Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

The Tawhai Falls Track was a short trail. The time we didn't spend hiking the hiking trail we spent enjoy the scenery at the far end. After spending time and making pictures at the falls we... spent more time and made more pictures.



I still didn't have my camera tripod with me (see my discussion of backcountry photography at Taranaki Falls from earlier that day) and on this trek I didn't even have my dual-purpose hiking pole with me; I left it in the car since the trail was so short. Oops. So I had to free-hand taking motion-blur photos of the falls. Some of the pics, as above, turned out pretty well.

In part 1 at Tawhai Falls I mentioned scrambling out along that "trail" on the right side of the picture.



It took me a few days to get the photos from Hawk's camera. That's why part 1 and part 2 are a few days apart. It was worth the wait to get this photo.

During the packed day of our visit to New Zealand's Tongariro National Park we made time to visit the visitor center. We always like stop by park visitor centers to get information on conditions, seek recommendations, learn a bit about the area and its history, and see if there are any cool souvenirs to buy. Generally we try to do that first... though here at Tongariro we did it almost last in the day because the park's visitor center is buried so deep within the park. I mean, we didn't even reach it until we'd been there 6 hours. Better late than never.



The park had a banner proclaiming a desire to rid New Zealand of predators. We'd seen similar things in other parks over the previous week. A variety of predatory animals were introduced by European settlers, some because they wanted their furs, some because they thought they'd control pests. Well, possums, ermines, etc. found it easier to prey on New Zealand's native species of flightless birds than pest animals. These imported animals ate some of the native animals to the brink of extinction. Now for several years New Zealand has been working to reduce the invasive species' numbers and threat.

So far, so good. NZ is hardly the only place to have a problem like this and try to correct it. But it was amusing that their "Predator Free" banner was right next to this display:



That's a Kārearea, a falcon that's native to New Zealand. It's... a predator. It eats birds. And it's endangered. And they're trying to save it. And the display that explains that (minus the "It eats birds" part; that was me) is right next to the banner proclaiming "Predator Free".

By the way, the karearea is the bird we bought a stuffed animal toy of the week before. Since we already had the toy— and had already named her Te'Anau— we weren't going to buy another. But I did buy this postcard of a karearea:



The visitors center had one of those almost-obligatory relief maps of the park. It didn't help us much in the moment— we'd already spent most of a day there and had figured out the lay of the land— but I'll include a pic now to help you (and me, when I look back on this in the future) get the context of the park:



Mount Ruapehu is the big mountain in the display. It's a cone volcano. As you've seen in my photos it's not quite as snow-capped during our visit. We were there in April, which is early autumn in New Zealand.

The visitors center is along the road (red line) somewhat below the Whakapapa Ski Field marked on the map. I shared photos from our drive up there in my previous journal entry. Kind of north of the visitors center is Taranaki Falls. I've posted two blogs about our hike there. Earlier that morning we visited Turoa, which is at the top of the road that approaches the flank of the mountain from the right side of the map, and hiked Mangawhero Falls from that road.

Our hike out to Taranaki Falls in Tongariro National Park, New Zealand, felt long. I don't know that it was actually long but it sure felt long subjectively, in that way that some things seem to take forever when you're going to them. Then on the way back you're like, "Oh, that wasn't far." Well, we hadn't made our way back yet so we were still in the mode of, "Wow, we've hiked such a long way to get out here!"

Having hiked all that distance— objectively or subjectively— I wanted to stay put for a bit to rest and, more importantly, to enjoy the view I worked so hard for.



Fortunately the view was one I could just keep drinking in. I had fun photographing the falls from various angles and with various effects. There was a pro, or pro-looking, photographer working the falls at the same time. I stayed out of his way partly in case he was trying to earn a living... though he was constantly in my way. That's one thing I've found is typical of pros doing outdoor photography. They step in front of people with zero hesitation but scream loudly when anyone steps in front of them.

The other part of why I stayed out of the pro's (or wannabe-pro's) way is that he was taking all his pics from much closer to the falls, where the spray would've been covering his lenses in a matter of seconds. And he was taking no steps to protect or clean his lenses between shots. That's one reason why I suggest that maybe he was pro-looking..... He was clearly carrying an expensive set of camera of gear, easily $15k (US) original purchase price, but his technique raised major red flags in my mind that he was almost certainly failing to capture photos with critical detail and sharpness. If so it would hardly be the first time I saw someone with a small car worth of camera gear making total noob mistakes.

My gear? I'm still making pictures with my now 5-year old camera and a few good, but not overwhelmingly expensive, lenses. ...Okay, my workhorse is a $1,000 super wide-angle lens. (And do I baby such an investment? No. I drop it off mountains. And glaciers.)

And do I carry a big bag of gear? Heavens, no! The same part of me that doesn't want to drop 15 grand on a camera rig doesn't want to drag 30 lbs. of it all over tarnation. I'm not even carrying a tripod on this trip. Instead I'm snapping these long-exposure shots balancing my camera on the monopod my hiking staff serves dual purpose as.



And shots with my iPhone? I'm free-handing those.

Soon enough it was time to head back to the start of the track. Remember what I wrote above about how far it seemed? I wasn't looking forward to hoofing it back. I also wasn't looking forward to starting the return trek with a climb up the switchbacks up that cliff. Trail signs showed that we could keep walking in the same direction, though, and catch a trail that looped back to almost the same trailhead. I pressed to go that way.



Hiking the loop was a plus because we got to see more than the same, frankly boring, trail across rolling hills of grass we hiked out. Instead we hiked down the stream canyon and saw a few more waterfalls. None were as grand as Taranaki but they were enjoyable.

The loop trail worried me, though. We were hiking down. Down a lot. Down, down down. And you know that when hiking a loop, what goes down must go up. I was really not looking forward to having to ascend hundreds of feet, probably even 1,000 feet, back up the mountain to return to our car.



Then, at what seemed like the low point of the trail, we saw a trail sign. It promised it was just 20 minutes of walking back to Whakapapa. Even if 20 minutes was an estimate for someone in great shape there's no way it means multiple miles and many hundreds of feet of ascent. And indeed it wasn't. After less than 200' feet of ascent, climbing out of the stream canyon, the end was in sight:



The trailhead is by that large, yellow-roofed building on the left. BTW, the large building on the right is a vintage hotel currently not in service.

We completed the loop appropriately tired but not completely spent. ...Which was good because we still had at least one more hike to do that day! Stay tuned.

It's time to get back to Tongariro National Park. ...No, not literally. It's 7,000+ miles away, and we already enjoyed a packed day-trip to Tongariro National Park on our trip to New Zealand last month. It's time to get back to writing about that trip!

One thing I find memorable about that day is that we called an audible around 10:30am. I've written before about calling an audible when traveling and how it's important in travel. This one's also memorable because it recalls for me a few lines from the chorus the 1972 Elton John song, Honky Cat:


I know, "Hiking in New Zealand" and "Elton John songs from 1972" seem to have little to do with one another. So let me explain.

I'd been really wanting to hike Waitonga Falls. Of the 4 hikes we scoped out in the park, it was the one I wanted to do most. But the weather had been crummy since early morning and wasn't getting any better after temporizing for an hour or two with a short hike to Mangawhero Falls and a scenic drive. In fact it started raining harder. And the heavy clouds stretched on for tens of miles (we could see them from above when we were on the flank of the summit at Turoa) so it wasn't likely to get much better for hours, if ever that day.

Hiking Waitonga Falls— and not just merely hiking it, but hiking it in weather that didn't suck— was the gold I wanted to find, the whiskey I wanted to drink. Unfortunately bad weather meant neither was available.

After several moments of fretting I accepted that I wasn't going to get what I wanted. Moreover, I accepted that when I can't get my first choice of hiking in beautiful weather, "Hike anyway but in shitty weather" is not necessarily the second choice! I decided that somewhere else the weather was probably better. In fact that view from above at Turoa made it look like the other side of the mountain wasn't so cloudy. So I decided to bail out on hiking Waitonga and drive on to the next place on our itinerary. Maybe I'd find the proverbial gold mine there.

As I wrote in a recent blog, we had plans to hike four waterfall trails on our day-trip to Tongariro National Park in New Zealand a few weeks ago. After we took a rain delay on hiking the first falls and then found a bonus falls instead we moved on to the second falls on our original list, Mangawhero Falls.

If nothing else the trail to Mangwhero Falls was short, maybe 5 minutes of hiking each way. Thus we didn't mind hiking it in the drizzling rain. (Again, it's a two hour hike that's no fun in the rain.)



Mangawhero Falls is dubbed "Gollum's Pool" for its use as a location scene in the Lord of the Rings movies. Apparently this was the grotto used in the scene where Gollum has a soliloquy with a dead fish. I say apparently for two reasons. First, because there is another falls in Tongariro National Park that also claims to be "Gollum's Pool". Second, because this canyon would be extremely difficult for a film crew to get into. There's no trail down from the rim. Equipment, crew, and actors would have to be lowered in from above, whcih is dangerous in a narrow canyon like this.



Well, Gollum soliloquy or no, it's a pretty falls.

In fact it's much nicer without Gollum around.

New Zealand Travelog #29
Whakapapa, NZ - Tue, 16 Apr 2024, 4pm

Today we've visited Tongariro National Park in New Zealand. I'm writing a summary of the day right now rather than a trail-by-trail blog because with us having managed 3 hikes plus numerous hop-out-and-take-pictures stops today the latter would span at least 5 journals with photos and would take a few days to publish.

We visited two areas Tongariro. For lack of better obvious names I'll call them the Turoa area and the Whakapapa area. First along the road to Turoa we:

• Started from The Hobbit Motor Lodge in Ohakune
• Got to the trailhead for Waitonga Falls but it was already cloudy and started raining and decided not to do this 4km hike... yet.
• Saw a falls from the roadside we initially thought was Waitonga Falls but wasn't.
• Drove to the top of the road at Turoa, where we got above one layer of clouds and caught a few glimpses through the upper cloud layer of 2,797 m (9,177 ft) tall Mount Ruapehu, an active volcano and the tallest mountain on New Zealand's North Island. We also saw a bonus waterfalls near road's end.
• Came back down the road into the cloud layer and hiked Mangawhero Falls (Golem’s pool).
• Thought again about hiking Waitonga Falls but when the rain intensified as we reached the trailhead decided instead to try our luck elsewhere.

We then drove back down through Ohakune and looped around the west side of the park to reenter via the Whakapapa road. Then we:

• Happily caught clear weather on western flank of the mountain. We could see clouds were still hanging heavily over its southern flank.
• Hiked Taranaki Falls.
• Drove all the way up to road's end at Whakapapa, catching several glimpses of the mountain's triple peak and seeing a bonus waterfalls along the way.
• Came back down the road and hiked Tawhai Falls— which is also called Gollum's Pool. I swear, if they try to stick Gollum's name on one more thing in this park they should just rename the damn park to Nasty Hobbitses, We Hates Them National Park.

Yes, it's been a busy day! More blogs with photos will come once I'm caught up with the rest of the trip.

Update: And after all this we still had time for a soak in a natural spring hot tub at our hotel before dinner!

Update 2: added links to other journal entries as I posted them.