How do you visit the Maroon Bells?

Caffe Siena (Highlands Ritz) opens 7am Paradise Bakery (Aspen downtown) opens 630am Felix Roasting (Aspen downtown) opens 7am Silvers Bagels (Aspen downtown) opens 7am Louis Swiss (Aspen ABC) opens 7am You already know what it looks like. Two maroon peaks, a still lake, aspens. It's on a calendar in your dentist's office. It's the photo on the front of every book about Colorado ever published. It is, genuinely, the most photographed mountain scene on the continent. And then you stand in front of it and take forty more photos anyway, like everybody else, because it turns out the calendar was underselling it. Here's how to go without the two things that go wrong. THING ONE: THE RESERVATION You need one. To drive, or to take the bus. Not "recommended," required, from roughly mid-May to the end of October. Book it at visitmaroonbells.com, and book it before you plan the rest of the day. Summer weekends and the fall colour weeks go early, and there is no version of this where you turn up and sort it out at the gate. People try. It does not work. They drive back down a very beautiful road in a very bad mood. Then, and this is the bit almost nobody tells you: SCREENSHOT YOUR RESERVATION. There is no cell service up there. None. Sometimes the Guard Hut will offer wifi but don't rely on it. Your confirmation email lives in the cloud, and the cloud does not visit the Maroon Bells. Save it to your phone [screenshot] or print it like it's 2004. THING TWO: WHICH BUS, FROM WHERE The shuttle leaves from the Maroon Bells Welcome Center at Aspen Highlands, not from downtown Aspen. Every summer a number of people go to the wrong place with great confidence. There's paid parking at Highlands, and a free bus from Aspen if you'd rather not drive at all.. which is the move, honestly. If you'd rather take your own car, you can, but only outside the shuttle's hours: very early, or in the evening. During the day the road is the bus's road. Hours and dates shift a little every season, so check the official site rather than a blog. Including this one. We're a blog. NOW THE GOOD PART THE EASY ONE Maroon Lake Scenic Loop. Flat, short, and it delivers the photo. If your plan is "see the thing, be moved by the thing, have a sandwich," this is the whole trip and there is nothing wrong with that. THE ONE WORTH DOING Crater Lake. Roughly three and a half miles round trip, rocky underfoot, and it puts you properly beneath the Bells rather than looking at them across water. Two hours-ish, depending on how many times you stop to look up. You will stop to look up. THE AMBITIOUS ONES Buckskin Pass, West Maroon, and the Four Pass Loop, which is a multi-day undertaking and one of the great walks in the country. If you're reading a guide called "how do you visit the Maroon Bells," these are probably not today's plan, but they're worth knowing exist. THE LIGHT Sunrise. It's not close. Early morning is when the lake goes glassy and gives you the reflection, before the wind picks up and turns it into ordinary water. It's also when the elk are out and the crowd isn't. Second best is the last hour of the evening, which is quieter than dawn and comes with better odds of seeing a moose, which brings us to: THE MOOSE There are moose here. Actual ones, regularly, right by the lake. They look like a sofa with legs and an expression of profound disappointment. They are also enormous, faster than you, and the most likely large animal in Colorado to actually ruin your day. They do not care about your photograph. Give them a very great deal of room. If a moose looks at you, that is already too close. And if you've brought a dog, this is the moment it matters.. moose see dogs and think wolf, and moose do not back down from wolves. THE BELLS THEMSELVES, AND WHY YOU SHOULDN'T CLIMB THEM TODAY Fun fact that is only fun from the ground: the Maroon Bells are nicknamed the Deadly Bells. The rock they're made of is loose, rotten, downward-sloping sedimentary mudstone..which in mountaineering terms means "held together by optimism." Handholds come away in your hand. There's a Forest Service sign at the trailhead that has been warning people about this for decades, in tones usually reserved for haunted houses. Every summer some people summit them safely and properly, with skill and equipment and a real early start. Every summer some other people do not. Look at them. Photograph them. Do not go up them because the light was nice and you were feeling good. WHAT TO BRING A layer more than you think. You're at nearly 9,600 feet and the temperature at the lake at 6am has a completely different opinion than the one in Aspen at noon. Water, because altitude dehydrates you faster than you'll notice. Sunscreen, because thin air, and snow, and a reflective lake. Something to eat. There's no café up there and there shouldn't be. Bug spray in early summer, when the mosquitoes have their moment. Not a drone. Definitely not a drone. WHEN TO COME Late June through July for wildflowers, which are genuinely absurd. Mid-to-late September for the aspens, when the whole valley goes gold and the reservations become competitive in a way that should probably embarrass all of us. Winter, if you're the sort of person who'd ski or snowshoe up a closed road for several miles to see it with nobody else there. The road shuts, the buses stop, and it becomes the quietest famous place in America. ONE LAST THING Everybody there is taking the same photograph, which is a bit funny when you notice it. Two hundred people, one lake, one composition, all slightly annoyed about each other. Take yours, then put the phone down for five minutes and just look at it. It's been standing there for a very long time waiting for you to do that. — Written in Aspen by Chloe, with supervision from Birdie & Goose 🐩🐩