SIGHTING: ASPEN, COLORADO (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"It's best to pull up the maroon bells in google earth/maps to follow along. i live and work in the roaring fork valley here in colorado, and my parents were visiting my wife and i to welcome their granddaughter into the world. this valley is infamous for the elk mountain range, and more specifically, the maroon bells. we live in basalt, co which is about a 20 minute drive from where i work, so on this particular thursday, we had agreed that they would head to my place of work, and from there, we would all carpool together to head up to maroon lake. i get off of work at 4pm and i immediately hop n the car. about 10 minutes later, we arrive at the parking lot for the bells where my wife and i spend about 5 minutes changing a very messy diaper! once we finished, we began walking sw along the n side of the lake towards the swestern most corner of the lake. once we arrived, we sat down on a bench and took in the views. my dad had brought some binocs, so after about 10 minutes of walking and 7 minutes of hanging out, i decided to borrow the binocs to see if i could spot anybody who might be signaling for help on the peak, as it was getting late. while scanning south maroon's ne face, my line of sight obviously being sw, i noticed a craft that appeared to be hovering over crater lake. this lake is around a mile away. while i can't say with 100% certainty that it was hovering over said lake, i feel pretty confident that it was hovering above the center of the lake when i made eye contact. my immediate thought, and verbal comment was that, "it looks like someone's flying their drone over crater lake!" one thing i thought was quite odd is that it seemed like my seeing it fired off a pre-departure sequence, becase it appeared to "wake up" from a sleep state, paused for initializing the departure sequence, then slowly and steadily began to ascend vertically the moment i saw it.I made the comment as it was ascending vertically. i know for a fact that this craft was within a 3 mile radius because south maroon's ne face was the backdrop of the scene i was witnessing as it ascended. from the sw tip of maroon lake to the ne face is 2.7 miles. i could tell it was about equidistance from the mountain and myself. it eventually ascended to about 30 - 40 degrees above the horrizon, and the background in my field of vision was a clear blue sky. at this point, it stopped ascending, hovered, and appeard to rotate slightly, but enough to make me exclaim, "wait, what..." due to my surprise of its resemblance to a predator drone banking hard left. but it wasn't banking, it just rotated, then changed its course and bean moving horizontally. it traveled a much shorter distance horizontally before it stopped. once it stopped travelling, i studied it closely. i remember thinking it kind of looked like boba fett's craft from star wars. as i studied it, the craft emittted a very pure light, it was by no means bright, but it was notable. its form remained intact, but its apparent size decreased in size at a rapid, exponential rate. i mean exponential in the most technical sense of the word, i.E. the beam of light illuminated the perimeter of the craft as it gradually began travelling further into the sky. gradual departure turned into rapid departure at an exponential rate. in less thn a second, the craft had completely vanished. throughout the short duration of its departure, the crafts light was visible and in my line of site the entire time, not once leaving the frame the binocs created. i lost my shit and had to do my best to calm myself down.This area is one of the largest source of silver. mining opperations died down around the time of the panic of 1893. mining of silver lasted about a decade. we know silver is a highly coveted raw material due to it being the earth's best electrical/thermal conductor. "