Views from Wilkerson Pass in the Rocky Mountains

 Wilkerson Pass is situated among the Rocky Mountains, about fifty miles west of Colorado Springs, Colorado, and about eleven miles northwest of Lake George, Colorado. The summit of Wilkerson Pass looks out over the South Park Basin from the Front Range Mountains.  

Wilkerson Pass' summit sits at 9,507 feet/2,898 meters above sea level. The Wilkerson Pass Visitor Center sits at the summit of the pass, on the south side of US 24. To the west you can see the Mosquito Mountain Range and to the southwest you can see the Collegiate Mountain Range. The Collegiate Mountain Range is part of the Sawatch Mountain Range. The South Fork South Platte River and the Middle Fork South Platte River flow through the basin. The confluence of the two rivers, south of Hartsel, Colorado, forms the South Platte River. 

Mt. Yale is center-left, and Mt. Columbia is to the right, in this view from the summit of Wilkerson Pass.

If you look toward the southwest from the visitor center over the South Park Basin, you will see the Collegiate Mountain Range. Above, in the center-left of the background is Mount Yale. To its right is Mount Columbia. From the cameras position the mountains are almost forty-five miles away. Both of these peaks are fourteeners, meaning their peaks sit above 14,000 feet above sea level. Mount Yale's peak reaches 14, 204 feet/4,329 meters and Mount Columbia's peak reaches 14,079 feet/4,291 meters. Other mountains within this range named after famous universities are Mount Harvard, north of Mount Columbia, and Mount Princeton, south of Mount Yale.

A rockface to the northwest of the Wilkerson Pass Visitor Center.

As the sun continued to set, I turned my camera to the north. This rockface sits along the northern edge of Wilkerson Pass, on the pass' eastern slope. It is 4,500 feet north by west (the compass point halfway between north and north-northwest) of the visitor center, and to the west of Badger Mountain's peak (out of sight to the right). Like Badger Mountain and Wilkerson Pass, this rockface is part of the South Park Hills, which lies within the Pike National Forest.

Photographs taken on September 5, 2013.