Don't go jumping waterfalls, please keep to the lake, people who jump waterfalls, sometimes can make mistakes

Jacky and I went for a walk in the woods yesterday after I'd spent time chopping up a tree that had fallen in a recent storm. It was a reasonably big tree and pretty much fell outside our bedroom window (taking a load of branches with it), yet we heard nothing!! We think it must have fallen a week or so ago when we had a massive blast of southerly air come through. Jacky discovered it snapped off about three metres up the trunk and so I got to with my trusty axe. It was tricky being so far up and Jacky was worried I'd endanger myself. But it's the Henry David Thoreau in me - I love this sort of stuff. Anyway, after comprehensively bloodying my hands against the tree-bark we ventured up the mountain. During the summer I enjoy taking some students for a two hour walk from Dawson Falls to the plateau carpark. Along the way there are some great scenic views of waterfalls and a view across to the central plateau mountains - Tongariro (pronounced Ton-gar-rear-row), Ngauruhoe (Nar-rue-hoe-ee) and Ruapehu (Rue-ar-pay-who). If you want to learn more - try http://www.visitruapehu.com/ for details. There's a good map on that site so that you can see we (Stratford) live in a more-or-less direct line between those three mountains and Mount Taranaki.

We had a lovely walk to a waterfall about 20 mins from the plateau carpark. Here are those views:

This is from the plateau carpark looking east towards Mount Ruapehu (top left). Stratford is the settlement to the right and our place is in between the treeline and the township.

The views as we walked along the track to the waterfall.


Said waterfall. As you can see it's pretty cold in the shadows - ice and snow feed the little streams coming down from the mountain.
When we returned to our little farm cottage the animals had beaten us to the fireplace to warm up.

Love and peace - W