KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister Helen Clark and her husband, Professor Peter Davis, were winter companions of Southern Alps guide Gottlieb Braun-Elwert for 10 years.
Mr Braun-Elwert's wife, Anne, read somewhere that Helen Clark was a cross-country skier - a pursuit she took up 17 years ago - and sent the then Leader of the Opposition a pamphlet about the couple's guiding business in Tekapo.
Helen Clark contacted them in 1998, the year before she became Prime Minister, and a pattern was set.
Every year for the past 10 years, the friendly German migrant guided Helen Clark, Professor Davis and their party on a winter retreat.
The area in which Mr Braun-Elwert died yesterday, the Two Thumb Range to the east of Lake Tekapo, has been the favoured area.
But it was not the only one. In 2002, Mr Braun-Elwert guided the couple and a Canadian friend on a 28-day climbing expedition on 6962m Mt Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Americas.
Another year they went to the West Coast.
Sometimes the Prime Minister's party had to themselves the trampers' huts they stayed in, sometimes they shared them with members of the public.
They would head out for day trips, to go cross-country skiing or climbing, sharing a packed lunch somewhere before heading back to the hut.
Helen Clark's nieces and nephews often join her on her winter retreats. British MP Austin Mitchell joined her on a summer trek one year.
In the PM's party this time were two of her outdoorsy Cabinet ministers, David Parker and Damien OConnor.
The trip was intended to be her last spell of relaxation before the tempo of the general election.
