An impromptu drive up from Zion, arriving with only an hour to take in the waning light ... yet another too much to see, too little time.

I would either clone out the shadows or crop just below the larger monoliths. The sky could be darkened as well.

Heading out for some fall color or I would give it a play.

Your image has blown channels. Try the recovery slider in ACR , or use the Apply Image command to to blend in a parts of the good channels. Duplicate the background layer, and change the blend mode to luminosity - color in background, luminosity in duplicate layer. Rebuild channels in the duplicate layer.

I got a lot of blown red channels from my trip out West ... this one is not exception.

However ... I'm not following your instructions ... can you clarify?

Replace the blown out areas in the red channel with highlights from the green or blue channel using a copy of the original layer set to the luminosity blend mode. I believe channel blending is covered in a Dan Margulis book somewhere - I may have seen this in his video series on Kelby.

Another possibility is to add a channel mixer adjustment layer in luminosity mode and add more green to the red channel.

Here is my take.

I cropped, added some shadow highlight to the forest, gradient mask to the top new curve.

I've got a couple of Dan's books ... I'll check there, thanks.

Plus 1 to newhaven's post. I don't know which camera you shoot, but my Canon's always blow the red channel first. I tend to review the red histogram and adjust accordingly in these scenarios. - Paul