[10]: 56  Celebrations by Ngāti Porou to commemorate the first dawn of the new millennium in 2000, including karakia led by Tamati and Amster Reedy, took place on the summit of the mountain.

[3][13] They were carved under Derek Lardelli's guidance by students from Toihoukura, the Eastern Institute of Technology's School of Māori Visual Arts.

In 1875 “Scotty” Siddons, mate of the Beautiful Star, claimed to have met a Māori person on the East Coast who had a few ounces of gold.

He, and a mate named Hill, found a lot of mundic on the north-west side of the mountain, but only outcrops of limestone on the higher slopes.

Drays, wheelbarrows and receptacles of all kinds were rushed to the scene, and large quantities of the “precious metal” were removed to a safe place.

[3] It is the iwi's most important icon, and in Māori mythology, was the first part of the North Island to emerge when Māui, an ancestor of Ngāti Porou, pulled it as a giant fish from the ocean.

According to myth, Paikea's younger half-brother, Ruatapu, attempted to kill about 70 of his older kin ("brothers") at sea in Hawaiki to exact revenge on his father for belittling him as a low-born son of a slave.

[4] The mountain is often referenced in Ngāti Porou's karakia (incantations), waiata (songs), haka (war dances), and pēpeha or whakatauākī (proverbs).

[10]: 82 [18] In the 1960s, members of the Gisborne Tramping Club heard what they thought may have been the call of a kākāpō on the mountain, a parrot whose last documented existence in the North Island was in 1895.

[23] Native birds and animals found in the area include pīwakawaka, tūī, whio, kākā, falcons, kererū, brown kiwi, Hochstetter's frogs, snails, lizards, skinks, Motuweta riparia (Raukumara tusked wētā), and short- and long-tailed bats.

[23][24] Introduced animals include deer, goats, possums, pigs, cattle and mustelidae, all of which pose a threat to the native wildlife.

Visitors to the mountain are asked to contact Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Porou before arriving, as the track crosses their private land, which is sometimes closed for short periods for cultural or farming reasons.