RAUREKA’S PASS

Hokitika Guardian, 13 February 1929, Page 2

RAUREKA’S PASS

(Auckland ‘Star.”)

The search for the two missing West C oast lads who set out to cros,Browning's Pass having been uns-ic cess I ul, it looks as if the roaring tor rents of the .Southern Alps have one. more taken their toll of clim-oers. That lofty notch in the great southern range is a very different place Iron, llit? Arthur’s Pass-Ofira route. It iabout two thousand feet higher than the flOODft saddle over which the Otira road goes and under which the railway tunnels. Browning’s Pass is an ler snow for about eight months in tin year, and even when it is clear of snow it is dangerous because of the irejuent avalanches from the glaciated peaks around it; and the streams an. often flooded. There is tin older name than Browning’s for this high-climbing way between Westland and the Canterbury Plain. By right it should he mapped as Raureka’s Pass, or, at any rate, that should he recognised as its alternative name. There is an icy mounttin in the Aorangi zone officially called Raurekn Peak, but tile name is misplaced. It was about 2b o years ago that Raureka, who was a woman of the Ngati-Wairangi tribe, of Arahura wandered away from her A\ est Coast home and with a slave climben from Luke Kanieri to the dividing range and by good fortune found a route across to the Canterbury side. Half-starved, the pair were found by a party of East Coast Alnoris, and Inter on Raureka showed the way back L the West Coast. The story is that she was the first to make known the existence of green stone to the people oi the eastern plain. Two centuries later two explorer. l Browning and Griffith, rediscovered the pass, and a few months after they reported on it- an enterprising slicep owner on the Canterbury downs took a mob of sheep across it to the new gold-digging camps at Hokitika. I I’.ai was at the end of 1805. Tt was probably the most difficult and risky task of sheep droving ever undertaken :r. New Zealand. The route was up the Rnkaia and Wilherforco river valleys to the pass—where the sheep among other adventures tried to climb a glacier on the flank of Alount Harman—and down into the valley of the Hokitika River, where road parties wore making a rough track. Alost of the five hundred sheep reached the coast and the vendor did well out of them : the price realised was £5 a head. .Another drover brought over a mob a little laer. But that was about the end of Browning’s route as a sheep i walk. It was only by great good luck that men and sheep were not swept away by avalanches or lost iii the swiit rivers. The Otira road was soon opened. and no more diggers or stock tackled the rocky way of Raureka. It is: a track for the adventurous now and again to-day, but there should ho three or more in a party. —J.C.