47.4

Photographer David Kingham makes the most of this amazing night-time scene high above Loveland Pass - featuring a view of the Milky Way arcing over Colorado peaks and Denver light pollution. The core of the Milky Way appears to start just above the Arapahoe Basin Ski Area (right side), arcing over Cupid (to be climbed after this capture), Grays and Torreys Peaks and then over the Denver light pollution and finally, David capturing the scene (left side).

On my 3rd trip to Cupid in 2 years, I decided it'd be pretty cool to time it with a possible view of the Milky Way over the peaks. And boy did that turn out to be a good call! But David and I had an an added bonus in that internationally known travel and landscape photographer Dan Ballard had agreed to join us for the trip. So between the great conversation on the way up and then the incredible view of the Milky Way arcing over the front range light pollution and the illuminated clouds hanging out over Grays & Torreys Peaks, we were pretty excited (as you can probably imagine).

This image was captured at 3:38 am after a night-time trek above timberline to a peak high above Loveland Pass, west of Denver, Colorado. It's an unnamed peak we stopped at (elevation of roughly 13,000 feet) on the way to our final destination - Cupid. This panoramic image comes from 11 overlapping exposures stitched together using PTGui. I shot each of the exposures with a Nikon 24mm f/1.4 lens at ISO 1600, f/1.8 for 20 seconds.