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Mourners came from as far as Germany and Australia to pay tribute to one of New Zealand's best-known mountain guides at his funeral in Tekapo yesterday.
Gottlieb Braun-Elwert's mourners packed the largest hall in the lakeside town that had been his home for more than 20 years, The Press reported.
His daughter Carla said she knew what her father's reaction would have been on a cloudless day in which new snow coated the Southern Alps.
"You'd say that today would be a beautiful day in the mountains. Why should you be inside on a day like today?" she said.
The service was told that Mr Braun-Elwert had been planning to celebrate his 60th birthday next February by climbing 60 peaks in 60 days.
However, he collapsed a week ago outside his skiing hut in the Two Thumb Range, near the head of Lake Tekapo.
The funeral was told that the coroner had found the cause of death was a ruptured aorta, the main artery to the heart, and not a heart attack.
Widow Anne Braun-Elwert said the family had been heartened by the turnout and thanked Prime Minister Helen Clark and the others in the group climbing and skiing with him "for your valiant effort to bring Gottlieb back to life".
Helen Clark was at the Pacific Islands Forum summit in Niue but wrote an eulogy, read by her husband Peter Davis for the "mountain guide extraordinaire" who had accompanied them on 13 trips into the mountains.
"He was bold and prudent, and the risks he took were calculated. He inspired us to take journeys we never thought possible," she wrote.
- NZPA
