Did you know Gottlieb Braun-Elwert?
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Gottlieb Otto Braun-Elwert, who died in the Southern Alps on a trip with his friend Prime Minister Helen Clark yesterday, loved the mountains.
The German-born scholar is believed to have a heart attack while hosting Helen Clark and her husband Peter Davis at a hut in the Two Thumbs Range in the South Canterbury backcountry. He was 59.
Mr Braun-Elwert was a prominent mountain guide.
He once said: "The great thing with mountaineering is that there are no traffic cops, no traffic lights. Is it a law that you must have a helmet when you go climbing? No, nothing is law. You make your own rules."
Mr Braun-Elwert was invited to New Zealand as an academic in 1976. At Munich University in Germany, he had been a founding member of a workshop Physics and Ecology which researched the inter-relation of energy consumption, population density, and environmental impact.
He also held a master's degree in physics from the University of Munich and had written a thesis on nuclear physics.
Two years later, he immigrated to teach at Linwood High School, and with his New Zealand-born wife, Anne, established an alpine recreation company, Alpine Recreation Ltd at Lake Tekapo.
Mr Braun-Elwert was granted permission to build a private hut, the Caroline Hut, in the Mount Cook National Park in 1985, and he fought for abolition of a monopoly by Alpine Guides Ltd in the Mount Cook National Park, and concessions for independent mountain guides.
He climbed Mt Cook about 30 times.
Mr Braun-Elwert spoke of Helen Clark and her husband Peter Davis as his most regular clients, and guided them on more than a dozen occasions.
He used to say of Helen Clark: "It takes her about 24 hours to tune out of her special work environment, and then she's like everybody else".
As well as taking the nation's "first couple" cross-country skiing he guided them climbing in New Zealand and in South America.
He was named Macpac Mountaineer of the Year, for his climb of Fitzroy in Patagonia, in 1993 with a guide on his staff, Erica Beuzenberg - who later fell to her death in the Ball Pass in 2005.
Mr Braun-Elwert hit the headlines in 1997, the year he first guided Miss Clark, then Opposition leader, and Dr Davis, when he took his daughter Elke, then 14, to the 3764-metre summit of Mount Cook.
Elke's record as the youngest climber was eclipsed in 2000, when Mr Braun-Elwert took her younger sister - by four days- to the summit.
Their father said: "Climbing a mountain is like life in general. When you make a decision, you must put up with the outcome - good or bad.
"I would say that, if you are able to pull off a climb on a mountain, you will see personal difficulties from a distant perspective. Fewer and fewer pursuits in life are as creative, as personally challenging, and as satisfying as being in the mountains."
Mr Braun-Elwert was a member of the Lake Tekapo search and rescue group, a member of the New Zealand Alpine Club, German Alpine Club, Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society.
A longterm member of the Canterbury Aoraki Conservation Board, he also served on a ministerial reference group looking into issues of public access to NZ waterways and rural backcountry.
Besides conservation his interests include nature photography and filming. He often campaigned to have "natural quiet" recognised as a resource which needs to be protected, particularly where it had been threatened by helicopter noise.
- NZPA
