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Rocky Mountain National Park - The Falls River road to Milner Pass

The drive to Milner Pass took place during an Army Reunion in Denver with old friends from our unit while based in Japan between 1959 and 1961. Now living in Denver our host and his wife are avid campers and know Rocky Mountain National Park well. As our tour-guides they suggested a day trip and a picnic at Milner Pass that sits right on the Continental Divide, and one of their favorite places in the Park. So all nine of us, in two cars, followed our guides up a back road, a dirt road called Falls River, or Fall Rivers Road. No one was on this road except us, all the normal traffic up to the passes coming up out of Estes Park on US 34. The dirt road ends at Fall Rivers Pass where it connect with US 34 West which we followed, far above the tree line in alpine tundra, to Milner Pass where we stopped for the picnic. Later, we descended to Estes Park on US 34 East and on to Denver. The weather was clear this day early in September, 2006, with clouds forming in the afternoon allowing for some interesting shadow effects. The visibility was restricted off and on throughout the day due to smoke from fires in the forests to our southwest. The smoke enhanced the golden reds of the alpine tundra and was picked up in some of the exposures found below.

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Going down the following nine images are a selection taken from the return down US 34 East late in the afternoon. Some of the last images are from the cutoff to US 36 and Colorado 7.