Sutherland Falls is a

waterfall A waterfall is a point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in severa ...

near

Milford Sound Milford Sound / Piopiotahi is a fiord in the south west of New Zealand's South Island within Fiordland National Park, Piopiotahi (Milford Sound) Marine Reserve, and the Te Wahipounamu World Heritage site. It has been judged the world's top tr ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 List of islands of New Zealand, smaller islands. It is the ...

South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasma ...

. At 580 metres (1,904 feet) the falls were long believed to be the tallest

. Terror Falls, in the Poseidon Valley (nearby), are 750m, and Browne Falls cascades 843 metres (2,766 feet) down a mountainside in

Doubtful Sound Doubtful Sound / Patea is a fiord in Fiordland, in the far south west of New Zealand. It is located in the same region as the smaller but more famous and accessible Milford Sound / Piopiotahi. It took second place after Milford Sound as New Zea ...

, leading some to view that as the tallest. The water falls from

Lake Quill Lake Quill is a tarn located in New Zealand's Fiordland National Park at 979 m above sea level. The cirque lake of approximately 1.2 km2 is the source of Sutherland Falls, one of the highest waterfalls in the country and seventh-highest in the w ...

in three cascades: the upper is 229 m tall, the middle is 248 m, and the lower is 103 m tall. A vertical fall of 580 m is made over 480 m of horizontal distance, thus the mean grade of falls is approximately 56 degrees. The base of Sutherland Falls is a 90 minutes (return) walk from Quintin Public Shelter on the Milford Track. Sutherland Falls are visible in the background of the eagle scene in

Peter Jackson Sir Peter Robert Jackson (born 31 October 1961) is a New Zealand film director, screenwriter and producer. He is best known as the director, writer and producer of the ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy (2001–2003) and the ''Hobbit'' trilogy ( ...

's fantasy film ''

The Hobbit ''The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the ''N ...

''.

History

Sutherland Falls was first known to Europeans when a Scottish settler,

Donald Sutherland Donald McNichol Sutherland (born 17 July 1935) is a Canadian actor whose film career spans over six decades. He has been nominated for nine Golden Globe Awards, winning two for his performances in the television films '' Citizen X'' (1995) a ...

, saw them in 1880. He initially claimed the falls were over tall, which would have made them the highest in the world by far. Later surveys showed that this claim was significantly inflated, and they have been confirmed to actually be tall. Lake Quill, which forms the source of the falls, was named for the first European explorer who climbed up the cliff face to find it in 1890.

References

External links

World of Waterfalls: Sutherland Falls
Waterfalls of Fiordland Tiered waterfalls {{Fiordland-geo-stub