Nature’s fall foliage at it’s best, beautiful golden leaf aspen tree  forest landscape  in the colorful autumn season of the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  This was taken in the Independence Pass area at the end of September.

Independence Pass is a high mountain pass in the Rocky Mountains of central Colorado. It is at elevation tops out at 12,095 ft on the Continental Divide in the Sawatch Range. The pass is midway between Aspen and Twin Lakes, on the border between Pitkin and Lake counties.

On July 4, 1879, a group from Leadville struck gold in the uppermost Roaring Fork valley below the pass. Four miles to the west, they established a settlement in the upper Roaring Fork Valley that eventually took the name Independence from the holiday on which it was established. The pass, the lake from which the Roaring Fork rises and another nearby mountain all took that name…