Hanging Lake Colorado May Print

Hanging Lake Colorado 3pm May 2021 My wife Betty and I decided to take in Hanging Lake on our way back from a visit to Boulder, CO. The entrance is in Glenwood Canyon a few miles east of Glenwood Springs on I70. A thousand foot altitude gain but only 1.25 miles, no problem! Big problem: many of the rough-hewn steps laid by the CCC in the 1930s were a foot or so tall and made our old bodies protest, especially on the way back down. But the azure-bottomed lake catching Spouting Falls in the late spring afternoon shade was very stirring. It reminded us of an equally-spectacular place we had once visited, the Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia , which has dozens of falls surging into picturesque small lakes amid an easily navigated network of walking paths and ferries. I was taken by the orange tinted cliff sides and headlands surrounding the falls. Dark green moss that grows under the falls apparently turns color as it dries, to the shade of Daniel Smith Aussie Red Gold it seems to me. The dark horizontal shadow in the foreground was cast onto the lake bottom by a floating fallen tree. The old log has a crown of grass growing on its exposed side. The lighter shadows between the log and the cliff face are made by underwater ledges on the lake bottom. I was also struck by a face staring out from the top of the falls, where a tousled caramel-colored lap dog winks at us over a yearning mouth expecting a treat. Other subliminal beasts: chipmunk peeking out from beneath right hand torrent, kiwi bird, fish. Hanging Lake is in a precarious state. The Grizzly fire burned down to the park’s riverside walk in 2020. The next year a flash flood roaring down denuded gulches in Glenwood Canyon wiped out the hiking trail and filled the lake with mud temporarily. The floating log is no longer in its place. The trail will have to be extensively rebuilt and is in primitive condition in the short term. So it could be a while before you can see the falls for yourself as “easily” as we did. We implore the Forest Service to please, please lower the steps in the long term rebuild. If this were Europe we might consider building an alpenhaus on the cliffs overlooking the lake with a lift to the top so that more Older and Wider Americans might appreciate it from afar and stop for a treat. Meanwhile, enjoy the painting and book a trip to Croatia?