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.

21 places · Rocky Mountains

More to explore

🎡 Attractions

Telluride

Telluride, CO · San Juan Mountains

Telluride sits at the dead-end of a glacial box canyon, a former silver-mining camp boxed in on three sides by 13,000-foot San Juan peaks with Bridal Veil Falls, Colorado's tallest free-falling waterfall, spilling 365 feet over the rim at the head of the valley. The free gondola climbs from the brick-and-clapboard storefronts of Colorado Avenue over the ridge to Mountain Village, and in summer the trails up to Bear Creek and Bridal Veil trade the ski runs for wildflowers. It is a town you reach on one road in and the same road out, which is part of why the Bluegrass and Film festivals feel like the whole place has shown up.

⛰️ Mountains

Million Dollar Highway

Ouray to Silverton, CO · San Juan Mountains

The twelve miles of US 550 south of Ouray climb the Uncompahgre Gorge to the 11,018-foot summit of Red Mountain Pass, hugging cliffs carved straight into the rock with no guardrail between you and the drop. Hairpin switchbacks open onto the rust-red slopes of Red Mountain and a wall of snow-streaked San Juan peaks, the old mining country that gave the route its name. Go slow, pull off at the overlooks, and save it for a clear day from late spring through fall when the high passes are open.

⛰️ Mountains

Pikes Peak

Colorado Springs, CO · Front Range

Rising 14,115 feet over Colorado Springs, Pikes Peak is the fourteener that put a phrase in everyone's mouth: Katharine Lee Bates wrote America the Beautiful after taking in the view from the top in 1893. You can reach the summit three ways, by the cog railway out of Manitou Springs, by the 19-mile toll highway with its switchbacks and famous June hill climb, or on foot up the long grind of Barr Trail. However you get there, the rite of passage is a fresh doughnut at the summit house, where the high-altitude recipe is the only one that comes out right at 14,000 feet.

⛰️ Mountains

Mount Blue Sky

Idaho Springs, CO · Front Range

Renamed from Mount Evans in 2023, this 14,266-foot Front Range giant lets you drive nearly to the top. The Mount Blue Sky Scenic Byway climbs 28 paved miles from Idaho Springs past Echo Lake and Summit Lake, the highest paved road in North America, gaining over 7,000 feet to a turnaround just below the peak. Mountain goats pick across the tundra, ancient bristlecone pines twist along the slopes, and on a clear morning the plains roll out a hundred miles east.

🏜️ Canyons & deserts

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Montrose, CO · Western Slope, Colorado

One of America's deepest, narrowest gorges, Black Canyon of the Gunnison drops as much as 2,722 feet through dark, lichen-stained walls so steep and shadowed that parts of the canyon floor see only minutes of sun a day. Stand at the South Rim's Painted Wall Overlook, where pink pegmatite stripes streak the tallest cliff in Colorado, then drive the South Rim Road between viewpoints near Montrose. Designated a Dark Sky Park, it hosts a summer astronomy festival.

🎡 Attractions

Ouray

Ouray, CO · San Juan Mountains

Ouray sits at 7,792 feet on the floor of a box canyon, wedged so tightly between the San Juan peaks that the town earned the nickname Switzerland of America. The main street is a row of 1880s mining-boom buildings, the Wright Opera House and the Beaumont Hotel among them, with red-rock walls climbing straight up behind the rooftops. It is the northern gateway to the Million Dollar Highway, a soak in the town hot springs, and the trailhead for Box Canyon Falls, where Canyon Creek drops 285 feet into a quartzite slot.

🎡 Attractions

Aspen

Aspen, CO · Aspen / Roaring Fork

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.

🌊 Lakes & rivers

Lake McDonald

West Glacier, MT · Glacier Country

Ten miles long and the biggest lake in Glacier National Park, Lake McDonald sits at the western foot of Going-to-the-Sun Road, where the water goes glass-still at dawn and hands back a perfect copy of the snow-streaked peaks above it. Wade in along the Apgar shoreline and the real prize is underfoot: a scatter of smooth pebbles in deep reds, greens, and slate-blues, colored by the iron in stone the glaciers ground down ages ago. Rent a kayak, ride the historic wooden tour boat DeSmet, or just stand on the gravel and watch the larch turn gold in October.

🎡 Attractions

Jackson Hole

Jackson, WY · Jackson Hole

Jackson Hole is the 55-mile valley where the Teton Range erupts straight off the sagebrush flats with no foothills to soften the rise, so the Grand Teton hits 13,775 feet barely a dozen miles from the town of Jackson. Pull off at the Snake River Overlook for the same bend Ansel Adams framed in 1942, watch the elk gather on the National Elk Refuge through winter, or ride the aerial tram up Rendezvous Mountain for a 4,139-foot climb to coffee and a waffle at the top. The four elk-antler arches on Jackson Town Square mark the human-scaled end of it, with cowboy bars and the start of the road into Grand Teton and Yellowstone just north.

⛰️ Mountains

San Juan Skyway

Durango, CO · San Juan Mountains

This 236-mile loop out of Durango stitches together the most dramatic corner of the San Juans, climbing over Red Mountain Pass on the white-knuckle Million Dollar Highway between Silverton and Ouray before swinging through Telluride and the old mining towns of Rico and Dolores. Come the third week of September the aspens turn the whole drive gold, and the valleys go so saturated you half doubt your own eyes. Give it a full day at least, longer if you want to stop for the hot springs in Ouray and the cliff dwellings near Mancos.

⛰️ Mountains

Beartooth Highway

Red Lodge, MT · Beartooth / Absaroka

US 212 climbs out of Red Lodge in a series of switchbacks and tops out near 11,000 feet on the Beartooth Plateau, where the trees give up and the world turns to tundra, granite, and dozens of cold alpine lakes. Charles Kuralt called it the most beautiful drive in America, and the views off the East Summit pullouts make the case fast. It only runs from roughly mid-May to mid-October, so check the gate before you point the car toward Cooke City and Yellowstone's northeast corner.

⛰️ Mountains

Sawtooth National Recreation Area

Stanley, ID · Sawtooth Mountains

More than 700,000 acres of central Idaho high country fan out around the old mining town of Stanley, where the Sawtooth, White Cloud, Boulder, and Smoky ranges throw up some 40 peaks above 10,000 feet. The serrated granite spires give the range its name, and they stand reflected in Redfish Lake, a glacier-carved sheet of cold blue water that fills with boats and swimmers all summer. Over 300 alpine lakes and the headwaters of the Salmon River, the River of No Return, hide along 700 miles of trail, with the Sawtooth Scenic Byway threading the whole basin past the dock at Redfish.

⛰️ Mountains

Independence Pass

Aspen, CO · Aspen / Roaring Fork

At 12,095 feet, Independence Pass is the highest paved crossing of the Continental Divide in North America, and the drive up CO-82 from Aspen earns every switchback. The road climbs past treeline into open tundra, where a short paved path leads to an overlook with the glacier-carved peaks of the Sawatch Range laid out in every direction. It is only open late May through early November, snow willing, so catch it while the wildflowers are out and the alpine ponds are still holding the sky.