Katherine, is that you? Repost

A couple of weeks ago I hiked up to Lake Katherine in the Mt. Zerkel Wilderness in hopes of catching the moon setting over the divide with the lake in the foreground. I was a day early for that plan, but I still enjoyed the hike at 2:30 in the morning and the bear pooh on the trail only added to the excitement of the hike. I made it to the lake about 4:15 and I have to say, Sitting next to the lake, waiting for the light, gave me some quality time to think about some things going on in my life. as always C and C welcome.
5:45 a.m.
ISO-100
25 seconds
f-3.5
18mm
polarizing filter

Comp is good but there is something going on here that doesn't work for me...looks like a decidedly cyan tint and it looks out of focus...no detail on the mountain walls. Is this HDR?

It's not HDR Jack. I thought the same thing about the cyan tint but wanted some other opinions on it. As for the focusI had to focus manually so it might be off a little but in the full size version you can see the details in the cliffs. Thanks for your feedback Jack.

Beautiful scene, Michael. Looks like some pretty strong halo action along the skyline though. If it isn't hdr, I'm guessing some pretty aggressive use of the shadow/highlight feature. Also, while this is a pleasing comp, I'd love to see a full reflection. If your lens wasn't wide enough to catch it all, two horizontals stitched to a vertical or square comp would've worked. And did you really shoot this at f3.5? Not the sharpest aperture available.

I hiked up there years ago and my notable "wildlife" encounter involved a massive cow that refused to yield the right of way.

This seems like a really cool area that I haven't explored. In my one attempt to hike in here, they had closed the road to Zirkel. I agree with the other comments. I'd either like to see something wider or zoom in, crop off the top of the mountain and make this more of an abstract shot showing patterns in the reflection. I also find the foreground rocks distracting rather than helpful here.

Thanks for the critiques. Todd, yes I really did shoot this at 3.5 and I should have known better but with a shutter speed of 25 seconds I wanted to keep the noise down. I'm guessing you're right about the shadow/highlight feature as well. I really need to learn how to stitch and blend. Grant, Thanks for the suggestion of cropping or zooming in, and I kinda had a feeling about the rock in the foreground. The nice thing is the lake isn't going anywhere so I get another shot so to speak.

I think there is a lot of potential with this shot. I'm surprise that at 25 sec. you didn't get some nice cloud movement. And a polarizer will cost you 2 stops of light, so you might try this again without it. I like the crop suggestion, too. I would like to see you do a little more work on it and repost. I also like your story and can imagine what a great place to go to sort out those pesky life irritants.

I tried a few different things with the first image and couldn't make it work. Here's a 2 image blend from 2 images shot 10 minutes after the previous image from the same vantage point. This is my first attempt at blending. I cropped the rocks off the bottom and some of the sky at the top as some suggested and stayed away from the shadow highlight feature as Todd suggested. I think this works better then the first image but I think it's still a little dark. Thanks for all the advice.