The gates to east side — at Beaver Meadows and Fall River — are open, staffed and visitors are traveling into the park, Estes Park Mayor Gary Hall said Wednesday. “That’s a good thing — how long that’s sustainable, that remains to be seen.”

Many of Colorado’s 54,000 federal civilian workers in limbo amid shutdown, but public lands are open

Park spokeswoman Kyle Patterson referred questions from The Denver Post to National Park Service headquarters in Washington.

A -- which oversees the Park Service -- about nationwide operations during the shutdown said park roads, trails and open-air memorials will generally remain accessible to visitors. However, park facilities or areas that are generally locked during non-business hours should be locked and inaccessible. That includes buildings, the majority of the visitor centers and gated parking lots. Road and trail conditions won't be updated, and websites won't be maintained.

Much of the park service's staff will be furloughed, except those deemed necessary for law enforcement and emergency response.

Estee Rivera Murdock, executive director of the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Conservancy, said the Fall River Visitor Center near the entrance to the park on U.S. 34, will remain open, however, since it is operated by the conservancy, not park staff, and is located outside of the park boundary. "We've done that in all previous shutdowns, also," Murdock said.

The shutdown comes at the worst possible time because this is a peak season when the park attracts hordes of visitors to see fall colors and rutting elk, she added.

"We need peak staffing this time of the year," Murdock said. "We’re absolutely concerned about not having full staffing in the park. We want visitors to have a wonderful experience, and we want to make sure the resources are appropriately protected."

The conservancy is urging visitors to use caution, warning that there could be delays in emergency response, including search-and-rescue and law enforcement.

"Those are positions that are not furloughed," Murdock said, "but there are always delays when you're missing the vast majority of the staff throughout the park who have been furloughed."

Rocky Mountain National Park's mountainous Trail Ridge Road, which climbs over the Continental Divide and reaches 12,183 feet, typically closes in the fall when snow begins to fall.

In August, Gov. Jared Polis told The Denver Post that the state stood ready with a plan to keep Rocky Mountain National Park open in the event of a shutdown.

“We will keep our national parks open," Polis said then. "That requires cooperation with the federal government. Both Biden and Trump, when they were facing shutdowns, were fine with that. It����ap a matter of us figuring out how to pay for it and do it. We haven’t had to do it, but we came very close a couple times.”

According to a news release posted Wednesday afternoon, the Polis administration expects Colorado's eight destinations managed by the National Park Service to remain open under conditions similar to Rocky Mountain, at least for the near term. They include three other national parks -- Great Sand Dunes, Mesa Verde and Black Canyon of the Gunnison -- and four national monuments (Dinosaur, Florissant Fossil Beds, Hovenweep and the Colorado National Monument).

“I have repeatedly called on the federal government to keep national parks open, especially during the busy fall tourism season," Polis said in the release. "The state is offering support to keep Colorado’s iconic national parks open for Coloradans and visitors and we continue to monitor for next steps.”

Friday through Sunday will likely be some of the busiest travel days of the season as folks flock to higher elevations to enjoy the changing leaves, Colorado Department of Transportation officials said Thursday.

Heavy traffic, significant delays and major backups are expected along the Interstate 70 mountain corridor, along with “extreme congestion” on U.S. 285 between South Park and Denver as people travel to Kenosha Pass.

CDOT officials tracked a peak of 3,000 vehicles per hour passing through the Eisenhower Johnson Memorial Tunnel during the same weekend in 2024, and road crews had to meter traffic late into the evening to keep vehicles moving safely.

Other areas of heavy I-70 traffic could include Floyd Hill and the stretch between Evergreen and Georgetown, as well as backups between Georgetown and Grant as vehicles wait to exit toward Guanella Pass.

According to CDOT, daytrippers should expect the heaviest westbound traffic in the late morning and early afternoon and the heaviest eastbound traffic starting in the late morning and into the evening.

The best bet to avoid some of the crowds is to head out early or late in the day, but delays are inevitable, state officials said.

Drivers should also think twice before taking any alternate routes to bypass the crowds, because local roads like Guanella Pass can’t handle I-70 volumes of traffic, according to CDOT.

Colorado has four national parks: Rocky Mountain, Great Sand Dunes, Black Canyon of the Gunnison and Mesa Verde. Keep in mind that timed-entry reservations are still required at Rocky Mountain, and it’s likely to be a busy day because of elk bugling season and leaf-peeping travelers.

Reservations are required for all of the park except the Bear Lake Road corridor from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. That reservation includes access to Trail Ridge Road. Reservations for all of the park including Bear Lake Road are required from 5 a.m. to 6 p.m. Reservation requirements will end on Oct. 13 for all of the park except Bear Lake, and on Oct. 19 for all of the park including Bear Lake.

Most reservations are secured weeks in advance, but a few are held back until 7 p.m. the night before the arrival date. These are likely to be snapped up quickly, though.

Reservations are free, except for a $2 processing fee, and must be bought in advance .

Annual free entry days at national parks

• Jan. 20: Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
• April 19: First day of National Park Week
• June 19: Juneteenth National Independence Day
• Aug. 4: Anniversary of the Great American Outdoors Act
• Sept. 27: National Public Lands Day
• Nov. 11: Veterans Day

Circle Sept. 20 on your calendar for peak fall colors in Colorado mountains

Heightened enforcement planned as Guanella Pass braces for tens of thousands of leaf-peepers

Citing two rescue operations that were impeded by slow-moving traffic and illegal parking on the pass last fall, officials of Clear Creek and Park counties say there will be extra sheriff’s patrols to enforce no-parking ordinances. Vehicles illegally parked along the roadway will be towed.

“During this time of year, the number of visitors to the Guanella Pass area increases by tens of thousands,” said Park County undersheriff Steve Spodyak. “Last year, on one of the peak weekends, we experienced 25,000 to 30,000 vehicles on Guanella Pass. On one of the peak days, between 1 and 4 p.m., we had over 10,000 vehicles traverse the pass. This is a narrow, two-lane mountain pass, and it����ap not capable of handling that type of traffic volume.”

Large no-parking signs have been planted every 50 yards or so along the road near the 11,670-foot summit, where the counties meet. Spodyak said that when cars are parked on the shoulders, it creates a dangerous situation.

“It makes it difficult for emergency vehicles to respond to emergencies,” Spodyak said. “And, it makes a narrow two-lane road into a one-lane road with both directions of traffic trying to utilize it at the same time.”

Last September, there was a rollover accident on the Park County side, six miles up the road from US 285, that called for fire and medical response. The first responder on the scene was a Park County deputy driving up from Bailey. The normal response time from there is 15-20 minutes, Spodyak said, but that day it took 41 minutes. The first ambulance took 55 minutes to reach the scene, more than double how long it normally takes.

“Seconds can be the difference between life and death when someone is experiencing a traumatic injury,” Spodyak said. “Last year could have ended in tragedy. Luckily, it didn’t. This year, we are taking proactive measures to ensure unimpeded emergency access to Guanella Pass at all times.”

Clear Creek County first responders had a similar incident on Sept. 29 when a woman experienced cardiac arrest atop the pass.

“Emergency response was significantly delayed due to illegally parked vehicles,” Clear Creek County Sheriff Matthew Harris said. “We had to use life flight, and we had to transport the person off the mountain. Thankfully, she survived. This year, we decided we needed to get ahead of this.”

Harris said nine people have required rescue already this year on Bierstadt, one of Colorado’s busiest fourteeners due to its relatively easy ascent and proximity to Front Range cities.

“Illegal parking and overcrowding on the pass puts people’s lives at risk,” Harris said. “We want everybody to come here and leaf-peep responsibly. We also want you to come on a Tuesday or Wednesday. Take off of work. Play hooky.”

Clear Creek County commissioner Rebecca Lloyd said she was stuck in Interstate 70 gridlock for two hours on a peak leaf-peeping weekend last year.

“Guanella Pass is a treasure,” Lloyd said. “Guanella Pass can be loved to death. As the number of visitors increases, we face challenges with overcrowding, people parking illegally, stopping in traffic lanes to take photos of moose on the side of the road.”

Georgetown, the gateway town to the pass from the north, will implement a traffic management plan for the weekends of Sept. 20-21 and Sept. 27-28 that is designed to mitigate disruption in a town with a year-round population of only 1,200. More than 20,000 people are likely to pass through town daily on those weekends.

“Our goal with this plan is to help keep leaf-peeping traffic out of residential neighborhoods as much as possible, while still making it easy for everyone to enjoy our commercial areas,” town administrator Dennis Durham said. “Visitors who would like to stop and support our local businesses are welcome to do so, and at the same time, traffic will be guided safely and efficiently so those just passing through can enjoy the drive and exit town smoothly.”

West, an entomologist for the Colorado State Forest Service who annually spends late-summer weeks evaluating the health of forests around the state from the air and on the ground, believes leaf peepers may be disappointed this year — at least in comparison to the past two.

“2023 was a banner year,” West said. “It was wonderful. Everywhere you went in the state, aspens had the fullest crowns going into the fall, lots of leaves, no maladies, no issues. 2024 was a good year, but certainly not as good as 2023. I think 2025 is going to be an OK year, but not great.

“We all have short memories,” West continued. “Over the last couple of years, it����ap been so good. This year there could be a bit of a letdown, because some of the colors are going to be muted.”

West expects colors in the central mountains — Summit County, Eagle County and the Interstate 70 corridor — to peak the weekend of Sept. 27-28. The southern mountains should see their peak early in October.

So far, there has been little color change. West has observed only hints of what is coming.

“The coldest areas — river bottoms, some of the willows, some of the cottonwoods along riparian areas — are just now starting to turn,” West said. “Up north, off Highway 14 on the way to Steamboat, things are just now starting.”

Some trees are showing colors that West attributes to drought damage, rather than the seasonal fall color shift that signals winter is coming.

“At this point it����ap kind of hard to tease out what is yellow from brown,” West said. “You’ve got to get out of your car and look. Everything I got out and looked at, that looked fairly yellow, it was pretty much some kind of drought (damage).”

Despite the prospect of fall foliage falling short of the brilliance seen in recent years, West says it will be worth the gasoline for road trips this fall.

“As far as the I 70 corridor is concerned, I still feel like there is going to be plenty of show,” West said. “Some stands still look green as you’re driving through, (some) look a little off color if you’re looking really closely. But for the most part it’s just starting to get into the swing of things. It����ap now time to start planning your trips.”

For the second year, the Breckenridge Tourism Office is ramping up Leaf Brief, an online program that will offer weekly photo updates tracking the progress of fall colors in and around Breckenridge. Updates will be posted on the , and at . Leaf Brief also will offer tips and trail recommendations. The Town of Breckenridge will offer .

West believes it might be a good year to consider checking out fall colors on the eastern plains and in riparian areas east of Interstate 25. Large swaths of eastern Colorado have evaded the drought plaguing most of the state west of 25.

“They’ve had above-average precipitation,” West said. “The cottonwoods look really beautiful.”

Unfortunately there is an unsettling hue in some Front Range forests: the color of rust in trees that don’t take part in seasonal fall foliage changes, the evergreen pines.

“Conifers along the Front Range are really suffering,” West said. “If you’ve driven I 70 or 285 over Kenosha Pass, you cannot help notice the pockets of dead trees from the mountain pine beetle.”

Are Colorado leaves already changing? We separate fact from fiction.

West has seen that in Boulder, Gilpin, Clear Creek, Jefferson counties and a few spots in Douglas County.

"Maybe rust is another fall color, but we don’t want to see that in our conifers," West said. "Unfortunately, that����ap the case right now. Other parts of the state have experienced this widespread mortality for a number of years, but the Front Range has really kind of evaded some of that -- until now."

It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate the beauty of a hillside embroidered with yellow and gold aspen stands in September. It’s just that the entomologist for the Colorado State Forest Service was dubious that the change had begun so early.

“I thought, ‘Here we go again,’” West said. “We need to stop with the misinformation and just give people the facts.”

West, who annually spends late summer inspecting forests in the state from an airplane to determine their health, drove to Summit and Eagle counties last weekend to see for himself. His suspicions were confirmed.

“There is a little bit of yellowing, but it����ap a stress response to drought stress,” West said. “There is some of what is called marginal necrosis, leaf burning around the edges, which is an indication that it just doesn’t have enough water. When it����ap losing more water than it’s gaining, it starts to die off the edges of the leaf. Ultimately, a portion of the leaf near that brown area goes yellow first. Then it just goes brown.

“Around that brown edge is this little line of yellow,” West added. “From afar, it makes the tree look almost like it����ap yellow, but it����ap not. It����ap more brown than it is yellow.”

West believes the fall color change will begin in two to three weeks in the northern mountains, slightly earlier than normal, followed by the central mountains along the Interstate 70 corridor a week later. Last year, the peak began about the third week of September.

Many aspen still look green and appear to be fine, West said, but he observed stressed aspen at Breckenridge, Frisco, Silverthorne, Vail Pass and Vail.

“It����ap pretty widespread along the I-70 corridor,” West said. “I think it����ap a pretty safe bet to say reports of early fall colors are really more of a report of poor aspen condition and stress from trees with not enough water. Walking through the forest, I was kind of amazed at how thin some of the aspens already look. Most of that is because they get this drought stress, so they start to shut down their processes a little bit earlier.

“I think that����ap what����ap happening,” he continued. “There are already brown leaves that are falling off trees as we speak.”

That doesn’t mean fall colors will be a bust when the actual fall color change comes in September, West said.

“I still think there is going to be a show,” West said. “On the west side of Vail Pass, those stands look as green as green can be. Sometimes that����ap one of the prettiest spots (for fall foliage) in all of Colorado. There are many, many trees that still look green, that look fine.

“I think a month from now, we’re going to see some stands that might go a little bit earlier (than normal) in color. Some stands will be more muted. And I think we’re not going to see as many of the deep oranges and dark reds,” he added.

The signs went up on July 23 on a section of the Guanella Pass Scenic Byway at the 11,670-foot summit of the pass, 11 miles south of Georgetown. Trails on the east side of the pass lead to Mount Bierstadt and Mount Blue Sky. Trails on the west side lead to two scenic alpine lakes beneath Square Top Mountain, another prime hiking destination.

Clear Creek County officials want to prevent motorists from illegally parking on the shoulders because it could obstruct or prevent first responders from getting through in an emergency.

“We had two emergency incidents, one on our side, one on the Park County side,” said Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Jenny Fulton, referring to last year’s leaf-peeping season.

“Emergency vehicles could not respond in a timely manner because of the vehicles on both sides of the roadway. They took a two-lane roadway and made it one lane,” she added. “That����ap why we started doing some parking mitigation up there, and we’re going to do more this year for leaf-peeping to mitigate the traffic volume and parking issues.”

During two leaf-peeping weekends last year, Fulton said, the number of cars on the 22-mile byway, between Georgetown, off of Interstate 70, and Grant in Park County, hit 10,000 both days. Since then, officials from Clear Creek County, Park County, the Arapaho National Forest and the town of Georgetown have been meeting regularly in order to prevent “a disaster,” she added.

That will take the form of checkpoints on both sides of the pass in 2025, posted with sheriff’s deputies.

“If we need to, we’re going to end up closing the road temporarily just to ensure it����ap not overcrowded during leaf-peeping,” Fulton said. “We’re also going to be towing vehicles that are parking illegally and are blocking the roadway. We can’t do what happened last year. We can’t risk people’s lives by not being able to respond to emergencies at the summit.”

Until then, hikers are warned not to park along the road at the summit where the no-parking signs have been posted. Violators will be fined $87.50. There are two lots near the summit, located on forest service land, but they tend to overflow during fourteener season.

“The parking lots are designed for the capacity of the trail system,” Fulton said. “When people are overflowing parking lots and parking on both sides of the roadway a mile down, then there’s too many people on the trails. The trails are not made for that volume of foot traffic. The forest service has designed their parking lots with the capacity of the trail system in mind.”

The Breckenridge Tourism Office has teamed up with naturalists from the Town of Breckenridge to launch the . It offers updates with information on which wildflowers are in bloom, where best to see them and other tips to enjoy Breckenridge’s natural beauty. The Wildflower Watch page is part of , the official website of the Breckenridge Tourism Office.

The Wildflower Watch follows the same theme as Leaf Brief, which Breckenridge debuted last fall as a means of providing fall foliage updates. The Wildflower Watch breaks the season into twice monthly updates.

“I think what makes the Wildflower Watch so much more interesting than the Leaf Brief is that the Leaf Brief is one species of plant — the aspens,” said Ella Garner, a naturalist for the Town of Breckenridge. “With wildflowers, there are hundreds of species. Some bloom in June, some in July, and it can vary from week to week.”

They vary depending on altitude, too. Breckenridge has three different life zones: montane (7,000 to 9,000 feet), sub-alpine (9,000 to 11,000) and alpine (above 11,000). Garner said peak wildflower season in the Breckenridge area usually comes in the second and third week of July.

“Things are peaking right now at that 9,000-foot altitude,” Garner said. “In another two weeks, things will be peaking at 11,000 to 12,000 feet. I was at a wildflower meadow at 11,000 feet (Thursday) morning and it was just starting. In town, the wildflowers will be drying up and going away in mid-August. Above treeline, they will hold out until the end of August.”

Wildflower Watch updates will suggest the best trails to see wildflowers in different altitude zones. The Town of Breckenridge also offers free guided hikes.

The Breckenridge area received a lot of spring moisture, which meant flowers that bloom in June were more abundant than usual. There has been less rain so far in July, though.

“Some of the flowers have started to dry up a little bit,” Garner said. “We’re hoping we get more rain here to prolong the wildflower season well into August.”