KEY POINTS:
Gottlieb Braun-Elwert brought German efficiency and an entrepreneurial spirit to the craft and business of New Zealand mountain guiding.
"Goat leg" as his mountaineering friends called him, was a master craftsman and the guide of choice for Helen Clark, the Prime Minister.
He was with her ministerial party
when he died, apparently of a heart condition, in his own snow-bound hut near Lake Tekapo in the Canterbury high country on Thursday.
A 59-year-old German immigrant, he had carved out a place for himself in New Zealand society through his outdoor tourism company, his photography and his commitment to the cause of public access.
While he was clearly a leading climber and guide, he concentrated on his business and conservation interests rather than pursuing first ascents. But he managed to put a new and attractive slant on the concept of first ascent in 1989 by being the first, with his climbing protege Erica Beuzenberg (who died in 2005), to climb all 20 of New Zealand's 3000m peaks in a single winter season.
Climbing Mt Cook, Mt Tasman, Mt Dampier and the rest in a period of months is feat enough on its own, but in winter they had the added burden of deep snow (they often used skis for access) and the risks of avalanches, intense cold and short days.
Braun-Elwert first came to New Zealand in 1976, invited as an academic _ he had a masters degree in physics and had written a thesis on nuclear physics _ but he was also a German-qualified alpine guide and managed to fit in a climb of Aoraki-Mt Cook too. Two years later he shifted to New Zealand, taking a teaching job at Linwood High School in Christchurch, a city whose hills offer a panoramic view of the Southern Alps on a good day.
"He started out working as a teacher most of the time," Alpine Guides Aoraki managing director Bryan Carter said yesterday. "Then he guided, in the summers initially, for Alpine Guides and then had some of his own clients and started his own business and went from there."
That business, Alpine Recreation Canterbury, which he owned with his wife, Anne, is based at Tekapo.
After driving over Burkes Pass from Timaru, tourists and hopeful mountaineers start craning their necks for a glimpse of Mt Cook, although it will be Lake Tekapo and its backdrop of snowy peaks that first fills their windscreens.
Alpine Recreation has built its reputation on the internationally-renowned peaks and passes of the Aoraki-Mt Cook district, but also on the lesser-known skiing and tramping territory of the Tekapo catchment, where Braun-Elwert died.
He was in a group including Helen Clark, her husband Peter Davis, Energy Minister David Parker and Tourism Minister Damien O'Connor.
They were staying at Rex Simpson Hut in the Two Thumbs Range, an area of snowy basins where Alpine Recreation takes guided parties for skiing _ mainly touring on "skinny" skis _ snowshoe trips and, in summer, straight trekking.
The hut is about three hours' ski or walk from the road around the eastern side of the lake. Braun-Elwert owned the hut, which he built himself. It is sited on Department of Conservation land in what will next month be officially opened as the Te Kahui Kaupeka Conservation Park, straddling mainly the Godley, Macaulay and Rangitata river catchments.
Like the other alpine shelter he built and owned, Caroline Hut, facing the frightening Caroline Face of Mt Cook, the Rex Simpson Hut (named after a local farmer who died in a climbing accident) has an open-to-the-public emergency shelter attached.
The locked huts are operated under a commercial concession from the department. Caroline Hut, granted permission in 1985, attracted some controversy at the time, but Braun-Elwert relied on his knowledge of history _ Ball Hut, the first alpine hut in what became Mt Cook National Park, was privately owned _ to brush off detractors.
The controversy died and Braun-Elwert managed to turn the three-day Ball Pass trip into an alternative _ for sure-footed and fit backpackers _ to the transalpine Copland Pass route, which has been rendered a far more serious undertaking by glacial recession and massive storm erosion at Hooker Glacier.
Erica Beuzenberg died near the top of Ball Pass when guiding two clients, to whom she was roped, across an icy slope. One fell and managed to stop, but not before triggering the fatal slide of all three.
Braun-Elwert described it as an "unspeakable tragedy that such an experienced guide died on the job on what is perceived to be easy terrain".
He and his wife later asked the Geographic Board _ it agreed last year _ to name a 2070m summit directly behind Rex Simpson Hut Beuzenberg Peak, in memory of Erica. There is also a plan to name a hut in the Ahuriri River further south Erica Hut.
Braun-Elwert's climbing connection with Beuzenberg also brought him a degree of fame. In 1993 he was named Macpac Mountaineer of the Year for his winter climb with Beuzenberg of Fitzroy, in Patagonia which is in the far south of South America.
"Very few people have climbed Fitzroy in winter," says mountain photographer Colin Monteath, a friend of Braun-Elwert's.
His other alpine achievements include the first ascent of the entire Peuterey Ridge of Mont Blanc in Europe, 1973; three winter crossings of the Patagonian ice cap from 1994 to 1996; 26 ascents of Aoraki-Mt Cook and eight of Mt Tasman. "He's had a huge impact," says Monteath, "on a broad cross-section of the mountain community, from the hundreds of people that he took to his two huts, which he built with his own hands and to his own design.
"That commitment to building and then following his dream of creating a company where he took hundreds of people successfully into the mountains and showed them the beauty of the high country here is a debt that we owe him. It's his legacy."
He is also credited with having a big impact on the development of high-quality training and standard-setting for mountain guiding in New Zealand, importing the influence of European guiding traditions.
Bryan Carter: "Gottlieb was involved with the establishment of the national guiding body because he was a qualified guide from Europe. That definitely eased the path of the New Zealand Mountain Guides Association into the International Union of Mountain Guides Associations."
He is remembered for getting things done, although this ruffled some.
"He brought a stiff, Germanic approach that was appreciated by some and spurned by others who believed he took away the `Freedom of the Hills'," writes mountaineer and blogger Bob McKerrow.
Monteath agrees his friend was forceful. "Very much so. On the one hand he was very gentle and humble and on the other hand Germanic and vociferous when he thought he was right."
Braun-Elwert described mountaineering as deeply satisfying.
"Climbing a mountain is like life in general," he said. "When you make a decision, you must put up with the outcome, good or bad. 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.
"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."
Clark and Davis became firm friends of the Braun-Elwerts after Anne sent them a company pamphlet and the prime-ministerial couple went on annual back-country adventures guided by Gottlieb, either tramping, skiing or climbing, including an attempt on the 6962m Aconcagua in South America, the highest peak outside the Himalayas.
As well as inspiring clients and friends, Braun-Elwert climbed and skiied with his family, including on New Zealand's highest mountain.
He once climbed 3764m Aoraki-Mt Cook with his wife, and in 1998 took his daughter Elke, then 14, to the summit. This made her the youngest person to have climbed to the top of New Zealand _ but only for a year, until her younger sister Carla repeated the feat also aged 14, but when she was four days younger than Elke had been.
When not busy with his family or his business, Braun-Elwert, a member of the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society and the Canterbury Aoraki Conservation Board lobbied for conservation causes like improved public access to the high country, and greater restrictions on development of high country stations through the tenure review process.
"Gottlieb campaigned for a long time to keep aircraft out of wilderness and mountain areas and was promoting `natural quiet' for many parts of the Conservation land," said fellow board member Ines Stager.
"He led by example. He cared for our natural environment and made sure that the areas where people treaded were left in pristine conditions under his guidance. He always emphasised that he wanted future generations to be able to enjoy these values."
His management of the huts exemplified this: "Everything was well organised _ the recycling, the wastewater disposal and so on."
The New Zealand Alpine Club, of which Braun-Elwert was a member for 28 years, last night paid tribute to him: "The nature of Gottlieb's sudden passing, in the midst of a landscape he loved, sheltered within the walls of a hut he constructed, beneath the summit of Beuzenberg Peak _ named after his long-time climbing partner Erica Beuzenberg _ was both apt and poignant.
"Gottlieb was never afraid to express his views, and absolutely stuck to his values. On environmental issues concerning our mountain regions he was a leading advocate for taking a responsible and proactive role in minimising human impact, and preserving the pure beauty of the mountain environment."
