Colorful and cleverly designed hot-air balloons ascend shortly after dawn, when the sky is most often fair and winds calm, at the annual Telluride Balloon Festival in that old Colorado mining town turned popular skiing destination, but not in Spring when the balloons are rising

Title, date and keywords based on information provided by the photographer.
Credit line: Gates Frontiers Fund Colorado Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Gift; Gates Frontiers Fund; 2015; (DLC/PP-2015:068).
Forms part of: Gates Frontiers Fund Colorado Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.