W

Summer Family Photography at Shrine Pass in Vail Colorado

I have some gorgeous Shrine Pass family photos to share today. I get a lot of interest in having family pictures created in Vail Colorado for families who are visiting on their vacations and it’s always a little bit of a struggle to find good spots to take them to get awesome mountain views in their backdrops.  Vail is located in a valley meaning it’s boxed in pretty tight on both sides.  You can get incredible views up on the mountain, but that requires buying a foot pass and the gondola closes during summer by 5 pm making it impossible to photograph during golden hour which I think is a must for getting beautiful family photos.  Luckily, only a 20 min drive east of Vail is a beautiful place called Shrine Pass. 

Family Photography on Shrine Pass Road 709 in White River National Forest

I met up with this family with three teenagers to capture their family portraits in a beautiful setting for them.  We briefly talked about a couple of locations in Vail proper, but eventually settled on the more wild Shrine Pass area for their pictures. Shrine Pass is absolutely gorgeous and you can find views looking west toward the Gore Range and you can also see views of the Tenmile Range looking toward the direction of Copper Mountain.  I love that there is a huge rest stop right there at exit 190 on I-70 called CDOT Vail Pass with bathrooms to meet at and then families can follow me in to go exploring along this beautiful forested road with incredible mountain views.  Once you leave the rest stop area, it is a bit of a steep bumpy road, but I have driven all the way to Red Cliff in a tiny low sitting Nissan so you don’t really need an off roading vehicle to go here if you go slowly and carefully. 

That’s exactly what we did for this beautiful family session.  They followed me along the red dirt road where we stopped to get some mountain views looking toward Vail first.  Once we finished up there, we continued along to the Shrine Pass Mountain Trail where there is plenty of parking and more bathrooms.  We ended our session here at sunset capturing the gorgeous wildflowers that had started to spring up.  It stormed a bunch that afternoon right before we met and we managed to get a beautiful rainbow photo right in front of the mountains.  I told this family that I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve been able to catch a rainbow at a session and I’ve been doing this since 2005.  And I certainly don’t always get lucky with having the rainbow line up in front of a pretty mountain view.  How lucky are they?  It was hard for me to narrow down some of my favorites from this session of Shrine Pass family photos, but I managed to pick a handful to share below.

If you’re looking to hire a Shrine Pass family photographer, be sure to take a look at the FAMILIES section of my website and get in touch!