342 - Hanging Lake
*Note: This adventure also features an in-field vlog.
To be honest, I have absolutely no idea how I secured this permit reservation, or pulled this whole adventure off. I just happened to be driving through Glenwood Springs, CO, and was fucking exhausted.
I decided to pull over and nap because apparently four days isn’t enough recovery time from a three day drinking bender in Vegas. Well, long story short I woke up at 9:30pm in the corner of a Taco Bell parking lot feeling like I’d wasted half my day. But I wanted to get one more photo shoot in before the work week started so I groggily searched for something to do in the area the next morning.
I knew that Hanging Lake was around, but honestly I thought it was still closed due to the 2020 fire damage situation. I decided to check it out anyway and see what was going down. TURNS OUT… There was one permit open at 6:30AM… The next morning. Which is fucking nuts because usually this shit is booked out multiple weeks in advance. Some drunk fuck must have canceled their reservation the night before...
So I snagged it up.
But there was a catch. The MAIN parking lot permit for Hanging Lake was booked completely, and the permit I booked wouldn’t allow me to park there. It basically said “You can hike Hanging Lake with this permit, but you can’t park at the main parking lot. Figure out how to get there.”
Well, the thing is, Hanging Lake is in a FUCKING CANYON, so there’s nowhere else to park except a few miles down the canyon at various rest stops. Upon Googling, I found two rest stops… One ~4 miles west of the trailhead, and one ~3 miles east of the trailhead.
I weighed my options and chose the trailhead ~3 miles east. Slept there overnight in the Prius without a problem.
Woke up the next morning at like 5:45am, and longboarded the 3 miles to the trailhead. Luckily Haley just bought me a longboard a couple months ago that has just sat in my Prius trunk unused. So that came in perfect handy.
Honestly it was a fantastic ride-in. Beautiful sunset vibes, and the canyon walls were lit up like crazy. If you watch the vlog, I managed to capture this in the intro.
From here, I just began the hike like a normal person. The crazy thing about this trail is that there is a massive amount of mini waterfalls the whole way up, as it follows Dead Horse Creek.
Here’s one shot I managed to get of my favorite waterfall on the way up. I have absolutely no idea what it was called, but there’s a sign in front of it so it’s vaguely important.
At this point I began to rush to the top, because I had no idea what the lighting conditions would be like at the top. I realized it was a canyon and it was only a little bit after sunrise, but I was gaining ELEVATION, FAST. The hike is literally a 1.5 mile climb with 1,187 feet of elevation gain. So I didn’t know how easily the sun would hit the waterfall at the top, and potentially blow it out.
I rushed up and got there with no worry at all. The sun wasn’t even close to hitting it yet. But now I had another problem… To find an original composition in this MASSIVELY overshot lake. At first I was getting really hung up on the moss in the water as a foreground to the waterfall, and at one point I even thought I got a decent shot of the moss/waterfall combo.
But upon editing, I realized the photo was dogshit and I ended up with this photo as my main photo:
Anyway, I really enjoyed that photo because the foreground made the waterfall almost look hidden… Which reminded me of an Irish Spring commercial. You know, the ones with from the early 2000s with the sexy Irish chick handing the guy his soap in the waterfall…
No? Ok…
I was about to head back, and saw that the trail went a little further. As this point I was about ready to leave (it’d been a LONG morning,) but I talked to some people coming from the trail and they said that it was only .25 miles to ANOTHER waterfall. So I said fuck it and went for it.
And what I found was INSANE.
Literally a waterfall was just coming out of a cliff. Like straight out of a rock hole. I managed to snag this pic:
Apparently it’s called Sprouting Rock.
I decided to keep the bottom of the waterfall out because the rocks below it were so ugly. The picture actually came out pretty cool, mainly because it’s a little different from most waterfall shots you see out there. The fact that the bottom is cropped out leaves it up to the imagination.
Anyway, that’s pretty much it for this shoot. An epic tale of adventure that somehow all came together at the last second. I hiked back to the trail and nearly shit myself on the way down. Cheers.
I’m on a mission to explore as much as humanely possible.
Want to see my progress? Check out the Adventure Map.
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