Million Dollar Highway - Red Mountain Pass

Author's Comments

There is no other stretch of road in Colorado quite like this one. You climb out of Ouray on a highway that drops away to nothing on the passenger side, and somewhere before the summit the mountains begin to change color. Iron in the rock. Centuries of oxidation. The peaks go rust and ochre and a deep arterial red that does not look entirely natural until you accept that it is. I prefer this pass in late September, mid-afternoon, when the sun has come around far enough to rake across the western faces and the color saturates into something almost embarrassing. The aspens at lower elevation are turning by then, and the contrast between gold and red and the bleached gray of mine tailings makes for a landscape that does not really resolve into a single photograph. You have to choose. A wide frame for the scale of it, a longer lens for the old headframes and tipples still standing on the slopes, a tight detail of the rock itself where the color is at its most improbable. The pullouts are narrow and the drop-offs are real. I have learned to scout the turnouts on the way up and shoot them on the way down, when I am on the inside of the road and not negotiating with traffic to cross a lane. There are no guardrails through much of this. That is part of why the views are what they are. This is not a place to rush. Drive it slowly, stop often, and give the afternoon time to move across the peaks. The light changes the color hour by hour, and the mountains are never quite the same red twice.

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