Parks and Recreation Areas

The Roaring Fork Valley is ringed by recreational land, checkerboarded between wilderness areas and national forests. To the southeast in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness area more 14,000-foot summits beckon peak baggers and day hikers than anywhere else in the Lower 48.

The often-overlooked Hunter-Fryingpan Wilderness Area is one of Colorado's hidden secrets—a thin-air spine of unnamed peaks and excellent trout rivers in the Williams Mountains just east of Aspen. On the other side of the Continental Divide, the Hunter-Fryingpan becomes the Mount Massive Wilderness Area, named for Colorado's second-highest peak, which stands 14,421 feet tall. Most of these wilderness areas are encompassed within the much larger—and more fragmented—White River National Forest.