I have just wrapped up my 2024 Autumn Photography trip to the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.
This year’s trip was outstanding. Traveling with my friend Jonathan Steele, we logged 6 days on the road, traveling to Crested Butte, Colorado, Lake City, Colorado, Chama New Mexico, Durango Colorado and all points in between.
The basic intent this year was to replicate the COVID shortened trip we made together last year, flying by the seat of our pants. Another goal was to visit areas of the San Juan’s that neither of us had visited before.
We began our road trip driving over Cottonwood Pass and on to Crested Butte, then south to Lake City. While in Lake City, we spent a morning on Engineer Pass photographing autumn foliage and the ghost town of Capitol City.
From there we went to Chama, New Mexico to photograph the Cumbres & Toltec Narrow Gauge Railroad, where we chased the vintage steam train for a full day. Most excellent.
From Chama, we traveled to Durango, Colorado and then on up to Telluride along the Delores River via Lizard Head Pass. We ended up spending our last two nights in Montrose, Colorado and worked Wilson Mesa.
Our drive home was via McClure Pass along the Crystal River.
Color was very good. Most areas were right at peak, and some were just a hair past peak. Color in Chama New Mexico was surprisingly good as well and we were able to compose a lot of train photos with autumn foliage.
The food sucked for the most part. Most of the restaurants had closed for the season or had gone out of business, but we managed to survive on what was available.
All in all, I came home with about 2,000 photos and I’m in the process of editing them right now. I’ll spend weeks going through everything, but I’ve mined a few images (below) for the blog.