Share article:
Share article:

County Road 12 is a well graded gravel road that starts on Colorado Highway 133 near Paonia Reservoir. It ascends to an altitude of about 10,000 feet at the top of Kebler Pass, before eventually dropping back down to the town of Crested Butte. It is home to one of the largest living organisms on the planet,the Kebler Pass aspen grove.

About 21.5 miles in from Paonia Reservoir or about 1.5 miles past the Horse Ranch Park turnoff is one of most colorful stands of aspen in all of Colorado. In a good color year, some of the aspens in this area get so red, they look like the sugar maples you see in New England. The picture seen above was taken in this area. I like to climb up about 30 feet, on a small open bank on the south side of the road. to get a good vantage point.

The best color for this location normally occurs in the last week of September.

Late afternoon on a day with partly cloudy skies. The shot above is a two shot panorama taken with the equivalent of a 300mm focal length lens on a 35mm full frame camera.

LENS: 70-300 mm on a full frame camera, 70-200mm on a crop sensor camera

FILTER: none needed

 

Kebler Dyje

The Rainbow Conection
©Miles Hecker

CLICK ABOVE IMAGE TO SEE GOOGLE MAP LOCATION

SEASONS

TIMES

LENS & FILTERS

FILMS

Slide films: Fuji Velvia 100

 

Read this story and all the best stories on The Luminous Landscape

The author has made this story available to Luminous Landscape members only. Upgrade to get instant access to this story and other benefits available only to members.

Why choose us?

Luminous-Landscape is a membership site. Our website contains over 5300 articles on almost every topic, camera, lens and printer you can imagine. Our membership model is simple, just $2 a month ($24.00 USD a year). This $24 gains you access to a wealth of information including all our past and future video tutorials on such topics as Lightroom, Capture One, Printing, file management and dozens of interviews and travel videos.

  • New Articles every few days
  • All original content found nowhere else on the web
  • No Pop Up Google Sense ads – Our advertisers are photo related
  • Download/stream video to any device
  • NEW videos monthly
  • Top well-known photographer contributors
  • Posts from industry leaders
  • Speciality Photography Workshops
  • Mobile device scalable
  • Exclusive video interviews
  • Special vendor offers for members
  • Hands On Product reviews
  • FREE – User Forum. One of the most read user forums on the internet
  • Access to our community Buy and Sell pages; for members only.
Share article:

You may also like

ricoh GR IV
Camera & Technology

Ricoh GR IV: Is Portability Worth $1,500?

The truth about Ricoh's latest pocket rocket: the GR IV succeeds at everything it tries to do, but refuses to give what most photographers want in 2025. 
Jon Swindall

Jon Swindall

·

September 28, 2025

·

10 minutes read


image
Camera & Technology

Panasonic Lumix S 100-500mm f/5-7.1 O.I.S.: Compact Telephoto Power

Panasonic's 100-500mm telephoto zoom brings professional wildlife and sports capabilities to the L-mount system.
Jon Swindall

Jon Swindall

·

September 26, 2025

·

4 minutes read