Beautiful images of the autumn colors in the forests of Aspen, Colorado

When the Spanish first explored the banks of the Colorado River in the United States, they were struck by the color of its waters.

The enormous golden Celtic cross that appears every autumn in a forest in Donegal, Ireland
A walk through Muir Woods, a place where there are giant trees over 1,000 years old

Upon observing the river's surface, they found it to be reddish in color due to the sediment it carried. Thus, they named it the Colorado River because of the red color of its waters. The river eventually gave its name to the Colorado Territory, an incorporated territory of the United States since 1861, which became the 38th state of the Union in 1876. Colorado is one of the two US states with the simplest map: it is rectangular in shape, just like the neighboring state of Wyoming.

Colorado is a very forested state: it has 5.9 million hectares of forest, with large forests such as the Arapaho, Pike, Rio Grande, San Juan, and Uncompahgre. In the northwest of the state is the White River National Forest, which surrounds the city of Aspen, with about 7,000 inhabitants. Founded by miners in 1879, the city experienced rapid growth but declined to about 700 inhabitants by the 1930s.

It was then that the city turned to skiing to attract tourists, becoming a major destination for ski enthusiasts ever since. Aspen sits at 2,405 meters above sea level and is surrounded by a ring of mountains, but it's not only interesting to see when the snow falls. When summer ends, autumn paints the forests surrounding this city with beautiful colors, as we can see in the first and lovely video published by Altitude Optics, a YouTube channel that has just launched:

It's a pleasure to end the day watching and listening to such an enjoyable video. My congratulations to Altitude Optics on their first video, which I hope will be widely shared. You can see some preview screenshots here.

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Main image: Altitude Optics.