Black Bear Road or Black Bear Pass, and officially Forest Service Road 648, is a dirt road that starts from the summit of Red Mountain Pass on U.S. Highway 550 (between Ouray and Silverton) to Telluride, Colorado. The road crests at Black Bear Pass, elevation , and descends over a set of switchbacks as it navigates the heights above Telluride. The road passes Bridal Veil Falls, the highest waterfall in Colorado. In 1975, the road was the subject of a spoken-word song and album of the same title by country musician C. W. McCall.
Black Bear Road is open a few months of the year, from late summer (usually the last week of July) to early fall. The road is traveled only downhill from Red Mountain Pass â except for the annual Jeeper's Jamboree in which travel is reversed for one day only. The start of the trail was formerly marked along U.S. 550 with a sign that read:
After repeated thefts of the sign, the local authorities stopped replacing it.