Rawhiti Cave become increasingly finer deeper down into the cave. A short walking track leads halfway down into the cavernous opening to a viewing platform. The diverse twilight-zone flora near the entrance of Rawhiti Cave makes this cave nationally significant. Over long periods of time, plant growth on the cave formations causes them to grow towards the sunlight as more calcium carbonate is deposited regularly on top of the plant growth. This phenomenon, called phytokarst, is most evident on the larger stalactites near the cave entrance, which are strongly curved outwards due to the heavy moss and fern growth on their sunlit
Carbonate-hosted lead-zinc ore deposits within the supergene zone. MVT and Irish type deposits are commonly associated with a 'dolomite front' alteration, which manifests as a yellow-cream wash of dolomite (calcium-magnesium carbonate) within calcite-aragonite assemblages of unaltered carbonate formations. Most ore bodies are quite sulfidic, and most are very low-iron, with pyrite-marcasite contents typically below 30% of the mass of sulfides. This makes MVT lead-zinc deposits particularly easy to treat from a metallurgical view. Some MVT deposits can, however, be very iron-rich and some sulfide replacement and alteration zones are associated with no lead-zinc at all, resulting in massive accumulations of pyrite-marcasite, which are essentially