At 5:30 in the morning on September 12, a line of buses will pull out of the Telluride courthouse parking lot and head for Ouray. The riders are runners, roughly 1,550 of them, about to attempt the Imogene Pass Run, a 17.1-mile point-to-point race that climbs from Ouray's 7,810 feet to the 13,114-foot summit of Imogene Pass before dropping back down into town on Oak Street. It's the 53rd running of a race that started in 1974 as training for the Pikes Peak Marathon. Registration caps out fast every June. The cutoff at Upper Camp Bird comes at 10 a.m., the summit cutoff at noon, and for one day the pass itself closes to every vehicle that isn't part of the race.
Every year these runners are, without meaning to be, the first people in town to get an honest look at whether the high country has turned. This year, that look matters more than usual.
Colorado is having a drought year. More than three-quarters of the state was sitting in severe, exceptional, or worse conditions as of early September, and that kind of stress does something specific to aspens: it pulls their color change forward and speeds up how fast the leaves drop once they turn. CBS Colorado's regional forecast puts Telluride, Ouray, Gunnison, and Crested Butte in a viewing window of September 18 through 29, a stretch that starts noticeably earlier than the assumption most people here carry around, which is some version of "wait for the last week of the month." That assumption isn't wrong, exactly. It's just built for a normal water year, and this isn't one.
The old assumption still works, just not everywhere
Here's the part that generic drought-and-foliage coverage misses, because it treats Telluride as one elevation instead of several stacked on top of each other in the space of a few miles.
The San Juan National Forest's own color reporting has long noted that aspens in this range typically peak toward the end of September into early October, a few weeks later than most of the state, because the elevation band here runs higher and cooler longer. That's the basis for the old assumption, and at town elevation, roughly 8,750 feet, and in Mountain Village a bit higher, it's probably still a decent bet this year. CBS's own window includes the caveat that the best color tends to land closer to the middle or end of whatever range they give you, which for Telluride's 8,000-to-9,500-foot band means something close to the back half of September. That's exactly when the Telluride Autumn Classic & Colors festival lands, September 24 through 27, four days of fine arts and a classic car show spread across Mountain Village's Heritage Plaza. The name has always assumed the aspens around the golf course and the gondola line will be doing their best work that weekend. This year, at that elevation, they probably still will.
The problem is everything above treeline. Imogene Pass, Black Bear Pass, the alpine basins above roughly 10,500 feet, these are the elevations where drought stress hits hardest and fastest, because the growing season up there is already short and the trees have less margin to begin with. If the pattern holds the way it has in past drought years, color at that altitude could already be building by the time the Imogene Pass Run happens on September 12, and it may be well past its best by the time Blues & Brews rolls around a week later. That's the gap nobody's single "let's go see the leaves" weekend accounts for. The town-level color and the alpine color are not on the same schedule this year, not the way they'd be in a wetter one.
What that means for the calendar you already have
None of this requires ripping up your plans. It means treating the high routes and the low routes as two separate outings instead of one, and timing them to the bands they actually belong to.
| Elevation band | Where | Typical local assumption | What 2026's drought is doing |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000+ ft | Imogene Pass, Black Bear Pass, alpine basins | Turns with everything else in late Sept | Turning and dropping earlier, possibly ahead of Sept 18 |
| 8,000-9,500 ft | Town of Telluride, Mountain Village, San Juan Skyway corridor | Peaks last week of Sept into early Oct | Tracking closer to CBS's Sept 18-29 window, best color likely in the back half |
If you're taking out-of-town guests up Imogene Pass Road for the high alpine view, the Tomboy Road route out of the north end of Oak Street, past the waterfalls, through the tunnel, up to the old Tomboy mining camp, do it before Blues & Brews weekend rather than saving it for Autumn Classic. Just don't try it on September 12 itself, since the race closes the road to vehicles that day. If your plan is the lower, more accessible color, the aspens along the San Juan Skyway toward Lizard Head Pass, or whatever you can see from the gondola cabin on the ride between town and Mountain Village, that one probably still lines up fine with the traditional late-September timing, Autumn Classic included.
The three weekends stacked into this month are worth having straight regardless of foliage:
- September 12 — Imogene Pass Run. Expect a road closure on Imogene Pass Road itself and a lot of runner traffic on Oak Street around midday.
- September 18-20 — Telluride Blues & Brews Festival, its 32nd year, headlined this time by Jon Batiste, Taj Mahal & Keb' Mo', and the Marcus King Band, filling Town Park along with a rotating cast of late-night club shows around town.
- September 24-27 — Telluride Autumn Classic & Colors, a four-day fine arts festival paired with a classic car show in Mountain Village, including a Friday cruise parading in from the airport for the Cool Cars on Colorado showcase and a Saturday concours staged on the golf course driving range at 9,000 feet.
Town Park will be tight with festival infrastructure for the back half of Blues & Brews weekend, and Mountain Village's Heritage Plaza will be doing the same the following weekend. If you're trying to time a quiet hike or a quiet drive around either event, plan for the gaps between them rather than the weekends themselves.
The hard stop at the end of the month
There's a real deadline sitting at the far edge of all this. The gondola's summer and fall service runs through October 25, then shuts down for maintenance until November 20. For anyone who relies on it to move between town and Mountain Village without a car, or who wants that aspen-canopy view from the cabin itself, the window closes for good once that date passes. Between a compressed color season and a hard mechanical stop three weeks later, this is not a year to assume there's a wide-open month to work with. There's a narrower one, split into two bands that don't move at the same pace.
None of this is a reason to worry about the season. It's a reason to go twice instead of once, and to go a little earlier than habit suggests, especially if the trip you have in mind is the one that starts at the top of Oak Street and ends 13,114 feet later.
If you're weighing whether a particular block, mesa, or slope holds up in a season like this one, or just want a longtime local's read on how a specific property sits relative to these seasonal patterns, Matthew Hintermeister has spent more than two decades watching Telluride's Septembers unfold from ground level. Reach out anytime for a private conversation about what you're seeing out your own window this year.
