Adventure #238

54//WHERE ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS/#238
THE POWER OF
HUKA FALLS
By Martin Grafetsberger
As a photographer, I get to live vicariously through the adventures of others.
Don’t get me wrong, over the years I’ve hung off the end of a top rope and
stood chest deep in an ice cold river, all in pursuit of that perfect shot. But when
it comes to kayaking, I’m well out of my depth, preferring to spend much of my
time as a mountain guide in and around Tongariro National Park.
Being a Taupo local, I don’t visit Huka Falls that much, but when a fellow guide
messaged me one morning to say that he and a few mates were going to run
the falls, there was no question, I had to be there. While my wife Debs (who’s
the better looking half of our photography business, Blurry Media) set herself up
on the bridge to capture the action in the gorge, I positioned myself at the lower
lookout to catch them going over the drop.
Now I have to admit that from the sidelines, these guys made it look easy, each
of them doing three back-to-back runs in quick succession which was great
for the crowds in the ‘grandstands’ and great for us taking photos. But don’t
be fooled, Huka can be a challenging run that changes radically at different
flows. On this particular day, the flow was at around 82 cumecs, well within the
supposed 50 to 120 cumecs ‘safe’ range. Just 24 hours prior to this however,
the river had been at 278 cumecs. Think about it, that’s around 280,000
litres per second, enough to fill a 50 metre Olympic pool every 9 seconds, all
pumping through a gorge that’s just a few metres wide.