Hmm... I collected a series in Teller County over the years at Big Spring Ranch. Any idea where those fit in? I labelled them eurytion. And the high altitude series I collected up at Horseshoe Cirque/Leavick Valley I thought were brucei.

Teller County is perhaps on the line between the two subspecies, and the ones from the southwestern edge may be ssp. eurytion. They might meet in the county, but I would suspect futher west. Those I've collected in the county were all typical, very orange ssp. capella (back in the '60's and '70's at Cripple Creek, Divide, Florissant, Woodland Park, etc.). Ssp. brucei to my way of thinking is a non-entity, just high elevation eurytion (I forget which name of the two is older though). However, people do recognize it, and it is listed in most checklists as distinct. It is smaller, darker and from the highest elevations that the species occupies. You can find a continuum involving these "subspecies", in which some specimens just won't fit nicely into any of the three. The transition from capella to euytion is often fairly abrupt. A good easy place to see it used to be roughly between Kenosha Pass and Grant. It's harder to look in that area now due to all the development and fences. In some areas you get the high elevation brucei types meeting capella instead, because the contact is over high passes.

Something else possible is that subspecies have moved or are moving. Things have tended to be drier in recent years, which I would suspect would favor eurytion phenotypes over capella where the two meet.

Is on the border of Teller and Park County at about 8,000 feet elevation. Tom Emmel used to run a butterfly week there and it was my first experience (1984) with the western fauna. I know brucei is often considered an altitudinal "form" as opposed to a subspecies, but if I lived out where you do, I would get some caterpillars, or better yet eggs, or maybe even a gravid female, from high elevation and raise the offspring at low elevation. I bet they would look like mommy looks.