The tall cliffs encircling the Fiordland waterways are blanketed with thick vegetation. The temperate rainforest ecoregion is a perfect habitat for nothofagus beech trees, indigenous to the Southern Hemisphere. Some of them are over 800 years old. Beneath this thick mass of silver, southern and mountain beech is a carpet of ferns and mosses clinging to the thin topsoil on the rocky edges. Notice the green, younger vegetation with the waterfall in the middle. This is evidence a glacier once retreated along this path. The gray patch in the center is an exposed moraine.
