It is likely that the Maori parties avoided snow. But when caught in a blizzard they knew enough to dig a hole, get down and breathe in it, and thus avoid suffocation. This foreshadows the present day mountaineer's technique of digging a snow cave for survival in an emergency caused by a sudden snow storm. Glaciers and crevasses would have been avoided, as there are many passes free from these obstacles. In The Coming of the Maori’ Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck) confirms some of the foregoing. He noted that ‘greenstone was procured by expeditions to the Poutini coast, by barter, and through war. From its rarity and beauty, it was made into valued ornaments, and from its taking a keen edge, it was worked into adzes, chisels and short clubs’. But he was primarily concerned with migration and with life in the North Island and unfortunately he has not recorded what he knew about legends of his kinsmen in the mountains of the South. The most graphic description of the knowledge and endurance of stalwart Maoris in mountain travel was given by the explorer Thomas Brunner, whose journal of 1846–48 was published in 1952 under the title The Great Journey. His trip of 550 days was made with the guides Ekehu and Epikiwati and their wives. They went from Nelson to Lakes Roto-iti and Rotoroa—not to be confused with similar names of the North Island. From this area of peaks and lakes they followed the Buller river to the sea, enduring hardships in steep country where birds were scarce and at times on a diet of semi-starvation. At one desperate stage Brunner had to kill for eating his dog Rover, ‘very palatable, tasting something between mutton and pork’. For this Brunner earned the nick-name of Kai Kuri. Ekehu and Epikiwati were adept at improvising shelters from storms by making houses of bark. They taught Brunner how to bake roots of the cabbage-tree and ferns in an oven that had to cook for twelve hours. They helped him swim the rivers. When they reached isolated Maori settlements on the Coast near the present towns of Greymouth and Hokitika, they were better fed with potatoes and birds. Brunner journeyed as far south as Paringa, and on his return trip went up the Grey river, down the Inangahua and back up the Buller. Again food ran short, illness beset Brunner, and he reached Nelson after the bitter trials of winter travel. He recorded that to Ekehu he owed his life, and there is little doubt that he would have died without the Maori's bushcraft and faithful attention. Such a concrete testimonial is a pleasant reminder that in a land that is popularly held to be lacking in tradition, there have been men whose courage and vitality have pioneered new routes. In themselves these journeys constitute tradition. The unrecorded footsteps of the successors to Raureka, the ashes of their perished fires and their footprints lost in rock slides and avalanches have contributed to the fascination of the high country. Sit in the evening under the lee of a boulder at your camp fire, hear the more-pork (ruru) calling across the valley above the rustle of the wind or the rapids of the river, and though the peaks above are bleak and lonely, it is a solace to know that Maori explorers once passed that way. They, too, met the challenge of a mountain barrier, and felt the excitement of crossing a pass to unfamiliar gorges below, and knew that within a few days of fair weather they could see the breakers of the Tasman Sea beating against the wild West coast. The next issue will describe some of the passes that are known to have been used by Maori parties and the offshoots of legends that make up an island story.