The two images look anything but shot from the same spot or angle, the vertical shot looks taken far more from a position to the right. (Perhaps you didn't mean 'spot' as in camera position, but as in the general scene - it's very hot here and difficult to concentrate.)
The problem with wides isn't the wides, it's the way people sometimes use them. Generally, unless one is consciously trying for an effect, the focal length is best used in as neutral a manner as possible. Pix that depend on distortions etc. usually lack much else. Equally, some impressive images couldn't be made without exploiting the viewpoint/focal length in use.
Maybe it's just not a particularly dramatic scene that you chose to photograph. Looking uphill or downhill is usually quite difficult to do well in a way that shows the sense of height in either direction unless you are dealing with regular buildings; nature can look like anything, so where the clues unless you use waterfalls, as you have done?
Rob C