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Hiking Karekare Falls
May. 31st, 2024 01:21 pmHere it is over a month later and I'm still catching up on sharing photos from our trip to New Zealand in April 2024. These pics are from our hike at Karekare Falls. It was on our last full day in the country, and we went on a driving loop out to the coast west and north of Auckland.
Usually I share pics in roughly chronological order, using them to illustrate my narrative. Here I'll start instead with my favorite pic from the bunch, this photo of us in front of Karekare Falls I posed with the help of my camera tripod. Yes, I carried my tripod for this hike since it wasn't that long.
Speaking of "not that long", as we parked for this hike we thought we could see the falls from the car....
It turned out this fairly tall falls dropping in multiple tiers behind some cliff-side houses is not Karekare Falls. It's an unnamed falls, at least on any of the maps we could find. Possibly it's a seasonal falls... "seasonal" in this case as it looks like it only appears when there's rainy weather, like there was this day.
In fact the rainy weather had us wondering whether it was worth it to go hiking— and we had identified at least 4 hiking trails we wanted to visit. We figured with that much on our to-do list we'd make the best of the weather. Thus we packed sweaters and rain jackets, which you see us wearing in the first photo, and braved the elements. While we were driving between locations the rain sometimes fell heavily. We managed to time our hikes for periods when it was only drizzling or merely overcast.
Anyway, the actual trail to Karekare Falls started a bit up the road from where we parked....
You can see Karekare Falls from where the trail forks off from the narrow road. The upside of rainy weather is that the falls are flowing well.
Just below this spot I took a spill on the trail. Everything was slick from the saturating rain, and my feet slipped out from under me. In the moment I didn't think anything was wrong other than feeling slightly bruised from the fall. By the next day, though, I realized I'd torqued my back and hurt one of my arms. That was as we headed to the airport for the long flight home to the US. A week later it was still hurting. In fact that spill is why I tried drug tourism in Mexico 2.5 weeks later. Even now, almost 6 weeks later, the aches are still with me.
But hey, back to the falls— I mean, the waterfalls— where it didn't yet hurt so bad. 😅
I took pictures from a few vantage points but mostly settled on this spot (photo above), up a slight rise from the edge of the pool at the base of Karekare Falls. This is also where I made the photo with us in the picture (top of this blog) using the tripod and timer.
Along the short trail to Karekare Falls we passed this smaller, unnamed falls. It's no more than 10-12' tall but falls nicely over a rocky apron. Again, I could make this photo with both of us in it because I carried my tripod on this trek.
Could I have gotten a similar photo by asking another visitor hiking the trail to use my camera? Almost certainly not. I'm circumspect about my skill in photography but I know I know enough about the art to know that nearly everyone else out there is a rank amateur at it. They'd have messed up the composition, likely centering the picture on us in our rain jackets and cutting off half the falls, as if we really traveled halfway around the world to get yet-another picture of us in our rain jackets. And there's almost no way they'd have gotten the exposure time I used without using my tripod anyway, so yay for carrying the tripod!
Usually I share pics in roughly chronological order, using them to illustrate my narrative. Here I'll start instead with my favorite pic from the bunch, this photo of us in front of Karekare Falls I posed with the help of my camera tripod. Yes, I carried my tripod for this hike since it wasn't that long.
Speaking of "not that long", as we parked for this hike we thought we could see the falls from the car....
It turned out this fairly tall falls dropping in multiple tiers behind some cliff-side houses is not Karekare Falls. It's an unnamed falls, at least on any of the maps we could find. Possibly it's a seasonal falls... "seasonal" in this case as it looks like it only appears when there's rainy weather, like there was this day.
In fact the rainy weather had us wondering whether it was worth it to go hiking— and we had identified at least 4 hiking trails we wanted to visit. We figured with that much on our to-do list we'd make the best of the weather. Thus we packed sweaters and rain jackets, which you see us wearing in the first photo, and braved the elements. While we were driving between locations the rain sometimes fell heavily. We managed to time our hikes for periods when it was only drizzling or merely overcast.
Anyway, the actual trail to Karekare Falls started a bit up the road from where we parked....
You can see Karekare Falls from where the trail forks off from the narrow road. The upside of rainy weather is that the falls are flowing well.
Just below this spot I took a spill on the trail. Everything was slick from the saturating rain, and my feet slipped out from under me. In the moment I didn't think anything was wrong other than feeling slightly bruised from the fall. By the next day, though, I realized I'd torqued my back and hurt one of my arms. That was as we headed to the airport for the long flight home to the US. A week later it was still hurting. In fact that spill is why I tried drug tourism in Mexico 2.5 weeks later. Even now, almost 6 weeks later, the aches are still with me.
But hey, back to the falls— I mean, the waterfalls— where it didn't yet hurt so bad. 😅
I took pictures from a few vantage points but mostly settled on this spot (photo above), up a slight rise from the edge of the pool at the base of Karekare Falls. This is also where I made the photo with us in the picture (top of this blog) using the tripod and timer.
Along the short trail to Karekare Falls we passed this smaller, unnamed falls. It's no more than 10-12' tall but falls nicely over a rocky apron. Again, I could make this photo with both of us in it because I carried my tripod on this trek.
Could I have gotten a similar photo by asking another visitor hiking the trail to use my camera? Almost certainly not. I'm circumspect about my skill in photography but I know I know enough about the art to know that nearly everyone else out there is a rank amateur at it. They'd have messed up the composition, likely centering the picture on us in our rain jackets and cutting off half the falls, as if we really traveled halfway around the world to get yet-another picture of us in our rain jackets. And there's almost no way they'd have gotten the exposure time I used without using my tripod anyway, so yay for carrying the tripod!
