Hanging Lake

Author's Comments

The permit system changed this place, and I think for the better. When I first climbed to Hanging Lake years ago, the trail was a scrum and the boardwalk was a queue. Now you book your window weeks in advance, and the crowd at the top is a manageable thing, and the lake has a chance to be what it is again. What it is, is difficult to describe without sounding like I am exaggerating. A shelf of turquoise water clinging to the side of a canyon a thousand feet above the Colorado River, fed by waterfalls that spill over moss and logs into a basin so clear you can count the branches on the drowned trees below the surface. The travertine rim holds the whole thing in place like something engineered, though of course it is only water and mineral and time. Morning is the only answer. The lake sits in a fold of the cliff that goes into shadow by early afternoon, and the magic hour here is the window when filtered light comes through the trees on the far side and lands on the water without hitting it directly. That soft illumination is what makes the turquoise read as turquoise and not as gray-green. A polarizer helps. A tripod helps more, because the boardwalk is the only place you are allowed to stand and the compositions from that fixed vantage want a long exposure to smooth the falls. Then walk the extra few minutes up to Spouting Rock, where a waterfall shoots straight out of the cliff face like the mountain has sprung a leak. It is a stranger, wilder image than the lake below, and almost everyone photographs it as an afterthought. Give it its own time.

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