didn't have to work around any harsh shadows. After the sun set, we drove the 2 hours back home. It was quite a bit of driving for such little time in the mountains actually shooting, but the photoshoot was worth it to try out the new lenses.

Trailhead Location
The map failed to load!
2.02 mi 1.7 hrs 9,345 ft 276 ft
View Graph
<
Carved in the Tree
The Bridge
Wide Angle
On the Rock
Mountain of Color
Up Close
Laughter
Stuck in the Tree
Getting Stormy
Back to the Bridge
Cool and Relaxed
>