Golden Aspen Trees Star In Utah's Fall Colors Show

Fall colors are coming on strong right now in northern Utah. The next couple weeks will be prime time to view nature's annual extravaganza of color.

The Orange County Register has this new article giving tips on where to see the colors. Here are excerpts:

Aspens, with their thin white trunks, suddenly seem everywhere. They shed their cloak of anonymous green as the nights get cold, revealing a luminous tone somewhere between butter and bullion.

"I think fall is my favorite time of year," Kathi Caveliere, who works in the Arts Center at the Sundance resort in the Wasatch Mountains. "It's after the summer crowds and before the winter skiing crowds. Just look up at the mountains, with all the aspens. They're beautiful. Soon they will be covered in snow."

In Utah, the best foliage is seen through a series of looping drives from the Salt Lake basin into the Wasatch Mountain. You can drive all the way up to Heber City and on to Park City, but the best aspen viewing was essentially elongated U-turns or loop drives that brought you back to nearly the same point. Big Cottonwood Canyon. Little Cotton Canyon. The Nebo Loop.

My favorite was the Alpine Loop, a 20-mile winding path through canyons up into the Wasatch. It opens in April and sees most of its traffic in September until snows usually force it to close in late October.

Read the complete article.