Exploring Whakapapaiti Waterfalls

Many of you will be familiar with Taranaki Falls on the slopes of Mount Ruapehu. There’s no shortage of photos of these falls on social media since they’re easily accessible via a short 6km loop track.

But for the more adventurous, there’s a seemingly endless number of waterfalls to explore, like the one below on the north-western slopes. It does require a little more effort to get to, but we think you’ll agree, it’s well worth it.

On this occasion, we weren’t too sure how much snow there’d be on the lower slopes so we packed our crampons and ice axe just to be safe. As it turned out, we didn’t need our crampons, but the axes were handy as we encountered a steep bush scramble to the base of the falls.

Of course, where there are waterfalls, there are usually pools, and on this occasion we couldn’t resist the urge to take a little skinny dip.