Hungarian Falls (Lower)

Lessons learned from Hungarian Falls
There are many drops at Hungarian Falls, which is one of the easiest sets of waterfalls for people in the Houghton-Hancock area to visit. This is the largest of the drops, a very large vertical drop which is barely a dribble during most of the year.

During the spring, however, the lower falls are amazing. They are a regular torrent, and Kyle and I decided to head out there one mid-spring day to see what we could see. As it turns out, it is rather difficult to get near these falls in the spring: there are no regular paths, the stream below the waterfall is (unusually) full and treacherous, and the sides of the Hungarian gorge are steep and slick with a combination of snow, ice, and red, muddy clay.

On this particular day, we managed to monkey our way down to the falls, using a series of branches, rocks, roots, and sheer dumb luck. Once I got to the bottom, I discovered that my camera's battery was nearly dead! I had been intending to take a bunch of long exposures of the waterfalls, but those eat up battery life in a very unpleasant way. Instead, I spent my time mentally framing shots and planning my work very carefully. In the end, I took only very few shots, this being one of them. It was an excellent lesson in photography and the mental skills necessary.