Description
Finally, yesterday the clouds and the moon aligned so I had to make the most of it. In my mission to photograph all of Colorado' tallest peaks I know sky variety will be a good thing. A collection of only Milky Way core images would get redundant. This is why I was excited to get some images of Andromeda and the Triangulum galaxy in the "tail end" of the Milky Way. The galaxies lined up PERFECTLY over MT Shavano at about 1 am. Mount Shavano is in the southern Sawatch Range of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. The 14,231-foot (4,338 m) fourteener is located in San Isabel National Forest, 6.5 miles (10.5 km) north west of the community of Maysville in Chaffee County, Colorado. The mountain was named in honor of Ute Chief Shavano.
Because of all the clouds I didn't even get an opportunity to scout this mountain during the day. I tried... but it's about 2 hours from my home and when I left one morning for a partly cloudy forecast my plans were foiled by clouds hanging so low you couldn't even see the base of the mountains. So finding the right view in the dark was... challenging. I ended up driving up a 4x4 road on BLM land. I would hold my camera up to the window at max ISO and a 2 second exposure to see if I could even see the mountain.
Thankfully everything all worked out in the end.
