Tragedy not PM's first brush with death

Prime Minister Helen Clark's brush with mortality in the mountains today was not her first.

Miss Clark and members of her alpine party were believed to be involved in resuscitation attempts on her friend and mountain guide, Gottlieb Otto Braun-Elwert, 59, after he collapsed in the Two Thumbs Range in the Southern Alps late this afternoon, but were unsuccessful.

Miss Clark has been to the range overlooking Lake Tekapo at least five times for cross-country skiing trips, and it was there in 1997 she met one of the nation's best woman climbers, Erica Beuzenberg, one of Mr Braun-Elwert's best guides.

It was Mr Braun-Elwert and his wife, Anne, whom Miss Clark immediately phoned at Tekapo when Ms Beuzenberg and two of her clients were killed in a fall off Mt Cook in March 2005.

Miss Clark described those deaths as an "almost incomprehensible tragedy" and a terrible loss.

The three climbers were short-roped together, Ms Beusenberg leading the party, when all three fell to their deaths as they descended an icy slope on the western side of Ball Pass. She had done 51 previous Ball Pass trips for Alpine Recreation over four seasons.

Another of Mr Braun-Elwert's guides Graham Jackson raised the alarm.

Mr Braun-Elwert described the Miss Clark and her husband Peter Davis as his most regular clients.

He began taking them cross-country skiing in 1997 -- when she was Opposition leader -- and said that in the first year she struggled on a very moderate mountain in the Two Thumb Range.

But in subsequent years, in addition to the cross-country skiing, he took Miss Clark on the Hochstetter Dome (a 2822-metre snow peak at the head of the Tasman Glacier), and on a couple of trips on the Fox neve.

And in South America Mr Braun-Elwert took the couple to about 6000m in an assault on the 6962m summit of Mount Aconcagua in Argentina in 2001.

The night before starting out on their trek, companions of the first climber killed on the mountain that season -- the day before -- came into the hotel where Miss Clark was staying.

"I'd never seen people look actually physically traumatised like that," she said. "It was written all over their faces."

Miss Clark later said that while she didn't make it to the top, she was happy to have got as far as she did.

Technically, the climb was no more difficult than the 2105m Ball Pass in Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park, which Miss Clark and Dr Davis successfully completed in December 1999, or the steep scree slopes of the 2291m Mt Ngauruhoe.

The difference was Aconcagua's height. For 16 of the 20 nights away the party were camping above the height of Mt Cook.

But when Miss Clark couldn't walk fast enough to keep her feet warn, crossing an ice face with crampons, she called it quits on the summit bid.

Mr Braun-Elwert took the pair back down to camp but climbed to the top a couple of days later, taking 15 hours to get to the summit and back to their high camp at 5860m.