Maroon Bells

The Maroon Bells, Maroon Peak at about 14,160 feet and North Maroon Peak at 14,014, stand a third of a mile apart at the head of Maroon Creek, ten miles southwest of Aspen, with Maroon Lake in a glacier-cut basin at their feet. Their color is their rock: Maroon Formation mudstone, sediment shed off an ancient range and stained red by iron, harder than it looks from the lake and far weaker than the granite of most Colorado peaks.

That weakness gave them their other name. In 1965 eight climbers died on the Bells in five separate accidents, and a Forest Service sign at the trailhead still calls them the Deadly Bells and warns that the rock is loose, rotten and kills without warning. Fatal falls have continued; the standard routes are exposed scrambles where a handhold can come away.

The view from the lake is among the most photographed in the country, and the crowds that came for it shaped how anyone gets there. In 1977, to cut the traffic and fumes on the ten-mile road up Maroon Creek, a mandatory summer shuttle bus began running from Aspen; it still leaves from Aspen Highlands. Since 2020 both the shuttle and the few private-car parking slots at the lake have required reservations through the summer and fall, and in fall color season they sell out early. A flat mile-long loop circles Maroon Lake, and a trail of under two miles climbs to Crater Lake, directly beneath the peaks.