Halfway up the trail, my phone buzzed. Brandon: “There’s a slight problem here.”
I’d scouted this exact hike the day before. I knew the light, I knew the spot, I had a plan. Now the plan was changing while they were already on their way up the mountain.
The Priority
Brandon is from Texas. Maddie's family lives in Park City, and the two of them hike together constantly, so a mountain proposal near her hometown was the obvious fit.
Maddie had recently had a concussion, though, which meant we needed a trail that wouldn’t push her recovery too hard.
What They Considered
Brandon found me on Instagram, after searching “Utah proposal photographers” and reaching out cold. He’d already mentioned Desolation Lake before I sent him anything.
Just in case Maddie's recovery called for something shorter, I put together a full list of comparable lake hikes: Beaver Pond from Solitude, Lake Blanche, Lake Solitude, Lake Mary, Lake Catherine, and Bloods Lake, along with a couple of reservoirs and Guardsman's Pass for mountain views without a hike at all. My personal picks were Lake Mary or Lake Catherine.
They didn’t take me up on the alternates. Desolation was the plan from the start, and Maddie was the one planning the hike, so the two of them moved forward with it. Her dad pitched in too, walking Brandon through the route, since it turned out to be a hike her family already knew well.
Why It Didn’t Work
I hiked up the day before, at the same time they'd be proposing, to check the light at the lake and send Brandon photos and video. The lake was running about five feet below its usual level. I thought we were set.
Then Maddie decided the lake wasn't enough. There's a saddle above it, with a peak that looks out over all of Park City, and once that view became the goal, proposing at the lake started to feel like underkill. Brandon's exact words: “I feel like it would be a little underkill to propose at the lake, so we're going to propose at the top.”
How It Came Together
There's no cell service on the lower part of that hike, just a little once you climb above the lake, which is what let Brandon text me once the plan changed. I had him share his location with me so I could track how close they were getting.
I found the spot I thought matched what he'd described: the first point on the trail where Park City opens up in front of you, right at the top of the old ski lift 9980.
TL;DR
That trail is popular with mountain bikers, so I had cover. I sat in the bush with my cameras out, reading a book, doing my best impression of someone who just happened to be there. As they got closer along the ridge, I kept pretending I hadn't noticed them at all.
They reached the top, looked around, hugged. Then Brandon told her that, technically, he'd never asked her to be his girlfriend in the first place. He had her take a step back and turn around while he dug into his backpack for the ring, tucked into a pocket she'd never opened on the whole hike.
When she turned back around, he was already down on one knee. Nobody biked or ran past the entire time.
Her ring was custom-made around her grandmother's diamond, with two more stones added on the sides: her grandmother's ring, made new and unmistakably theirs. I was right there freaking out right along with her.
Maddie's dad had been dropping hints about a bad back all weekend, wincing his way through fake PT stretches so he'd have a built-in excuse not to summit with them. He waited at the lake instead, which meant the two of them got the whole peak to themselves.
We hiked back down together, and Maddie told him everything, jumping up and down the entire way. We got a few more photos at the lake before heading out. They're a wonderfully silly, goofy couple: Maddie kept saying she wasn't tired anymore, that she could run a marathon, the whole hike back down.
Client Experience
“Jade went above and beyond to capture my mountain proposal! Huge fan of hers and would recommend her to anyone in need of high quality pictures for a special day!”
Brandon
Propose Today
If you're picturing something like this, a hike your partner already loves, a plan that might change on you halfway up, that's the kind of proposal I love working on.
Reach out
Written by
Utah-based wedding, elopement, and proposal photographer since 2025. I've scouted these locations myself, so the advice here comes from firsthand experience, not guesswork.
