The Old Fall River Road is one-way uphill. Construction crews were hard at work preparing the road for winter closing, but the delay turned out to be serendipitous: We were chatting with a worker about the lack of fall color, and he suggested we go to Grand Lake, way around on the SW side of the park, where the colors were already full-on. We hadn’t planned on driving that far, but this IS the Leaf Peepers’ Trek, so we altered our day’s itinerary.

Last time we’d seen Chasm Falls, we’d hiked in on the closed-for-winter Old Fall River Road, and then snowshoed to the frozen falls. This time we could drive right there, although we did a lot of stopping for photos of peaks and valleys and critters along the way.

The Alpine Visitor Center is up at 11,796’ – well above timberline and truly alpine. Just as we drove out of the trees we heard an elk bugling, and spotted this big guy hunkered down in the krummholz basking in the sunshine, right next to the road. We pulled off, enjoyed his audio-visual displays for a bit, then continued on. We had to bundle up just to make the run into the visitor
center – it was below freezing and WINDY! The visitor center’s wrap-around windows looked down on alpine meadows, and lots of elk. We were hoping to get around to Grand Lake, and then “home” before dark, so we didn’t linger very long at Alpine.