Fantail Falls, Waterfall in Mount Aspiring National Park, New Zealand

Fantail Falls is a 23-metre waterfall where Fantail Creek drops into the Haast River in Mount Aspiring National Park, Westland. It sits in the Haast Pass at 450 metres above sea level, between the Gates of Haast and the pass summit. The creek spreads into a fan shape at the base, which gives the falls their name.

From the late 1930s a hydroelectric plant stood at the base of the falls, powering machinery used to build the first road over Haast Pass, from Makarora to Jackson Bay. Commissioned by the Ministry of Public Works, that road was not finished until 1960. The plant is gone and no structure remains.

The surrounding forest displays native New Zealand trees and ferns that create the backdrop for the falls. Visitors walking through this woodland can see how the landscape has remained largely unchanged for generations.

A car park on State Highway 6 sits opposite the falls, and a 5-minute wheelchair-accessible bush track leads to the riverbank facing them. The steep 5 km track to Brewster Hut, a serviced Department of Conservation hut, begins at the base of the falls. The walk passes through almost pure silver beech forest.

The name refers to the fan shape the water makes at the base of the 23-metre drop, not to the native fantail bird (pīwakawaka). The falls sit at 450 metres in the Haast Pass, higher than Roaring Billy Falls and Thunder Creek Falls, so the track passes through almost pure silver beech forest rather than mixed beech and podocarp.