The photo represents the climax of a 17 hour adventure my wife and I shared in 2013. It hardly does the place justice, but I wanted a memento, as the journey was significant on many levels for us both. The rarely-trodden route gained a few more visitors, after the Hobbit was filmed there, ourselves included. Still, the only advertised route was a luxury heli-tour. We finally found some track information online that recommended survival skills and river crossing experience. We had neither, but were blessed with amazing weather and low-waters.

Ideally we would have camped in the valley and spent more time surrounded by a thousand waterfalls in the most glorious and pristine location we'd ever been, but our days were limited. We began before sunrise, jumped a sheep-fence and followed orange tags, as no actual trail ever became visible. 8 hours of forested mountainside finally gave way to the open valley in the picture. We returned through pitch-darkness, scarcely a moon and a single head-lamp to recognise the tags marking the way. Exhausted, but completely satisfied.

This image was stitched together from 9 photos. The end result was 12022 pixel wide, which I had printed at 240dpi on canvas to hang above our dining space.