Sequoia National Park: HDR vs. Original Image

I like the above HDR photo of Heather Lake. It has an otherworldy feel to it. Unfortunately, it isn't an accurate representation of what I saw. I've been getting a lot of questions from people about what non-HDR photos of the lake actually looked like. No one thought that the HDR looked realistic and I definitely agree. I dug up the third photo of the five that I combined to create the HDR. This photo looks much closer to reality. In Lightroom I increased the contrast by 45% and the vibrance by 60%.