Plan your trip.
Follow the color.
Mountain gold comes first. Foothill oaks, river cottonwoods and neighborhood trees keep the season going. Here’s where we’d start looking this fall.
Where will the color be?
Select a place. Move the date.
Map colors are estimates, not live reports.
Color follows actual elevation and latitude. It estimates timing where deciduous trees occur, not tree coverage. Highest alpine terrain is faded out. Pins and charts retain the local planning windows; shading may differ by elevation. Filters select locations; regional shading stays statewide. Zoom with +/−; drag or use arrow keys when zoomed.
Elevation-driven color · Terrain: Mapzen Terrain Tiles · USGS 3DEP / GMTED2010 / SRTM. Relief and elevation grid derived from these data.
Today is outside this outlook’s September 8–November 1, 2026 date range. The page opened at the nearest available date.
Allow roughly a week either side of these estimates, and potentially more in cities. A hard freeze or strong wind can shorten the display quickly.
Worth a look around September 26
Matches your date and location filter.
Suggested stops, not confirmed peak reports.
See every region’s suggested peak weekends
| Area | Estimated window | Suggested weekends |
|---|---|---|
| Buffalo Pass / Steamboat | Sep 15 – Sep 24 | Sep 19–20 |
| Rocky Mountain National Park | Sep 17 – Sep 27 | Sep 19–20 · Sep 26–27 |
| Guanella Pass | Sep 18 – Sep 28 | Sep 19–20 · Sep 26–27 |
| Vail / Minturn | Sep 18 – Sep 28 | Sep 19–20 · Sep 26–27 |
| Aspen / Maroon Valley | Sep 19 – Sep 29 | Sep 19–20 · Sep 26–27 |
| Grand Mesa | Sep 18 – Sep 28 | Sep 19–20 · Sep 26–27 |
| Kebler Pass / Crested Butte | Sep 21 – Oct 1 | Sep 26–27 |
| Twin Lakes / Independence | Sep 17 – Sep 27 | Sep 19–20 · Sep 26–27 |
| Teller County / Mueller | Sep 21 – Oct 1 | Sep 26–27 |
| Monarch / Cottonwood passes | Sep 18 – Sep 28 | Sep 19–20 · Sep 26–27 |
| Ouray / Telluride / Silverton | Sep 23 – Oct 4 | Sep 26–27 · Oct 3–4 |
| Cuchara / La Veta Pass | Sep 24 – Oct 5 | Sep 26–27 · Oct 3–4 |
| Pagosa / Wolf Creek | Sep 23 – Oct 4 | Sep 26–27 · Oct 3–4 |
| Pikes Peak foothills | Sep 28 – Oct 12 | Oct 3–4 · Oct 10–11 |
| Fort Collins / Boulder | Oct 5 – Oct 19 | Oct 10–11 · Oct 17–18 |
| Denver metro | Oct 8 – Oct 23 | Oct 10–11 · Oct 17–18 |
| Colorado Springs | Oct 5 – Oct 19 | Oct 10–11 · Oct 17–18 |
| Pueblo / Cañon City | Oct 10 – Oct 26 | Oct 17–18 · Oct 24–25 |
| Grand Junction / Palisade | Oct 11 – Oct 26 | Oct 17–18 · Oct 24–25 |
| Alamosa / Rio Grande | Sep 29 – Oct 13 | Oct 3–4 · Oct 10–11 |
| La Junta / Lamar | Oct 11 – Oct 27 | Oct 17–18 · Oct 24–25 |
Hot everywhere. Equally dry? No.
Our summer left a different starting point from one community to the next. Colorado Springs and Alamosa ran short on rainfall. Pueblo finished wetter than normal, despite the heat.
Our interpretation: watch dry, exposed trees for premature yellowing, browning or leaf drop. Keep later options open in irrigated parks and river corridors. An airport rain gauge cannot tell us how much water an individual grove can reach.
Station observations below are preliminary NWS figures for June–August 2026. They are not statewide averages. NWS summer review ↗
| Station | Temperature | Rainfall |
|---|---|---|
| Colorado Springs | +2.7°F | −5.11 in. 3.24 in. total |
| Alamosa | +3.1°F | −1.98 in. 0.87 in. total |
| Pueblo | +2.9°F | +1.05 in. 6.33 in. total |
The gold was there all along.
Green steps aside.
As autumn arrives, trees reclaim nutrients and chlorophyll declines. The yellow and orange pigments already in the leaf become visible. Shortening days provide a dependable seasonal cue.
Red is a different story.
Some trees make red pigments called anthocyanins in fall. Sunny days and cool, nonfreezing nights can favor reds. Aspen gold and a neighborhood maple’s red are not the same chemical process.
Stress can cut it short.
A dry tree may shed leaves early. Strong wind can strip a colorful canopy, and a hard freeze can damage leaves. Frost is not required to start fall color.
Science: CU Boulder plant biologist Barbara Demmig-Adams and meteorologist Lourdes Avilés / American Meteorological Society. These explain the mechanisms; they do not provide our 2026 local dates.
Same town. Different trees. What changes?
Start checking earlier. Drought stress can produce scattered yellow or brown leaves and early leaf drop. That does not mean the whole surrounding forest has reached its best color.
Qualitative examples. These buttons explain the science; they do not alter the forecast dates.
Keep a second option.
For Southern Colorado: mountains first, city walks next
Start with Teller County and the Upper Arkansas high country in the second half of September. Keep Cuchara and the southern mountains in play around late September into early October. Then switch your attention to Colorado Springs parks, followed by the Pueblo–Cañon City river corridor. These are planning windows; compare recent photos from the actual elevation you intend to visit.
Why the grove across the road can look different
Aspen often grows in connected clones. Neighboring clones can differ in autumn color and timing. Exposure, elevation and moisture add more variation, so a single yellow stand does not establish a regional peak. US Forest Service: How Aspens Grow ↗
What about the Springs, Pueblo, Denver, and the plains?
City trees mix species, irrigation and sheltered or exposed sites. Expect several rounds of color rather than one synchronized peak. River cottonwoods depend on local water access. Our October city windows are intentionally broad and carry lower confidence than the general mountain-to-valley seasonal progression.
Before you head out
Check COtrip and the destination’s official page for road conditions, closures and any reservation requirements. High-country travel conditions can change quickly. A foliage window is not a road-access or weekend-weather forecast.
What this outlook can tell you.
These are initial 2026 planning estimates prepared for Peaks2Plains Weather, combining the broad elevation-and-latitude progression with documented seasonal weather and tree physiology. There is no calibrated leaf-color model, satellite classification or verified grove-by-grove report behind the map. The color areas use a real elevation grid, sampled at roughly 1–1.5 km, and latitude. A simple statistical fit to the existing local planning windows sets the elevation/timing relationship; it is not a validated biological forecast model. There is no distance-to-marker weighting or circular coverage limit. Terrain above about 10,800 feet is progressively faded, with no shading above about 11,800 feet; that is an approximate alpine display rule, not a mapped tree line. Vegetation, soil moisture, irrigation and tree species are not resolved at each pixel. Dates for northern and western Colorado rely more heavily on the seasonal baseline; the strongest weather evidence here is from Southern Colorado.
Confidence: moderate in the broad mountain-before-valley progression; low in exact local peak dates and color quality. The “peak window” describes when to start targeting a region, not a promise that every tree is at peak. The non-peak stages and their durations are illustrative. The map, markers and location progression chart use the same stage definitions. Map shading represents terrain-based regional timing; location markers and charts preserve the original area-wide planning windows, so they need not match the pixel at a marker exactly. No automated foliage observations or forecast updates are connected.
Primary source for station temperatures and precipitation.
Primary source for the September climate outlook; a seasonal tendency is not a daily forecast.
September 17, 2025. Plant biologist Barbara Demmig-Adams explains pigments and tree responses. Prior-year conditions are not used as 2026 observations.
November 3, 2025. Lourdes Avilés explains weather, pigments, frost and wind.
Aspen clones and differences in color and timing.
Regional seasonal guidance and a place to check field updates. No current field report is imported into this map.
