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Aspen

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🎡 Attractions

Aspen

Aspen, CO · Aspen / Roaring Fork

About

Tucked into the Roaring Fork Valley at 7,900 feet, Aspen runs on two clocks: powder mornings on four mountains in winter, and a slower summer of wildflower hikes, Aspen Music Festival concerts, and patio lunches where the conversation outlasts the meal. The brick storefronts on a walkable downtown grid trace back to silver-rush money, and a few minutes out of town the Maroon Bells and the aspen groves of Castle Creek give you the postcard the whole place is named for. Come for the skiing or the music, but stay for the way the light hits those golden hillsides in late September.

Highlights

Walkable silver-rush downtown of brick storefronts and patiosFour ski mountains: Aspen (Ajax), Snowmass, Buttermilk, HighlandsAspen Music Festival and School every summerMaroon Bells and Castle Creek's golden aspen groves nearbyPeak fall color on the hillsides in late September

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The Rocky Mountains21 places

The Rocky Mountains

Alpine lakes, fourteeners, and golden aspen along the spine of the West. The Rockies at their most iconic: the Maroon Bells mirrored in their lake, the Tetons rising straight off the valley floor, Glacier's Going-to-the-Sun Road, the red spires of the Garden of the Gods, and Idaho's serrated Sawtooths over Redfish Lake. From Colorado's San Juans to the Wyoming Tetons, Montana's Glacier, and the Idaho high country, with high passes and old mining towns in between.