A devastated New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has told how she battled to save the life of her close friend and mountain guide Gottlieb Braun-Elwert.
Braun-Elwert, 59, died on a ski trip with Clark, her husband Peter Davis and others, including cabinet ministers David Parker and Damien O'Connor in the Lake Tekapo region on Thursday.
"It's just a terrible thing to see one of your old friends pass away," Clark told reporters on Friday.
"It was very harrowing but everybody rose to the occasion and we just threw everything we could at trying to help and trying to get support in."
She said the ski party at the backcountry hut owned by Braun-Elwert kept up CPR on him for two-and-a-half hours - but to no avail.
"Gottlieb was one of the most incredible people I have ever seen. I have had so many beaut trips with him," Clark said, adding that over the years she had also got to know his wife Ann and family very well.
Clark said the party had two beautiful days skiing in the Two Thumbs range, near Lake Tekapo in the South Island.
"And we got to the hut door and two people went inside the hut and Gottlieb came back out of the hut and collapsed on the snow," she said.
Ann Braun-Elwert praised Clark and the rest of the party for their efforts in trying to save her husband.
She said it still seemed unclear what killed her husband although it was assumed to be a heart attack.
"We don't really know what the real cause is. We are just guessing it's a heart attack. He's such a fit, strong man, it's the last thing I thought would have taken him."
Clark left the remote mountain hut late Thursday night by snowmobile and four-wheel drive so she could spend time with Ann Braun-Elwert, whose husband's body was flown by helicopter to Tekapo on Friday morning.
"She made a special effort to come out in the dark last night. (It was) probably a bit scary coming down the mountain in the snow, partially on a skidoo," Ann Braun-Elwert said on Radio New Zealand.
"So she made a special effort to get back."
She said Clark was such a regular client of her husband they referred to her as their "pet client".
St John Ambulance on Thursday said it received a call from Mt Gerald at 3.53pm (1353 AEST).
Braun-Elwert ran his own business, Alpine Recreation, at Lake Tekapo.
He had guided Clark more than a dozen times, on either cross-country skiing or climbing expeditions in New Zealand, South America and other countries.
In 2004, he took Clark on a four-day ski touring trip.
Clark had to abandon a summit bid on Aconcagua in the Andes with Braun-Elwert in 2001 because of bad weather and a fellow climber's illness.
They had crossed New Zealand's highest guided pass, the 2,105m Ball Pass on the Mount Cook Range, together the previous year, and later climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak.
Front page
RSS Feed