KEEPER OF THE MOUNTAINS

THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY STORY

Bernadette McDonald

Foreword by Sir Edmund Hillary

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Chapter 1 Enigma

Chapter 2 Encyclopedic Mind

Chapter 3 Educating Miss Hawley

Chapter 4 The Fortune Years

Chapter 5 Halfway to Asia

Chapter 6 Nepal Beckons

Chapter 7 A New Life

Chapter 8 Learning the Ropes

Chapter 9 A Friend for Life

Chapter 10 A Break with the Past

Chapter 11 Great Achievements

Chapter 12 The Horse Race

Chapter 13 Many Claims, Many Ambitions

Chapter 14 Living Archive

Chapter 15 Chronicler or Historian?

Chapter 16 Changing Objectives

Chapter 17 Queen of Everest

Chapter 18 It’s Nepal

Epilogue

Photos

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to the people who assisted me in this writing adventure. To Helen Cherullo of The Mountaineers Books, I offer thanks for inviting me to do this project and for her ongoing support and encouragement; and to Don Gorman of Rocky Mountain Books, thank you for this new paperback edition with its lovely new title. In the beginning, I would not have been able to accept Helen’s invitation if The Banff Centre had not granted me a six-month leave, during which time I researched and wrote parts of the manuscript – thank you to Banff Centre President Mary Hofstetter for allowing me that flexibility. Thanks also go to the Mountain Culture dream team for their unwavering support.

Richard Salisbury provided me with important cooperation and insights, even in the midst of his own Elizabeth Hawley project. Paula Rondina helped me with valuable research. Woody MacPhail ensured that the audiotapes I recorded in Kathmandu were of the highest quality and Yvonne Dixon kindly lent me her recording equipment. Fran Hunziker gave me the use of her backyard cabin in Cape Town, South Africa, as well as German shepherds Max and Murphy to protect me. Catherine Destivelle provided a writing space with the most inspiring view in Provence. At the beginning of the project, Charlie Houston wrote a letter to Elizabeth Hawley promising her that I wasn’t an ogre, and Sir Edmund and Lady Hillary assured me (and Elizabeth) that this was a good idea. Broughton Coburn lent me books and was always interested and encouraging. Meg and Michael Leonard entrusted me with a priceless box of letters and photographs that opened the door to Elizabeth’s early life. Maria Coffey lent me her interview tape from a previous book project and was supportive, as was Lisa Choegyal, who sent many helpful emails and images. Thank you to Ang Rita for delivering faxes to Elizabeth when I couldn’t get through to her directly. Special gratitude also goes to the people who generously read through early versions of the manuscript and advised me – Geoff Powter, John Porter and Leslie Taylor – and to Anne Ryall for her meticulous fact checking. Also, a huge thank you goes out to Bob A. Schelfhout Aubertijn for his marathon fact-checking effort on this new edition of the book.

Additionally, I want to thank all those who wracked their memories for Liz Hawley stories to share. Although not all are mentioned in this book, their interviews helped inform the effort. Sincere thanks to: Sir Edmund Hillary, Lady Hillary, Sir Chris Bonington, Reinhold Messner, George Band, Tomaž Humar, Ed Viesturs, Jean-Christophe Lafaille, Doug Scott, David Breashears, Audrey Salkeld, Tom Hornbein, Tashi Tenzing, Charles Houston, Robin Houston, Arlene Blum, Kurt Diemberger, Rebecca Stephens, Voytek Kurtyka, Greg Child, John Porter, Silvo Karo, Marija and Andrej Štremfelj, Junko Tabei, Conrad Anker, Frances Klatzel, Ken Wilson, Carlos Buhler, Christian Beckwith, Geoff Powter, Bernard Newman, John Roskelley, Richard Salisbury, Harish Kapadia, Reudi Eisland, Tamotsu Ohnishi, Erhard Loretan, Stephen Venables, Ed Webster, Catherine Destivelle, Dave Hahn, Eric Simonson, Lisa Choegyal, Leo Dickinson, David Schlim, Ed Douglas, Bill Crouse, Broughton Coburn, Mary Lowe, George Lowe, Russell Brice, Lindsay Griffin, Heather Macdonald, Sharon Wood, Michael Brown, Meg Leonard, Michael Leonard, Alex Lwow, Elaine King, Lee Kneerim, Will Kneerim, Eleanor Schwartz, Bernadette Vasseux, Kunda Dixit, Ang Rita, Lydia Bradey, Jean-Michel Asselin, Dr. Bekha Bahadur Thapa, Gopal Sharma and Bahadur Garung.

Those who generously provided photographs include Heather Macdonald, Meg and Michael Leonard, Elizabeth Hawley, Lisa Choegyal, Colin Monteath, Alex Lwow, Ed Webster, Tomaž Humar and Jimmy Chin.

Elizabeth’s life in Nepal is fundamentally tied to the mountaineering achievements of the past 40 years, and so the efforts of countless climbers play a major role in her story. Many climbs and climbers of great significance are not included, however, because the selection of stories for this book was driven by a connection to Elizabeth, rather than their place in mountaineering history. I sincerely thank all the climbers whose stories have so enriched this book.

My deep appreciation goes to Christine Hosler of The Mountaineers Books for her patience as she guided me through the process; to my editor, Helen Whybrow, for the enlightening – and surprisingly enjoyable – experience of working on this manuscript; and to Brenda Pittsley for her meticulous copy editing. Thank you to Sir Edmund for writing the foreword with such enthusiasm, as well as to my husband, Alan, for tolerating and encouraging me as I lived, ate and breathed Elizabeth Hawley stories for 18 months.

Finally, thank you to Elizabeth Hawley, for putting aside her skepticism about the project and for cooperating with me in such a wholehearted and enthusiastic manner. She opened her home and her files to me, gave me access to her personal papers, offered me glimpses of her wonderful sense of humour and dug deep into her memory bank to provide me with more stories and images than I ever dreamed of. It was a rare privilege to work with her.

FOREWORD

I have known Elizabeth Hawley for 45 years or more. When she settled in Kathmandu she quickly became a member of that unique group of people who added colour and vitality to a city that had only recently moved into the new age – people like Inger and Boris Lissanevitch, Desmond Doig, Father Moran, Barbara Adams, Jimmy Roberts and, maybe to a lesser degree, myself.

In her early days, she was a researcher in New York, but she soon found that dull. She started travelling around the world and revelled in new experiences and adventures. She was a brave woman, never afraid to meet challenges or to travel in areas of uncertainty and possible danger.

Finally, Nepal became her home; she enjoyed the people, the culture and the intense political changes. She knew everyone she considered worth knowing, and when she became a Reuters correspondent she dispatched dramatic stories of the remarkable happenings that were so frequent in Kathmandu and on the Himalayan peaks. Her old-model Volkswagen was recognized by everyone, and if anything of consequence was going on, then Elizabeth and her VW would be there, too.

Elizabeth was never a climber, but she interviewed every Himalayan expedition passing through Kathmandu and, on their return, reported on their adventures and their successes or failures. No one has a wider knowledge of Himalayan mountaineering than Elizabeth. She is respected and admired by all the famous climbers.

She played an important role in the establishment of Col. Jimmy Roberts’s Mountain Travel trekking agency. She is a formidable lady and does not suffer fools easily, but she is kind and generous to those she admires.

When I established the Himalayan Trust and started building schools and hospitals for the people in the mountains, Elizabeth Hawley became a godsend to us. She was our executive officer and supervised our programs and finances with remarkable common sense and wisdom. Our Sherpa staff admired and respected her, as we did, and they worked together as a most effective team.

So Elizabeth continued to work energetically on all her projects, be it reporting on Himalayan climbing, guiding the Himalayan Trust programs, or serving as honorary consul for New Zealand in Nepal. She is a woman of efficiency and courage who does everything well. She is widely respected around the world and has, in consequence, received many important decorations and awards.

I am particularly pleased that her unique and eventful life has finally been documented, as she has lived through interesting times, in fascinating places, with some remarkable people.

May she long remain her very special, formidable self.

Ed Hillary

2005

CHAPTER 1

Enigma

I came to Nepal. I never planned to stay. I just never left.

— Elizabeth Hawley

I was well aware of Elizabeth Hawley’s formidable reputation as the “grande dame” of the Himalaya and foremost authority on climbing in Nepal. She has been described as the single most reliable source of statistics on Himalayan climbing and “a one-woman Nepal Himalayan mountaineering institution.” So when The Mountaineers Books asked me if I would be interested in writing her biography, I was intrigued, sensing there must be a remarkable personality behind that reputation. I had previously corresponded with Elizabeth on various mountain matters through my work with the Banff Mountain Festivals, but our contact had been cursory at best. What was her story? How – and why – did this woman from Middle America create such a unique role for herself as the doyenne of the world’s highest mountains? Despite prolific mountaineering reports and published articles written by her over the course of 40 years, almost nothing had been written about her. This surprised me, until I started talking to people who know her.

With discouraging unanimity, her acquaintances warned me that Elizabeth is an unequivocally private woman and, despite her having led a fascinating life in Nepal and elsewhere, they doubted she would reveal much of interest to me. All had asked her about her past, and her typical response was to hand over a one-page bio that revealed the basic facts: date of birth: 1923; citizenship: American; occupations: journalist, honorary consul, Himalayan chronicler. New Zealand guide Russell Brice has known her for 30 years, but even he could offer no insight into her personal life.

It was apparently hard work getting to know Elizabeth Hawley. American climber Carlos Buhler met her for the first time on an expedition in Nepal in 1979, when he was in his early 20s. He was focused on the climbing at hand and the logistics that had to be sorted out before leaving Kathmandu, so when she called him for an interview he was not enthused. “She was nosy and I didn’t know her from Adam, and I thought, ‘Wow! Goodness gracious, who is this gal?’” Looking back, he estimates it took at least five trips to Asia to begin to know her and appreciate what she was doing – “Sort of like your mother’s antiques,” he says. “I feel lucky that I went back and saw through that initial period of consternation and confusion about who she was.” But even after dozens of meetings with Elizabeth, Buhler doesn’t think he ever “cracked her.” She is just as abrupt with him now as she was in 1979. Only his reaction has changed: “I’m not offended by it – I love her for all of those reasons. While at the beginning, I just didn’t have enough life experience to know where to put this type of person.”

Eleanor Schwartz, a good friend and colleague from Elizabeth’s 20s, implored me to do more than list her accomplishments. “Try to capture her personality,” she urged. Even though it might be difficult, “Elizabeth is worth the effort.”

Heather Macdonald, Elizabeth’s assistant in Nepal for a time, once approached her about writing a biography. Elizabeth responded that it would be a waste of paper. Heather knew there were great stories tucked away in this woman’s memory, but she was not successful in drawing them out. When she asked Elizabeth why she stayed in Nepal, her answer was vague: “I came to Nepal. I never planned to stay. I just never left.” Despite her reluctance to talk about herself, Elizabeth always leaves an impression – of mystery.

She has been a woman in a world of men – athletic, focused, devoted, egocentric, powerful men. Most of these men seem to be either in awe of her or terrified. At least one has thought of using her as a thinly veiled character in a novel. He describes this character as the ultimate schoolmarm type from the 1930s or ’40s, with an aura of fear and terror radiating around her. Others are more prosaic: “She’s just Liz. She’s blustery and opinionated and outspoken and eccentric and, to many people, rude.” Some have learned to “keep their mouths shut” and stay out of her line of fire.

Sir Edmund Hillary describes her as “a bit of a terror. If you get on the wrong side of Liz, it can be a bit difficult, but if you befriend her, you have a good friend and one for life.” He wonders if perhaps the only people who are not afraid of her are himself and his wife. One author muses, “It’s always fun to speculate what Liz is doing when she’s not terrorizing people.” British author Ed Douglas agrees that people are afraid of her, but he thinks she is a “sexy old gal.”

American climber Conrad Anker describes her as a diminutive, fragile, wickedly witty person exuding confidence and a no-nonsense authority. She is known far and wide as Miss Hawley. He has seen her on a regular basis for 14 years, but on his last visit in 2002, he said, “She was definitely getting older and frailer. She’s still beautiful and athletic, although a bit stooped.” And he smiles as he observes, “She likes climbers, especially guys!” He admits he has always been curious about her private life – particularly the rumours of affairs with famous climbers.

In fact, many people are prone to speculating about the kind of fabulous private life Elizabeth might have had – mysterious men, maybe a broken heart in New York, royal family connections and so on. Himalayan climber and writer Greg Child is one of these. After post-expedition interviews with her, he and other climbers have discussed her in private, imagining and speculating. “What’s she doing? Who has she been with? What’s she hiding from?” There have been a lot of theories, especially about potential lovers, among them Col. Jimmy Roberts, Eric Shipton and Sir Edmund Hillary.

American climber and physician Charles Houston was convinced that Elizabeth was not the marrying type. She was too independent. There are many stories about how and why she came to Kathmandu, including one in which a boyfriend leaves her, another where she stays in Kathmandu when she runs out of money while travelling. Italian alpinist Reinhold Messner agrees that she is a completely independent woman, free and modern – and has been since the 1960s. He believes she knew exactly what she wanted and she went out and got it. But if this is true, she is also a woman of contradictions. He has seen her prudishness first-hand and cites an incident when she was talking with a climber who told her about having children with his girlfriend, whom he hoped to marry at some point in the future. She scolded him that it should be the other way around: marry first and then have children.

British filmmaker Leo Dickinson interviewed Elizabeth in 1990 when he was in Nepal to fly over Everest in a balloon, as well as to work on a film about British climber Don Whillans. Dickinson remembers her as “inscrutable” and “buxom,” and found her difficult to interview. Others who knew her during the same period described her as short and stocky, a busy woman who didn’t bother much with her appearance. Others said she was tall, slender, well groomed and elegant. One climber remembers her as standing 6 feet 7 inches tall and weighing 90 pounds – at least that’s the impression she made. Could they all be talking about the same person?

According to Dickinson, Elizabeth sticks to facts and figures like an encyclopedia. He felt a barrier descend when he attempted a more personal line of questioning, comparing the experience to a medieval moat: “you can go in one way, but you can’t get out the other way.” He is convinced she thinks that what others are doing is much more interesting than anything about her. He thought – but didn’t dare ask – that she agreed to do the interview about Don Whillans because she and Whillans had had a romantic fling.

British climber Doug Scott agrees there may be something in the Whillans romance theory. He remembers an interview with Elizabeth, Whillans, Hamish MacInnes and himself in the early 1970s in which she singled Whillans out and, Scott believes, was enamoured of him. Whillans thought so, too. After she left, he commented to the others, “I think she likes me … I think I’ll follow this up.…” Scott doesn’t know what happened, and he can’t help but chuckle at the incongruous image of the two of them together – the “buxom” Miss Hawley, and Whillans, who was 5 feet 2 inches and somewhat round at belly height. Another story has Elizabeth arriving in Kathmandu in the early 1960s with a man who was a climber and a scientist. Probably the most persistent rumour about love affairs with climbers is one that almost every Himalayan climber believes – that Elizabeth and Sir Edmund had a long-standing romantic relationship. Doug Scott sums it up: “Of course, Ed’s the one!” Elizabeth has been an ardent Hillary defender throughout her years in Kathmandu, and there is a story that she physically stood up for him at the Tiger Tops lodge when something disparaging was said about him. Observers claim she took a swing at the heckler with her fists. Elizabeth vehemently denies the incident.

Romantic theories aside, Scott is sure that most mountaineers and countless others are interested in Elizabeth’s knowledge and opinions on the inside dealings of mountaineering in Nepal. Ed Viesturs agrees. Every climber he knows who has met and worked with her wants to know the story – and opinions – of Elizabeth Hawley. After all, she has interviewed climbers and reported on expeditions to Nepal for more than 40 years. She has seen and heard some amazing stories, yet her seasonal mountaineering reports have stuck to the facts, without overt opinion. What did she really think?

After interviewing dozens of climbers and friends, and reading thousands of her letters lent to me by Elizabeth’s nephew, it was time to go to Kathmandu and meet her in person. I was warned “there’s a side of her that’s very robotic.” Several people advised me to have a drink with her first to “take the edge off.” Anything from whisky to wine would do.

I was further advised to do my homework. “You need to know the big events … the epochal events” because “if you don’t know your stuff, she will arch her eyebrows.” I was told that when I asked a question, a typical response would be for her to turn the question around and make me feel ridiculous for posing such a silly question. I was repeatedly instructed to “never, ever, call her anything but Miss Hawley.” Friends cautioned me to be emotionally prepared for a belligerent, antagonistic, rude woman. I was urged to be patient, to work with her, to not go on the offensive. Many advised me to bring whisky.

But there was positive reinforcement as well. Lady Hillary urged, “Just be yourself.” Elizabeth had called the Hillarys about this project, and, despite being reticent in the beginning, was now said to be somewhat “chuffed” about the idea. Elizabeth was flattered, but still couldn’t understand why I’d want to do it and wondered aloud who on earth would want to read it. Sir Edmund encouraged me by saying that it was high time her story was told, and he was confident she would cooperate.

Climbers regaled me with stories about how, upon their arrival in Kathmandu, they would no sooner be checking into their hotels, or unpacking their bags, or jumping into the shower, when they would receive a call from Elizabeth Hawley asking to set up a meeting as soon as possible. I found this to be encouraging – maybe she’d be eager to meet me too. But the difference was that they had something she wanted – information about a climb – and I didn’t. Yet she had something I wanted – her life story.

I left my home in the Canadian Rockies and started the long journey: Calgary, London, Frankfurt, Bangkok and, finally, Kathmandu. A couple of days of bad meals, long lineups, important bits of paper, cramped seats and ever-rising temperatures. The Kathmandu airport was crowded and steaming. I crammed myself into a taxi and rumbled off to my hotel, located conveniently near Elizabeth Hawley’s residence. I was in the hotel just long enough to unpack my suitcase and brush my teeth when the phone rang – it was her! I took it as a good omen.

She gave me directions to her house and wanted to meet immediately, so I stuffed the whisky into my briefcase and headed out. I didn’t follow her directions well enough, though, and ended up walking an extra hour in the late-afternoon monsoon heat. The streets were packed with postage-stamp-sized shops selling everything from bathroom fixtures to silk fabric to aspirin, while vendors crowded the sidewalks hawking fresh vegetables and roasting corn. The pungent smells were overwhelming – a sensation intensified by unrelenting traffic and billowing clouds of black diesel smoke. Two narrow driving lanes were choked with rattling buses and sleek SUVs, as well as what seemed like thousands of clanging motor scooters, all pouring into town with horns blaring. The sidewalks presented an obstacle course of unexpected drop-offs and ankle-bending steps, piles of rotting garbage, and giant open sewage holes. Attractive, traditional, three-storey brick buildings stood juxtaposed to four- and five-storey cement monstrosities. Beautifully carved, ancient wooden doorframes leaned into the street, providing stark contrast to their aluminum and concrete neighbours. It appeared a cityscape in transition, from the traditional to the modern, from medieval times to the twenty-first century. It bordered on mayhem.

At last, I came to a gated black iron fence on the north side of the street. To the right of the open gate was an official-looking brass plaque reading “Himalayan Trust, Miss Elizabeth Hawley, Honorary Consulate of New Zealand.” The sign suggested order in a world of chaos. I walked through the gate, greeted the guard, wandered down a slight incline and found myself in a courtyard surrounded by flowering trees and shrubs and a small plot of green grass. Everything was suddenly, unbelievably, quiet.

Within the courtyard were several houses. Elizabeth Hawley’s home for more than 45 years occupies the central position. A ground-floor entrance leads to the headquarters office of the Himalayan Trust, an organization founded by Sir Edmund Hillary to provide educational and health support to the Sherpas of the Khumbu region of Nepal. I walked around to the left and up a short set of stairs leading to an unlocked screen door adorned with a string of bells, presumably to announce visitors.

On the other side of the screen door, a steep set of stairs ascended to a small landing, from where it was possible to see into a neat, orderly office. And there she was, at her desk playing solitaire on the computer.

Glancing over her reading glasses, she turned her head to greet me: “Did you get lost? Don’t worry, everyone does.” She rose from her desk and strode over to shake my hand, still peering over her glasses. She was smaller than I expected, thin and well groomed. Her 80-year-old eyes were clear and dark, never wavering as she looked me over. We moved to the sitting area, where she offered a cool drink. Within the first half hour of meeting Miss Hawley, she asked me to call her Elizabeth. And so we began.

CHAPTER 2

Encyclopedic Mind

The puzzle remains unsolved, and her tenacity won’t allow her to let it go.

The next day, I watched as Elizabeth, Sherpa Pemba Dorje and two companions engaged in the kind of investigative cross-examination that perpetuates Elizabeth’s reputation as being honest, relentless and not easily fooled. Pemba, a wiry, sun-blasted, super-confident athlete, perched on her couch like a coiled spring, there only as long as it would take to convince her of his latest climbing feat, which was being contested by other climbers.

For the 27-year-old speed climber, this was a matter of pride, as well as his place in history. He had made a splash in the climbing world, appearing in the “Breaking News” section of Rock & Ice magazine, as well as in Gripped. But was this new exploit true? Did Elizabeth believe him? Pemba claimed to have climbed 3500 vertical metres from base camp on the Khumbu Glacier to the summit of Mount Everest in 8 hours and 10 minutes during the night of May 20–21, 2004. He climbed alone, using artificial oxygen above the last camp at around 7900 metres. The announcement of this astonishing climb was met with skepticism from other climbing Sherpas, however, and was challenged by his rival Lhakpa Gelu Sherpa, who had beaten Pemba’s time from the previous year.

It did seem amazing that Pemba could lop four and a half hours off his time from just one year ago, and it was this that Elizabeth was probing. But he had a plausible explanation for her: on May 16, just a few days before his historic climb, he had climbed the mountain completely without bottled oxygen. That ascent had prepared him mentally and physically for the May 20 speed ascent – with bottled oxygen. Others on the team said he had used oxygen intermittently on the earlier climb, however, and any discrepancy in his story aroused Elizabeth’s curiosity.

One of the problems with his claim was that he reached the summit in the middle of the night, on a night when nobody else was on the upper part of the mountain. Since his camera malfunctioned, there was no summit photograph. She asked him what he could tell her that would prove he was there. He answered that, when he was on the summit, he saw headlamps coming up from the north side. She double-checked his statement to ensure she had heard it correctly, making a note to cross-reference her other sources and records.

After an hour of questions, answers, repeat questions, more elaborate answers and copious note taking, Elizabeth concluded with, “Congratulations, you have made an admirable effort.” Pemba and his team stood up with an audible sigh of relief and bade this formidable, investigative force of a woman goodbye. For Elizabeth Hawley, this was but the first of many interviews concerning this ascent. It would occupy much of her attention and sleuthing abilities during the weeks to come.

Before we settled into a serious interview session of our own, Elizabeth showed me around her home, pointing out items of interest. Her office is filled with mementos, photos, mountaineering books, and two paintings by Khumbu Sherpas. Most of the furniture is made of wood and simply built. A small sofa and two upholstered chairs appear a little worn. Fully one-third of the room is taken up with a large desk, a smaller table, upright wooden chairs and the usual office equipment. This room, functioning as both her office and living room, is all hard surfaces – there is not much soft about it and it feels a little severe.

Old-fashioned wooden cabinets stuffed with mountaineering files stand against the office walls. Every climb Elizabeth has covered is documented in a file organized by year, mountain and route. Each file has an arrival form, bio forms for each expedition member, a return form, letters, photos and route drawings. On an interesting or unusual climb, she makes notes regarding exact locations of camps, landmarks, distances, times between camps, oxygen information and anything of interest. If any letters or photos are supplied to her, she attaches them to the file. In some cases, she asks the expedition leader for a detailed, blow-by-blow, day-by-day account of the climb. There are thousands of such folders. The history of Himalayan climbing in Nepal is contained within these files. Upon closer examination, I realize that all of the bookcases and file cabinets are firmly attached to the wall, the computer is chained to the wall and the fax machine is chained to the table on which it sits. “Earthquakes,” she explains. “They’re not uncommon here. We’re due to have a major one any minute now,” she adds with a grin.

Adjoining the office is a dining room, lovely in its simplicity. A wooden table with ample seating space for six occupies the centre of the room. On it lies a small notepad. A china cabinet holds her dishes – and that’s it, very simple. Tall French windows open onto a shallow balcony. I imagine Elizabeth holding court at the head of the table as famous mountaineers and adventurers regale her with their stories. This is the kind of dining room meant for interesting people, languid lunches, stimulating conversation and laughter.

A hallway leads to a curious little bathroom – nooks and crannies peek out from the walls, each with a specific purpose. A large nook housed a water heater in days gone by; another is an alcove for towels; on a small shelf rests another notepad. The toilet features an old-fashioned, elevated, water tank dangling a long slender chain for flushing. The tub looks barely big enough for a leisurely soak, but luckily Elizabeth is a small woman.

In her bedroom, nothing is king-sized, queen-sized or even double-sized. The wardrobes are conservative, the dresser is small and the proportions of her canopy bed are elegant but diminutive. Draped with mosquito netting in the warm months, the narrow mattress looks functional but hardly comfy. Another notepad is handy on a small bedside table.

Passing from room to room, I notice that all the walls are similar shades of ivory, though Elizabeth points out slight differences in hue, each selected by her. It’s a sensory shock, then, to walk into a screamingly bright, mustard-yellow kitchen. Did she choose this colour, too? “Oh, Lord, no,” she scoffs, “my cook chose this colour. He’s the one who spends all his time in the kitchen. I certainly never do.” It’s a tiny room, but looks well organized and efficient.

Four massive truck batteries sit on her balcony, standing by, ready to power various pieces of equipment when the power goes off, which it frequently does. In addition, she has rechargeable battery-operated lamps close at hand to navigate the rooms not connected to the truck batteries. The wiring in her apartment is an eclectic mix of two-pronged plug-ins, narrow three-pronged plug-ins, fat three-pronged plug-ins and plug-ins for both narrow and fat prongs, a representative collection that tells the history of the evolution of electricity in Kathmandu.

Finally, I ask about the notepads. A distinct twinkle in her eye suggests she’s been waiting for that question. She explains she never knows when she might think of something, and she detests the thought of losing an idea, or a detail, or a to-do item. “I’m full of systems,” she offers. “When you went into the bathroom, everything was neat and tidy, and that wasn’t just for your benefit, you know.” We return to the bathroom so she can explain her bath towel system: “When I get out of the bathtub, I take my towel and divide it into quadrants. Each quadrant is carefully used for a portion of the body, ensuring that, at no point, will I be drying myself with a wet towel.” As a postscript, she points to the notepad within easy reach of the bathtub.

Although her mind is robust and agile and she is clearly having fun at my expense, Elizabeth appears fragile and thin. She wears a light, cotton, short-sleeved, pastel, patterned frock. Her hair is neatly done up and those reading glasses still rest on her nose. Her legs are slender, bare and tan. At about 1.6 metres, she isn’t as tall as I expected, but she may have been taller at one time. Her eyes are dark brown, large and clear. It appears she’s wearing eye makeup, as well as a bright shade of lipstick.

The tour ends and, back in her office, the phone rings frequently. Her response varies – sometimes she’s smooth as silk, other times she’s impatient to the point of rudeness. Her voice can be rather sharp, a marked contrast to the conversational tone I’ve enjoyed so far. Occasionally, someone from the Himalayan Trust or one of her staff comes in; she speaks sharply to each one. The only exception is her driver, a handsome young man named Suben, who confers with her about a metal part somewhere in the depths of her car’s motor. It is not working and he is attempting to get it fixed. He seems to know what he’s doing, so she agrees he should keep doing it and gives him money to pay for whatever he needs. Maybe it’s due to her lack of expertise in auto mechanics, but he’s the only one who escapes reproach this afternoon.

A painting she cherishes has fallen off the wall and leans against a file cabinet. She explains that it was hung probably 40 years ago on a string that finally rotted. A staff member and a carpenter arrive to make it right, and she barks out orders, which are followed by considerable banging and scraping. Soon the painting is hanging again, but at a sharp tilt. She fumes that the only way to get anything done right is to do it herself.

She describes a typical Hawley day, which starts with an early breakfast and a thorough read of the two local daily papers. Meetings begin at 8:00 a.m., when Ang Rita from the Himalayan Trust comes upstairs to discuss funds he needs for a school or hospital project he’s working on. Elizabeth doles out money from the trust account and confirms what needs to be done.

Next, she calls climbing expedition leaders and makes appointments for interviews. She prefers to go to their hotels because they can’t easily find her (I’m relieved to learn I’m not the only one who gets lost). She does one or two interviews in the morning, with her driver delivering her from hotel to hotel. The locations vary from elegant, expensive hotels to mean hostels, depending on the expedition.

Back home, she eats an early lunch in the dining room, noting, “It takes me two minutes to get from my desk to my lunch.” She has an excellent cook who prepares a light meal, such as a soufflé or shrimp with rice. Then it’s time to take the information she gleaned from the expedition interviews and type it up in the afternoon, into the evening if necessary. During the afternoon, she calls trekking agencies and hotels: Is the expedition coming tomorrow? Have they checked in yet? Have they changed their plans? She knows when the daily Thai Airways flight arrives, so shortly after touchdown she’s on the phone calling expedition leaders at their hotels to arrange meetings for the following day.

Dinner is at 5:30 p.m. Evenings are a good time to phone people she wasn’t able to catch during the day, as well as for more writing. Although her work is computerized, she prefers to do some things manually. She keeps lists of trekking agents, hotels and expeditions, which are organized by mountain, leader’s name, hotel name and expected arrival and departure dates. To best organize her time, she creates a document that lists the chronological order of the expeditions’ arrival dates. Several times a week, she revises this five-page schedule because plans change constantly. But she resists doing it electronically “because it would take a lot longer.” She describes the task as “a great evening’s entertainment.”

When Elizabeth stops working, at around 9:00 or 10:00 p.m., she reads the International Herald Tribune, a daily ritual begun in her early days of travel, as well as an Indian daily paper. To relax, she does the Tribune’s crossword puzzle followed by perhaps an hour of solitaire on her computer. Then it’s time to shut down the computer and place her backup files in a locked tin trunk beside her bed – in case of an earthquake she can escape with it out the back stairwell. Finally, it’s time to choose her clothes for the next day and then retire. Sixteen-hour days are normal.

But there are a few diversions; for example, Thursday morning is her weekly hairdresser’s appointment. In addition to getting her hair done, she catches up on local gossip, and since she uses the same hairdresser as the queen of Nepal, there’s always something interesting going on. “It’s pretty good entertainment for a Thursday morning,” she says. On Saturdays, the telephone rings less often and there are fewer interruptions. Weekends are her time for writing end-of-month reports for the adventure travel company Tiger Tops, working on the seasonal mountaineering report and tidying up any leftover accounting for the Himalayan Trust.

The Tiger Tops report is a kind of “state of Nepal” analysis that includes political, economic and tourism news which she writes for the company’s executive director. In preparation, she clips anything of interest from the daily papers and saves it for the weekend writing exercise. She claims to actually hate writing, but she loves the research.

She tells me there is virtually no day that she doesn’t work, even at age 80. On reflection, she concedes that every once in a great while there comes a day – usually a Saturday, maybe near the end of July – when she doesn’t have anything pressing to do. On that glorious day, she luxuriates in an all-day read of a murder mystery. She hasn’t indulged herself for a few years now, she admits, but remembers a day such as that some time ago, and it was wonderful. She prefers murder mysteries because they are full of problems and puzzles, and she loves problem solving.

Elizabeth’s excursions out of the apartment are all business. She never shops for food. “Me? Shop?” Her recurring theme is “the staff does what they can do, and what they cannot do, I do.” Shopping for food is something they can do. She doesn’t even tell the cook what she wants to eat; he knows what she wants and he finds it.

She spends most of her time conducting mountaineering interviews. They form the core of the mountaineering reports she provides for a number of journals and mountaineering magazines around the world: the American Alpine Journal in the United States, Desnivel in Spain and Klettern in Germany, among others. She doesn’t press for a lot of detail from those who climb the most frequented routes, but she does expect detailed accounts from those doing anything out of the ordinary. She asks them exactly where their camps were – in a crevasse, beside a rock outcropping or on a ledge? From those facts, she builds her information base.

Her forms have evolved little over the years. “What is your email address?” was introduced after a request from Christian Beckwith when he was editor of the American Alpine Journal. She used to ask for “nationality,” but changed it to “citizen of” because of the complex nationality issues that emerged as large states broke into smaller nations. Anatoli Boukreev was a prime example. On the form, he said he was Russian. She pointed out that he was travelling on a Kazakhstani passport. “But I am Russian!” he insisted. In fact, his father and mother were ethnic Russians, but he lived in Kazakhstan. Just as a Sherpa would sign on as Sherpa rather than Nepali, Boukreev’s nationality under the Soviet system was Russian because of his parents. She also got “Jewish” as a nationality because the old Soviet system identity papers classified people as Jewish, not Soviet. Someone once wrote “gypsy” in answer to the nationality question.

Many have questioned her need for all this detail on the biographical forms, and some have been irritated by her insistence that everything be filled out. What does she need this for? She explains that one of her jobs as a reporter is to write obituaries for the climbers who don’t come back.

American climber Dave Hahn, who has done 20 expeditions to 8000-metre peaks, sees Elizabeth before and after every trip. He chuckles at her unwillingness to change her form to accommodate the changing times. She still has a box to check for “living with girlfriend,” but none has yet emerged for “living with boyfriend.” She doesn’t see the need to change, although she agrees that the combinations are endless – she once received a form filled out by a female climber who checked off “living with girlfriend.” Assuming it was an error, Elizabeth corrected it while the climbers were on the mountain, but when they returned, the woman laughed as she pointed out that “living with girlfriend” was the correct answer.

Elizabeth covers all of the expeditions that climb inside Nepal or on the other side of the border mountains. As she explains, “You can’t do just half of Everest.” The interviewing work takes about three and a half months each year, with three main climbing seasons: spring, fall and winter. The spring season is the busiest, with its warmer weather, but it also presents the constant threat of the onset of the monsoons. During the climbing seasons, Elizabeth spends “half my waking hours” doing interviews and recording the results.

American climber Ed Viesturs loves it when the phone rings in his hotel, often just as he’s checking in. “We expect it – it’s fun.” Elizabeth fills him in on the latest gossip and he reciprocates. He finds she’s easygoing with him most of the time, but occasionally she’s in a grumpy mood and really grills him about something. He remembers being cross-examined after one expedition about the location of his Camp II. He couldn’t remember, but she insisted on an exact location for her seasonal mountaineering report. So he made something up. Unfortunately, he chose the wrong location and was scolded for the mistake. In retrospect, he admits, it was amusing. Viesturs claims she always arrives at the hotel right on time and nicely dressed, with her hair “fixed up.” In fact, he is sure to be properly dressed and combed when he meets her, too. “It’s only common courtesy and respect,” he says. He feels he must be careful about what he says and how he says it.

But not everyone is as cooperative as Viesturs. Robin Houston, a climber, physician and son of Dr. Charles Houston, has had many occasions to see her in action. He has observed mountaineers paying her limited attention or respect because of their difficult experiences with her. But more experienced mountaineers, those with a bit more savvy and consideration, do cooperate, he suggests. They respect her accuracy and diligence. They appreciate the fact that she makes it easy for them to get their story told. They don’t have to chase her down; she comes to them. All they have to do is tell her their intentions, give her accurate information, tell her what actually happened, and she does the rest – carefully and precisely.

Tashi Tenzing, grandson of Tenzing Norgay, doesn’t understand why some climbers won’t cooperate. “They think that she’s taking their valuable time, but in fact it’s she who is making time for them – making time and effort to record accurately what it is that’s so important to them.”

But some find her cold and dismissive. American climber and filmmaker David Breashears once overheard her scold someone for not reading a particular book in preparation for the interview. He has seen her be dismissive to the point of arrogance – almost belligerence – and thinks it comes from having had deferential and accommodating Nepali staff for so many years. Some find this side of her irritating. In his opinion, it is her only negative side.

Australian climber Greg Child recounts a story about her coming to interview him after his attempt to climb Menlungtse. She asked if he had summited; when he said no, she replied, “Well that was easy,” and left. He had ordered a pot of tea for them, but she left before it arrived. He believes there was someone else in the hotel she wanted to interview but she came to see him first. His summation: “Kind of a thorny old dame.”

By contrast, Houston has often observed her work hard to get to the bottom of a complex or controversial story. She does multiple interviews related to the same expedition, getting different points of view and triangulating her data to ferret out the truth, particularly if she suspects new ground has been broken or there was friction within the team. Houston remembers her sitting at the Summit Hotel asking tough questions of youthful mountaineers and “holding court.”

That’s what I observe over the next few days, too. Following Pemba Dorje’s interview, Elizabeth goes into detective mode, checking her files to discover whether anyone was climbing high on the north side of Everest at that time. Not a soul reached the summit that day, although a Bulgarian had gone to 8500 metres searching for a missing teammate. Checking her notes, she sees Pemba’s claim that he saw headlamps above the last camp. She goes back to the Bulgarian file to learn that just one climber went out that night to search for a missing climber. So, if there were three headlamps, where did they come from? Puzzled, she puts the matter aside for the moment.

Late that night she remembers a Sherpa friend who has summited Everest from the north. She will ask him about the probability of seeing headlamps in that situation. Two days later, Chuldim sits on her couch poring over photographs. He is firm: “You can’t see down that side of the mountain from the summit.” He explains it would be impossible to see headlamps coming up on the north side because a small ridge blocks the view.

The puzzle remains unsolved and her tenacity won’t allow her to let it go. Next step: she needs to verify Pemba’s timetable, which he insists he radioed throughout the night to the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee man, Nuru Jangbu, at base camp. This is Elizabeth Hawley, Himalayan detective and mountain chronicler, in action – ruthless with her questions, dogged with her fact checking and tireless in her efforts to know the truth.

Over the 10 days I spend with Elizabeth Hawley, I learn about her insatiable interest in politics and history, her belief in a good education, her extensive world travels, her eclectic friends, her strong work ethic, her quirky sense of humour, and, of course, her deep knowledge of Himalayan climbing. Austrian climber and filmmaker Kurt Diemberger once told me, “I’m sure if she would open her mouth she would tell a whole book of stories about mountaineers … I hope she will do that for you.” That she did – and as she told her stories, I learned an entirely new perspective on the history of climbing in Nepal.

CHAPTER 3

Educating Miss Hawley

She knew one thing she didn’t want to be – somebody’s secretary.

Where Elizabeth came from has been the subject of much speculation in the climbing community. A number of American climbers were convinced she was British. Some speculated she was American but had adopted a British accent as part of her image. Others were positive she came from Boston. Her nephew explained she came from Mayflower stock – the source of her abruptness and stiff upper lip.

Sitting opposite her penetrating stare, I asked for details of her personal family history with a trepidation that soon evaporated. She was extremely forthcoming: family trees, lineage charts, photographs, letters and stories that she obviously enjoyed retelling. Her memory was impressive. After hearing only the slightest reference to something I had read in one of her thousands of letters written decades earlier, she would launch into another anecdote. One story led to another and the hours slipped by.

Elizabeth’s maternal grandfather, Edward Everett Gore, was born in the coal-mining community of Carlinville, Illinois. He attended Blackburn College, a business school in Jacksonville, Illinois, and “read law” for four years in a Carlinville law office.

In 1895 Edward and his wife, Amanda, and their first daughter, and first child to survive infancy, Florelle, moved to Chicago, where he had been offered a job as an accountant. He reported for work, only to hear his employer announce that there was no job after all. In shock, he dug into the entrepreneurial depths of his character and opened his own office. In recounting the history, it became clear that self-sufficiency, making do and getting on were traits and values Elizabeth shared with her grandfather.

Edward became a leader in Chicago’s business and civic circles, taking an active interest in educational and public affairs. His role as president of the Chicago Crime Commission led to several threats against his life by the Capone syndicate. He retaliated by organizing the “Secret Six,” an undercover group that collected evidence to help indict Chicago mobsters during the height of the gang wars.

Elizabeth’s grandmother Amanda was college educated, as was her mother, a rare achievement for women of that era. Elizabeth loved to watch her grandmother pin her long hair on top of her head, and her favourite memory of her grandfather was the ample size of his comfortable lap – possibly due to his fondness for chocolate. Every Friday afternoon, he allegedly bought ten pounds of chocolate and by Monday morning, it was gone.

Their eldest daughter, Florelle, was Elizabeth’s mother. Born in 1894, her unusual first name was a combination of two beloved aunts, Flora and Cinderella. Florelle hated the name and tired of people asking about it. She graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University in English literature and went on to work in labour relations for the League of Women Voters in the mid-1930s. She was also treasurer for the organization in the state of New York.

On the other side of the family, the Hawleys landed in Connecticut in the 17th century, initially settling in Hawleyville. Born to them in 1893 was Elizabeth’s father, Frank. Frank and Florelle met, fell in love and married while at Northwestern University. He served in the Navy during World War I, then came home to qualify as an accountant and join his father’s Chicago accounting firm. The couple settled in La Grange, a Chicago suburb.

Elizabeth Ann Hawley was born in Chicago on November 9, 1923. The infant Elizabeth had severe digestive problems, and as a baby, she came close to dying before her condition was finally diagnosed as gluten and starch intolerance. From then on, those were banned from her diet. This was bad news for a little girl who loved birthday parties. Not only could she not eat the cake, she couldn’t even eat the ice cream. Instead, she made do with Jell-O. However, a pediatrician suggested that when her digestive system was finally ready for starch, she would ask for it. And so she did. One fine day when she was 11 years old she asked for mashed potatoes: she had outgrown the intolerance. In a letter to her grandfather in 1937 at age 14, she wrote, “Dear Grandfather, I went to a party last night.… We had a lot of fun and then ate ice cream and cake.” In an unfortunate postscript, her gluten intolerance returned in her 70s. Once again, it was Jell-O for dessert.

Shortly after Elizabeth’s birth, the family moved to Yonkers, New York. There were four of them: Frank and Florelle, Elizabeth and her brother John, three years her senior. Not long after, Florelle and the two children moved to Huntington, Indiana, to settle some issues surrounding Frank’s deceased father’s estate. He had been president of a bank and his affairs were complicated and confused. It took four long years to sort out, and during this time, they lived apart from her father. Perhaps because of this, Elizabeth never felt terribly close to him. Though devoted to her father, she did not feel the profound connection with him that she felt with her mother.

Although the Hawleys were neither strict nor religious, they were a family of some social prominence and therefore Elizabeth was expected to attend Sunday school. It was here that a seed of skepticism was planted that would flourish over the years. One day at Sunday school, when she was just four, the children were asked to sing, “Dropping, dropping, dropping / hear the pennies fall / every one for Jesus / he will get them all.” Even then, she was very practical, and said to herself, “Jesus can’t possibly receive our pennies; he’s not a living person. He won’t get my pennies.” Although Elizabeth was not active in sports as a girl, her practical side was evident in her love of sawing, hammering and chopping wood. She enjoyed doing useful things and was always a bit of a loner. Her brother was more socially inclined; he mixed easily with people and loved to tease her.

Elizabeth remembers summer vacations at her great-grandfather’s place on Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota, as “hot as hell.” There were huge family get-togethers at the lake – a beautiful spot that had yet to be “discovered.” Few cars braved the unpaved roads during the Depression, and farmers still used horse carts. The kids roamed the woods from dawn to dusk, untethered by parents or responsibilities.

Once the estate business was cleared up, Florelle and the children joined Frank in a Detroit suburb, Birmingham, Michigan, where Elizabeth attended grammar school. But when reports of infantile paralysis (polio) closed down the school, Florelle whisked the children to their grandmother’s for safety. During the journey, Elizabeth became restless and fevered. Soon she couldn’t raise her right arm above her shoulder: polio. The standard treatment was to immobilize the limb, but, luckily for Elizabeth, her doctor knew of more modern treatments, which may have saved her arm from deformity. He gave her a brace to immobilize the limb in an upward position for 23 hours a day. But for one hour each evening, the brace was removed while her mother massaged her arm and tried to move it for Elizabeth as best she could. After three and a half months of this treatment, mobility in her arm returned. According to family lore, there were just three cases of polio in Birmingham that year: one died, one was paralyzed for life and the third was Elizabeth.

The family next moved to New York, where business prospects provided more opportunities for her father’s work. Before moving, her parents researched where the best schools were located, finally deciding on Scarsdale. The school was deemed excellent by her mother, for they even managed to “fix” Elizabeth’s unwanted Midwest accent.

In the years that followed, they moved several times to increasingly comfortable houses. The last one was spacious and filled with antiques and masses of books, but their lifestyle remained quite frugal. They made good use of the local library, but if their friends wanted to give a gift to the Hawleys, it was an easy choice - give them a book.

Elizabeth became captivated by the world of books and was an insatiable reader the rest of her life. While staying with family friends in Woodstock when she was 18, she listed the books she had read thus far that summer in her weekly letter to her mother: You Can’t Do Business with Hitler, I Saw It Happen in Norway and The White Cliffs, with Europe in the Spring next on her list. Her brother John was already at Princeton, where he proved to be an excellent student, although not a bookworm. He was both socially and athletically inclined and was on the Princeton rowing team.

Three years later, she was ensconced at camp in Sackets Harbor, New York, where she was to spend the summer. Weekly letters to her mother – a tradition that would be lifelong – reveal a mixed response to the highly scheduled days of swimming, riding, games and excursions, as well as a penchant for detail. Her mother wanted to know what she had been eating at camp. Elizabeth’s response left nothing to the imagination and indicates an early fondness for lists:

Breakfast – 1 glass tomato juice

2 rolls with butter

1 glass milk

1 banana

Lunch – potato salad

glass of water

bread and butter

raspberries and blackberries

Supper – baked beans (I didn’t like them)

glass of water

bread and butter

chocolate candy bar with peanuts

She summarized her camp experience as, “It’s quite strange here – but I like it.”

While she was in high school, the family bought an old-fashioned summer home in the Green Mountains at Dorset, Vermont. Called Hollow’s End because it was at the end of Hollow Road, the house was her parents’ joy. They enjoyed big family gatherings there and worked endlessly on the house and its extensive grounds. Elizabeth spent hours watching the carpenters, loving the fact that something useful was being created. As a family, they relaxed by wandering in the woods and gathering stones. Elizabeth often hiked with her father, clarifying years later that it was hiking – not climbing – that they did. Her highest point was Mount Mansfield at just over 4,000 feet (1219 metres). Elizabeth loved the hills around Dorset and later found reminiscent hills around Kathmandu.

Although Elizabeth was closer to her mother, it would be unfair to ignore her father as an influence in her life. Some describe him as a typical accountant, immersed in his work and distant from his family, but correspondence between Elizabeth and her father reveals his active and specific interest in her doings, her education and her friends. He offered her names and introductions to people he thought she would be interested in meeting or who could help her. His financial training was probably a blessing, as the family struggled, particularly during the war, to maintain their comfortable middle-class lifestyle, which included the summer home in Dorset and the ability to support two children through college. Her father agonized over the smallest details of their finances. A letter to his wife in 1942 reveals his concerns: “Have spent hours more on our budget and, after chiseling away here and whittling away there, I think I have at last produced something for us to follow.”

Even as a young girl, Elizabeth felt fortunate to be born into a family that was reasonably well-to-do. But upon reflection, she thinks she may not have fully understood the hardships her parents endured to ensure her comfort and a good education.

While in high school, she took particular pleasure in grammar bees: “I was a hot shot.” Always the competitor, she soon learned that when the teacher distributed the bits of paper with the questions, it was best to avoid the long pieces of paper because those questions were harder! One of her high-school teachers asked the class what they wanted to do when they finished school. Elizabeth retorted that she didn’t know, but she knew one thing she didn’t want to be: somebody’s secretary. And she purposely did not take shorthand or typing, disdaining that stereotypical female role. Years later, a newsletter was prepared for her 60th high-school reunion (which she did not attend) to update everyone on various classmates’ activities. One of her schoolmates wrote, “Elizabeth has some sort of job where she interviews all the climbers who attempt to scale Mount Everest and other tall mountains in Nepal.” She had delivered on her promise to avoid being somebody’s secretary.

In 1941 Elizabeth enrolled in the University of Michigan. More than 60 years later, as she recounted stories about those formative years, the personalities, classes and incidents floated to the surface with clarity and focus, as though it happened yesterday.

She soon became completely immersed in classes, starting with political science, English, zoology and history. She was particular about choosing her professors, and the biggest coup of all was landing Professor Slosson for history. He was a well-known – almost revered – professor, and it was Elizabeth’s determination that landed her in his much-coveted class.

Orientation week included a number of tests. Elizabeth did well, scoring in the 96th percentile in English and the 93rd percentile in aptitude. The other big event early in her first semester was sorority rushing. She received open-house invitations to 14 sororities and was pleased when several asked her back after the initial meetings. She settled on Alpha Xi Delta as the most interesting. Phones rang off the hooks as the girls in the dorm scrambled to get the best possible sorority membership. But there was to be no sorority for Elizabeth – not one invited her to join. In the end, she was relieved. She couldn’t imagine living in a house full of “chummy” girls, expected to participate in all kinds of social activities together. Although her mother didn’t care whether she joined a sorority, her grandmother was disappointed and let her feelings be known.

By October there were a number of extracurricular lecture and concert series to attend, and Elizabeth showed an eclectic curiosity in her choices: from British labour law to the war in Europe to the symphony. But she was disappointed in her fellow classmates and didn’t mince words in a letter to her mother, in which she observed that most of the students seemed to be leading an “awfully artificial life here. They don’t read the papers; they don’t know what’s going on in the world and they aren’t the least bit interested. It’s like moving to a different planet where there is no war.” She recalled several students in her dormitory asking her about the location of Pearl Harbor when the U.S. Pacific Fleet was sunk there by Japanese warplanes later that year.

College wasn’t all books and exams, however. Elizabeth’s years there revealed an early, wicked sense of humour. In one letter, she described her social plans to her mother: “Well, hand out the flag and ring all the bells: I’m going to a dance next Saturday.… The gentleman in question is a sophomore, would-be constitutional lawyer, from Rochester, Indiana. He isn’t too wonderful but he might have a roommate.” And lest she be perceived as too bookish, she was as concerned as many other young university students about important issues like her waist size (which apparently changed by three-quarters of an inch from before to after dinner) and her need for a yellow pullover sweater, black spectator pumps with toes, and a full plaid skirt, as well as the recently published Secret History of the American Revolution by Carl Van Doren. Her mother bought all her clothes for her in New York, so Elizabeth kept her updated on her precise measurements. As always, Elizabeth was exact: “waist – 27½", hips – 35½", bust – 33".”

Her first mid-semester exams yielded B’s in zoology, political science and history. She was madly in love with her history course, less so with political science, and she detested zoology. By the semester’s end, she had maintained these grades and was relieved to have moved her history grade up to an A. Her father even received a congratulatory letter from the University of Michigan registrar lauding her efforts and expressing the hope that she would continue to be as successful.

With barely a moment to catch her breath, she now had to begin arranging courses for the next semester. As in any big university with thousands of students and few popular professors, it was difficult to get the courses she wanted: “Tomorrow I go forth to do battle with the most cold-blooded members of the darned institution I’ve ever known – the University of Michigan – in other words I am going to register.” In a revealing self-analysis, she adds, “It will be interesting to see what happens when an indestructible force meets an immovable object!”

Curious about unknown places, Elizabeth decided to attend a lecture and film screening about India. She was disappointed, commenting to her mother that it was “superficial, silly and misleading, if not altogether insulting.” Even more disappointing was the reaction of her friends, who thought the evening interesting. Elizabeth was brutal in her evaluation: “Interesting, hell! That was supposed to be an educational lecture, not an ignorant travelogue.” Famous in later life for her impatience and sharp tongue, those habits were developing even now, as her standards were very high.

In fact, her standards were rarely met, but when they were, as with her favourite professor Dr. Slosson, she exuded enthusiasm. He was charmed by her as well, and he and his wife included her in social gatherings where they enjoyed intense discussions about the war, education, the economy, government or whatever they chose.

She describes his lectures as masterpieces in form and content, perfect combinations of history and metaphysics, of the particular and the general. It was easy to learn from him. He made it interesting. He made it come alive. She admits to having had a crush on him and cherishing the informal evenings in his home, where he proved he was not only incredibly smart but also good, kind and even funny. She was friendly with Mrs. Slosson for a time, but they eventually drifted apart. She had little respect for Mrs. Slosson’s intellect and thought she took up “air space with idle chatter.” The trait that rankled Elizabeth the most was that Mrs. Slosson was a domineering woman, and Elizabeth didn’t like (other) domineering women. “That poor man!” she exclaimed in a letter to her mother.

Many of the informal discussions and formal debates at the university were about the ongoing war, and Slosson surely influenced her thinking on this topic. He was not an either–or kind of person but took the historian’s perspective of relativity. No matter who won the war, he felt sure that civilization would not be lost. He was equally sure a pure state of democracy would not be the result – it was a matter of degree. Others disagreed with him, and Elizabeth relished the debates as stimulation for her ever more curious mind.

Elizabeth’s interests moved beyond the borders of the United States. Partly because of the people (primarily professors) she surrounded herself with, partly because of the lectures and debates she attended and partly because of the war, she found herself just as keenly interested in international affairs as national. She sympathized with Britain’s stand against Germany and didn’t agree with the isolationist views of many Americans who wanted no part of a “foreign” war.

She became fascinated with social philosophy, the meaning of freedom, and the materialistic conceptions of history, democracy, fascism and socialism. It began to dawn on her that she was leaning toward an honours history program, but for this she needed to be recommended by one of her professors. As much as history interested her, she wondered what she would do with this knowledge. “Is teaching the only answer?” Sensibly, she decided, at age 19, that she could be patient; her future might yet reveal itself. It’s doubtful she could have imagined what form it would take.

Although there were few students with whom she shared her increasingly awakened consciousness, she and her mother communicated constantly about ideas, giving Elizabeth an outlet for her thoughts and imagination. It was a healthy outlet, since, as she pointed out to Florelle, the university experience, stimulating though it was, relied on input from her professors: “I don’t have the time I would like for thoughts of my own, but it is fascinating gathering those of others.” In letters to her mother, she began to develop – and test – her own theories of a moral order within the reality of a world at war. And although she missed her family, New York and the Green Mountains at Dorset, she admitted, “I really wouldn’t trade places for anything.”

Discussions with her father were more challenging, as he tried to steer her academic program into a more practical vein, namely math and calculus. She humoured him for a while but eventually made her own choices, and they didn’t include calculus. Her father was disappointed; calling her “selfish and unpatriotic” while pointing out that calculus and other practical courses would prepare her for factory work where she could make a real contribution to the war effort. But she held her own in an acrimonious argument that stretched over a period of months, responding that devoting herself to current history would better prepare her to “win the peace.” Her parting shot was, “If this be treason, make the most of it.”

Her social life continued, but the men she met did not impress her. “A graduate student who was half bald, a Frenchman who got me smoking a cigarette, and a very nice architect who walked me home,” was how she described them. Eventually she began to see a young man named Fred. They attended movies and dances and went for long walks together. She appreciated his company and his intelligence, but didn’t find him especially exciting or attractive and disliked his conservative political views. She recalls that when they were feeling particularly “dangerous” they might sip a little wine. Fred eventually pressed her to marry him, but she was not in the mood for marriage, particularly not to Fred. They continued to see each other, however.

Unlike her brother, she wasn’t interested in sports, although she attended all home football games. After a particularly conclusive win against her mother’s alma mater she wrote, “But one might ask, so what?”

She began to involve herself with the Post-War Council, a student organization that coordinated a series of extracurricular lectures and events. Their wide-ranging program included philosopher Bertrand Russell and the Beethoven scholar and pianist Artur Schnabel. She was also instrumental in organizing a regular series of student–faculty discussions that resulted in good debates on topics such as hate, particularly in relation to the war. One point of view suggested that more organized hate was required in order to win the war. Elizabeth discounted the idea, but she didn’t view Churchill as a solution either. “Churchill just doesn’t seem to be able to see beyond his nose in regard to planning for the future.” She concluded that “the British simply muddle their way through things and tend to shy away from people with too many brains.”

The Post-War Council provided her with an opportunity to learn about organizational structure and process and how she could influence that process. An opening came up on the executive committee, so she offered her services on a temporary basis. Thinking strategically, she realized the role would put her in close proximity to professors, campus advisors and other decision makers at the university, a place she enjoyed being. By spring, she had been elected council chairman, and not long after she was asked to be president of her dormitory – the largest one on campus. As she moaned to her mother, “I’m sure only Mrs. Roosevelt is as busy a woman as I am.”

But Elizabeth’s tendency to speak her mind landed her in trouble with the Post-War Council – a messy situation ensued that resulted in her being “relieved” of her job as chairman. She was strongly criticized because she had supported a policy decision that no member of the council could appear on stage with guest speakers – and then she broke that rule. She was subsequently viewed as a self-promoter, asked to step down and then offered the position of executive secretary-treasurer as consolation. Disappointed and humiliated, she confided to her mother that the process “left your little daughter a much sadder and wiser person.” She was soon demoted again, this time to program chair. Nevertheless, she continued to pour energy into the organization because she believed its work had value.

Elizabeth relied on her mother not only for intellectual sparring but also for practical needs. In addition to continuing to buy her clothes for her in New York, her mother was also in charge of mending them, which in January 1943 happened to be a sock. Elizabeth’s quirky sense of humour was in evidence as she sent a single green sock home and begged her mother to mend it because it was “vital” to her wardrobe. Her mother teased her about this attachment to a sock, but Elizabeth defended herself, explaining that her mother obviously didn’t know her socks: “I have them so well trained that when I whistle one tune the green ones come out, and when I whistle a different tune another colour comes out.” And she constantly pleaded with her mother to send her care packages of food: “It would be grand if some day a box of lemon cookies or some fudge or something came for no apparent reason except that you acted like a normal parent with her child away in school and sent her something extra to eat!” She wasn’t afraid to ask for what she wanted.

Elizabeth was elated in February 1943 when the academic committee approved her plan to do honours work in history. They took her grades into consideration as well as her considerable efforts in producing a term paper on the causes of war. Elizabeth was pleased with the paper, as it proved to her that she could work independently, do her own research and come to her own coherent conclusions. In this case, it was a complicated subject for a 19-year-old to tackle, but she did it well, digging beyond the superficial to argue that the psychological state of people’s minds made them willing to fight, thereby facilitating war. She concluded that, in order to prevent war, it wasn’t the incidents that needed to be prevented, but rather the state-of-mind factors that should be eliminated.

Her mother challenged her, maintaining that if people could learn to live under law and order and regard war as taboo, peace would be achieved. But Elizabeth insisted that this was a restrictive point of view, that more could be achieved by concentrating on the “spirit of brotherhood” where people worked toward the same goal: peace. She agreed that law and order were necessary, but achieving real peace required something more creative and dynamic than simply obeying rules.

It was during this time that she began to formulate her thoughts about the role of an historian, an interesting foreshadowing of her future work. It started with an article in the New York Times on whether American history should be required study at universities. Elizabeth felt that its required inclusion was irrelevant if it wasn’t taught correctly, citing her high-school American history courses, where she had learned facts but not their relative importance or proper perspective. She had learned about the trees, but not the forest. She was beginning to understand that facts were important, but something was needed on which to hang them. She equated the learning of facts to the work of an antiquarian, while the understanding of context was the sign of a true historian. Little did she know that 50 years later many in the mountaineering community would debate these same issues around her life’s work documenting the history of Himalayan climbing.

A new man entered her life in the form of Harold Sokwitne, secretary of the Post-War Council. They had many opportunities to work together and they now began seeing each other socially. A tall redhead from Hillsdale, Michigan, he came from a religious background and had intended to follow that line of work himself but had rebelled. The liveliness and conversational abilities of the 20-year-old freshman attracted Elizabeth. She also continued to see Fred, recognizing good points in each of the two strikingly different personalities. Fred was pleasant to be with, but was too complimentary: “He likes my eyes, he thinks I’m brilliant, he thinks I have great ability.” It was all too much for Elizabeth. Harold (nicknamed Sok), on the other hand, didn’t have Fred’s polished manners, and he didn’t compliment her at all – he was perfectly aware of her faults. But in August 1943 Sok was called for induction into the Naval Air Corps. They had one last wonderful evening together in Detroit and he was off.

By November Elizabeth was paying her own way with an assistant position in the history department. Taking attendance and correcting papers brought her a grand total of $250 per semester. She was proud of herself, partly because of the money, but mostly because of the recognition. In addition to her work for the history department, she was beginning to get speaking opportunities, often arranged by Slosson (whom she now called by his first name, Preston). The local Business and Professional Women’s Club, Rotary Clubs and high schools all had the benefit of her keen interest in, and growing knowledge of, international affairs.

Her personal relationship with the Slossons deepened as their working relationship matured. She now spent most Sunday afternoons and evenings with them, frequently staying overnight. In the summer of 1944, against her mother’s advice, she moved in with them.

By September of that year, she had wrapped up her classwork. She was excited about her family’s arrival for graduation, although her brother John couldn’t attend because of a serious illness. After majoring in philosophy at Princeton, John had gone on to medical school at the College of Physicians & Surgeons at Columbia University, where he proved to be a brilliant student. He then joined the Navy, during which time he contracted tuberculosis and was sent to Trudeau Sanatorium near Lake Placid in upper New York State. Because of his illness, he was subsequently discharged from the Navy.

Shortly before graduating, Elizabeth decided to carry on with her studies and immediately begin work on an advanced degree. As a graduate student, she had classes that were much smaller than before or were in an individual-study format. She thrived in this environment.

The tides of war seemed to have changed and she felt a sense of relief. She was beginning to think seriously about her future now, as various ideas presented themselves. One was to enter the service as an officer in training, providing a chance to go overseas and be attached to the Allied military government. Another option was to go into State Department work, but when she inquired with the State Department she was told that, although they were impressed with her qualifications, returning veterans would fill any openings.

Then an offer arrived for a teaching position at the Oklahoma College for Women. The president of the college told her that their goal was the “development of capable young women with beauty of character, personal charm, gracious manners, and social insight, willing and able to perform successfully the duties of life in their generation.” She considered the offer, although it didn’t excite her, in part because of concerns about the overall intellectual atmosphere of the college. But, being practical, she knew it would provide the experience needed to compete successfully against the returning servicemen for good jobs in good universities in the future. Another obvious plus was that the job was permanent, with possibilities for promotion. But the drawbacks were serious: it was a small college in the middle of nowhere, and her mother was dead set against it, skeptical about the quality of life that Oklahoma could provide her daughter. Florelle’s opinion prevailed. After college Elizabeth went, not to Oklahoma, but to New York.

As often happens when a long period of intensity nears its end, she had had enough of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan and was ready to leave, vowing that if she did continue with doctoral studies, it would definitely not be in Ann Arbor. Above all, she was tired and needed a break. A time of rest and relaxation at the country home in Dorset was the solution. The only problem was the lack of a job; Elizabeth was a doer and she liked to have a plan of action. Not having one was a worry.

CHAPTER 4

The Fortune Years

The Sherlock Holmes of the mountaineering world.

Before I met Elizabeth, many people told me about her attention to detail and dogged insistence on getting things right. It’s her signature style. Heather Macdonald, Elizabeth’s assistant for a couple of years in the 1990s, asserts that Elizabeth insists on knowing the source for every bit of information, grilling climbers to ascertain whether it was 7550 metres or 7555 metres. The climbers might be exhausted and their “brains half-melted” after being at altitude for weeks, Heather remembers, but Elizabeth wouldn’t let up. In time, she came to be affectionately known as the Sherlock Holmes of the mountaineering world. Where did this diligence and attention to detail come from? I wondered. Who taught her these techniques and how did she gain the confidence to cross-examine world-class climbers in such an authoritative manner?

Independence is another of her strong traits. Living alone most of her adult life, Elizabeth carved out a place for herself in a new and strange environment. Lady Hillary describes her as “one of the original feminists,” adding that she doubts Elizabeth will thank her for saying it. Heather Macdonald is convinced her early self-confidence grew from her insatiable curiosity. If so, it allowed her to evolve into a woman who is comfortable with high-profile climbers, royalty, government officials and writers. She has an innate sense of protocol. I was curious how this young American woman became so worldly. As she recounted the next decade of her life to me, parts of the mystery were revealed.

Back in New York in 1946, she went job hunting, honours degrees in hand, at a number of organizations and foundations, finally arriving at Fortune magazine, part of the publishing family that included Time, Life and Sports Illustrated. It was her lucky day. They hired her to start immediately as an editorial research trainee, earning $39.40 a week. Researchers were first assigned six months of training in “the morgue,” where thousands of files on people and issues were kept. Each file had original material – tear sheets, letters, photographs – supporting and informing that particular topic. It was her job to learn what was in those files, to regularly update them from newspaper clippings and other materials, and to access that information whenever the magazine needed it. It’s easy to recognize the similarity between the morgue system and Elizabeth’s future mountaineering archive.

Unfortunately, there was a not-so-subtle hierarchy at Fortune at that time. Without exception, researchers were women and writers were men. Elizabeth saw no way to break that mould. In retrospect, she’s not sure she had the makings of a writer, and others agree with her. Former colleagues described her as “brilliant and literal,” but not terribly imaginative. Even as a lowly researcher, however, she found opportunities. Sometimes she travelled with a writer and took notes, and sometimes she travelled alone, doing research in the States as well as in Canada and Brazil. After the writer finished the piece, it would come back to her to be checked – every word required a dot above it to indicate it had been checked, rechecked and cross-checked. It was an arduous system that took considerable time and effort, but it appealed to her sense of order.

She lived in an apartment at 220 Madison Avenue and her first office was in the Empire State Building, later moving to the Time & Life Building in Rockefeller Center. She started her day at about 10:00 or 11:00 a.m., worked until 2:00 a.m. and then walked home. The first thing she did each morning was read the New York Times.

From her recent university studies in world politics, she had developed a curiosity about far-off places. That led to an interest in travel and, now that she was working and had a salary, she began to use her annual vacation and unpaid leave to do just that. Her salary was small and she lived frugally, eating a tomato sandwich with mayonnaise for lunch most days. But by living simply she saved enough to travel widely and in good style – usually alone.

Elizabeth’s first trip abroad was to England in 1948 when, in October, she boarded the RMS Queen Mary for Southampton. Her first stop was London and all that it had to offer. She loved it: Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, London cabs, the architecture and the fog. Then it was north to Scotland and into the countryside of Wales and rural England. After all that she had studied and read and observed in movies, it astonished her how different and rich the experience was when seeing it for herself. “Britain is a fascinating place and I’m having the time of my life,” she wrote to her mother.

After cramming in as much of Britain as possible, Elizabeth moved on to immerse herself in the great cities of Europe, including Paris, Rome and Florence. She walked and walked, mentally cataloguing the sounds and smells of the streets, inspecting museums, historical monuments, palaces, gardens and churches.

But it had to end, and it was with reluctance that she sailed home. It had been an unforgettable experience, one she hoped to have again. Her appetite for travel had been whetted in a serious way – back in New York, where it was work and more work, she immediately began scrimping and saving for the next big trip.

But a family tragedy awaited her. Having recovered from tuberculosis and completed his medical degree, John had begun practising as a physician and married Ann, whom he met while doing medical research. They had a child and named him Michael. But John’s health took another downturn when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. After a five-year battle with the disease, Elizabeth’s brilliant brother and only sibling died in 1955 at age thirty-five.

Family members and friends recall that Elizabeth appeared to be cool and stoical about this loss. They described her as a model of the stiff upper lip – even though she was inwardly devastated by the premature death of her brother. John’s wife remarried and had more children, but young Michael didn’t adjust easily to this new arrangement and his adolescence was troubled. Elizabeth kept tabs on him through her correspondence with her mother and worried about his future.

Years later, Michael was touched and surprised to learn she had been an advocate for him in his adolescence, that she had understood what he was going through, even from a distance. She had never told her nephew about her early and ongoing concerns about his troubled childhood and youth. Nor did she tell him how pleased she was when he later appeared to be settling down to a good education. Her pride, like her earlier concerns, went unspoken.

Back at Fortune, Elizabeth’s routine continued with research for the magazine’s writers. She worked hard, but made time for a few friends, too. Eleanor Schwartz, who sat next to her at work, was one of them. She remembers Elizabeth as somewhat shy and “terribly smart,” not very feminine and lacking a “sizzling social life.” Years later, Eleanor moved into Elizabeth’s apartment when she left for Kathmandu. Elizabeth also admired and befriended her boss, Mary Johnston, who was an avid traveller like herself. Fred still came around to pursue her – still with no results.

In 1951 her cousin, Lee Kneerim, an aspiring actress, moved in with her. Elizabeth knew Lee had a dream to meet the great actress Judith Anderson, so she decided to do something about it. First, she bought a copy of Robinson Jeffers’s translation of Medea, a play in which Judith Anderson was starring. Then she tracked down the elusive Anderson, asked her to sign the play, and gave it to Lee for her birthday, along with a ticket for a very good seat for the next performance. This act of kindness meant a great deal to Lee, and the signed play remains one of her most prized possessions years later. She describes Elizabeth as a “typical Vermonter” – somewhat taciturn – but remembers that when Elizabeth gave her that thoughtful gift, “her face revealed warmth and love.”

One day a rather famous friend of her grandmother came to visit. Irma Rombauer, author of The Joy of Cooking, was affectionately called “Cousin Irma” by Elizabeth’s cousin Lee. Elizabeth had never shown any interest in cooking, so was unaware of Cousin Irma’s connection to the well-known cookbook. Elizabeth could boil an egg and make toast, but there wasn’t much else in her repertoire. While Irma was in New York, however, she called Elizabeth, resulting in an invitation to dinner. Her mother was aghast – “Elizabeth is going to cook for Irma!” During dinner, Elizabeth asked Irma what brought her to New York, and found out, to her discomfort, that she was in town to do book signings for the famous cookbook. Her mother called the next day to ask, “What did you serve?” Elizabeth replied, “Oh, just a regular dinner.” Her mother pressed, “Yes, but what was it?” “I had lamb patties with bacon around them, fresh peas and peaches and cream cheese salad.” Her mother was horrified, but Cousin Irma later sent Elizabeth a signed copy of The Joy of Cooking, inscribed with a note thanking her for the simple meal. Of course, she didn’t know it was the only meal Elizabeth knew how to cook.

Over the next eight years, Elizabeth travelled extensively, keeping a tight budget at home in order to go ever farther afield as her interests widened and her confidence grew. She almost always travelled alone. Travelling through Germany and Austria in the summer of 1949, she began to understand just what the ravages of war look like. Her curiosity led her to visit the Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s retreat on top of a mountain in Obersalzberg, as well as the crematory at Dachau.

She gambled in Monte Carlo and lost 1000 francs – representing a sum of three dollars at the time. Next, she caught the Simplon-Orient Express to Trieste, Italy, before venturing into more challenging terrain – Yugoslavia – with journalist accreditation letters in hand. She was delighted to discover that her train compartment companion was a Time researcher friend from New York who was on assignment in Yugoslavia. Her name was Judy Friedberg.

The meeting with Judy was fortuitous, as they continued to travel together throughout Yugoslavia and beyond. The Ministry of Information had arranged a number of interviews for Elizabeth; between interviews, she and her friend met up with interesting foreign correspondents stationed in Belgrade. Gathering information for a Fortune story was more difficult than Elizabeth imagined. Things moved slowly in Belgrade. It was common to have appointments cancelled or postponed with little or no notice, and it was hard to find the right person to answer a particular question. She did manage interviews with the deputy minister on law, a member of the Central Committee of Trade Unions and an executive of the Women’s Anti-Fascist Front.

Travelling through Macedonia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and along the Dalmatian coast, she witnessed, for the first time, isolated and primitive villages. She saw scenery that was wild, barren and dramatic. She had her first exposure to the Islamic religion and interviewed people who had never before been interviewed by a foreigner. Upon returning to Belgrade, she was thrilled by an invitation to a gala reception celebrating Yugoslavia’s national holiday, where she was introduced to Marshal Tito. She delighted in writing her mother that he was “courtly” and had chatted with her on a number of topics. She knew Fortune would be pleased with the results. She was proud to have learned how to navigate the challenges of Yugoslavia, from the high society of government officialdom to the rough conditions of the countryside.

In 1951 Elizabeth travelled to Berlin, where she had arranged letters of introduction to various intriguing and influential residents. They entertained her at cocktail parties and showed her around the city in fine style. But there wasn’t much to see. Berlin was so badly destroyed during the war that she concluded the most interesting places were where important buildings had once stood.

She went on to Helsinki, Finland, where she connected with the foreign ministry’s press section and arranged to tour factories and conduct interviews with people involved in Finland’s reparations payment program. She discovered a dramatic story of a country that was surmounting its postwar problems and launching a revival. At the moment, consumer goods were still scarce and expensive, but when war reparations payments to Russia ended the following year, it was generally thought that Finland would move into the world market with confidence. Perhaps her best interview yet was with a part-time correspondent for the Associated Press, who was the woman commonly known to be the prime minister’s mistress. Elizabeth noted: “She must have good inside sources.”

She went to Rovaniemi, the principal town of Finnish Lapland, near the Arctic Circle, where it was –24°C at night and dark by 3:00 every afternoon. She was there to see the Sámi (then called Lapps) and reindeer and, more important, to see the reconstruction efforts after the Germans torched Lapland in 1944. When she asked to see some of the country north of Rovaniemi, the local police chief responded by sending her to the Swedish border in a police car accompanied by two Finnish policemen – officially, they were on a smuggling patrol. She enjoyed three entertaining days travelling through rolling terrain blanketed in pine, birch and snow. The colours were magnificent – mauves and purples with a sky of blue and pink – which was due, she thought, to the low angle of the sun. They didn’t find any smugglers, but she doubts they were seriously looking.

She also experienced her first sauna and wasn’t overly impressed with this Saturday-night tradition. But she was amused to learn that when the Finns began rebuilding their towns after the war, the saunas went up first. In answer to her mother’s persistent questions about Finland, Elizabeth’s responses were peculiar: “The Lapps are some kind of mysterious people with an unknown ancestry, but they don’t have much resemblance to an Eskimo, and I believe their cultural level is supposed to be a bit higher – at least they all belong to the Lutheran Church.”

In 1953 Elizabeth headed to Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, her first time on African soil. As usual, she contacted the local public-affairs officer at the U.S. Consulate, who went out of his way to ensure she saw everything of note. In addition to touring the city of Tunis and nearby Carthage, she travelled for a couple of days with some visiting Americans to Kairouan, a Muslim holy city 150 kilometres from Tunis. After spending so much time in Europe, where the land had been inhabited and worked for centuries, she found it fascinating to travel through a landscape that was majestic in its emptiness. Wandering through the labyrinthine Casbah in Constantine, Algeria, she found it dark, dirty and mysterious – alluring, but also a primitive and difficult place to live.

In the middle of one all-night journey, she was obliged to change trains at a remote station in Algeria. As there were very few people around, she struck up a conversation with a man who then pummelled her with questions in French about the famous Rosenberg spy case – a laborious discussion to have at 1:00 a.m. On another train journey, from Marrakesh to Casablanca, a French expatriate sat down next to her and proposed marriage. She declined, but he persisted. “Why not? Do you not find me handsome?”

Throughout Morocco, she was struck by the number of men who seemed to have nothing to do, and by the notable absence of women in public places. The exception appeared to be when there was heavy work to be done; here she saw heavily veiled women carrying weighty loads. Extreme poverty was evident everywhere. It was hard for her to accept, and disturbing to behold, that people here lived in conditions only slightly better than their animals.

She continued her annual travels for the next three years, spending more and more time in the Middle East. On one of these trips, she fell in love with a Sudanese man named Mamoun El Amin in Khartoum. He was a tall, very dark, Muslim Arab. They met on a Nile steamer travelling upriver from Aswan to a town named Wadi Halfa, now at the bottom of Lake Nasser. They spent many hours together on the steamer deck, watching the palm trees glide by, talking, discovering each other.

At the time, Sudan was officially the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, ruled jointly by Britain and Egypt. It had a British-trained, British-style civil service, and Mamoun was a senior administrator in Khartoum. He fascinated her. He was a study in contrasts – exotic, mysterious and educated, with a proper English accent. They spent hours in the cool of the evening sipping whisky on the veranda of her hotel and talking about his work and her travels. It was a short, intense romance. After she left Khartoum for Kenya (British East Africa, as it was then known), she never saw Mamoun again, although their correspondence reveals a deep emotional connection. Decades later, they exchanged letters again, trying to reconnect their lives. His began with “My dear Eliza.” Handling the faded letters, she admits he was one of the few men she ever considered marrying.

After working for 11 years at Fortune, Elizabeth, at age thirty-four, was a little bored. By 1956 it was clear she wouldn’t advance any higher than a researcher, even though her work was appreciated and admired. Unsure what to do next with her life, and with no strong emotional ties, she decided the best thing was to get out of New York and really see the world. She took her profit-sharing funds from Time Inc., Fortune’s publisher, and set off for as long as the money would hold out. It was the beginning of a new life for Elizabeth Hawley, but one for which she was well prepared.

And so in 1957 she embarked on an around-the-world journey, master of her own schedule, seeing what she wanted, going where she wished and when it suited her – no more assignments and deadlines as she had known them in New York. In order to be assured of meeting interesting people along the way, she collected numerous letters of introduction before departing. For the next two years she explored: Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1957; the Middle East, Turkey, Israel, Iran and a number of Arab countries in 1958; and South and Southeast Asia, including Nepal and Japan, and finally back to the United States in 1959.

She travelled with panache. In each new city, she would stroll into the office of the Time Inc. correspondent as though she were of a different stature – a higher one. She assumed a certain “presence” to pull it off time and time again. As a clever, curious woman travelling alone, she stood out and she met fascinating people wherever she went.

She launched her journey on the SS Statendam, leaving New York on April 16. Using Paris as her initial base of operations, she caught a train for Warsaw, a lengthy journey that revealed a countryside and architecture in transition as she moved from the Western traditions of France and Germany into Czechoslovakia and Poland. Throughout her travels, trains were her preferred mode of transport in order to see and absorb the country at a civilized pace. Arriving in Warsaw, she was delighted to run into Judy Friedberg, her former travelling companion from Yugoslavia. Working on articles for American magazines, Judy already knew the lay of the land, so she introduced Elizabeth to several American, British and German journalists.

Elizabeth’s first impression of Warsaw was one of shock – so much destruction, so many gaping empty spaces in the centre of the city where buildings once stood. But rebuilding had begun, and she walked the entire city, exploring the churches, the Palace of Culture and the old section that had been rebuilt in its original baroque style. The locals joked with her about the Palace of Culture – a gift from Stalin to Warsaw, and truly ugly. They told her that the best view in town was from the palace’s 30th-floor observation deck – because it was the only place in the city where it couldn’t be seen.

Together with her new journalist friends, she attended the May Day parade, where there was enthusiastic response to the new party secretary, Gomulka. That was nothing compared to the frenzied response to the cardinal of Poland when he led a parade of half a million Poles in the town of Częstochowa for the annual dedication of Poland to the Virgin Mary. Recently released from three years’ imprisonment, Cardinal Wyszyński would soon appear on the cover of Time, courtesy of Judy Friedberg.

In Łódź Elizabeth interviewed the chairman of a Jewish civic group in Poland whose family was in the process of emigrating to Israel, along with most of Poland’s seventy thousand other remaining Jews. He explained to her that anti-Semitism persisted in Poland and there was no future for them there. The family story was astonishing. The parents and one of the daughters had spent the last nine months of World War II hidden behind bookstacks in a convent library in Vilna (now known as Vilnius), which was in Poland before the war but was now the capital of Lithuania. Behind the bookstacks was a small room where they had lived with nine others. There were three beds and that was all. They could never raise their voices above a whisper and could only use an upstairs bathroom quietly and secretively at night. While they were in hiding, the Germans systematically destroyed the Vilna ghetto. Vilna’s Jewish population went from eighty thousand to five hundred, leaving only eight families intact, including the Łódź family. It was a chance for Elizabeth to become aware of a war experience she could not have imagined while living those war years in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Travelling around Poland was an extraordinary learning experience. It was a study in contrasts – a devoutly Roman Catholic nation struggling to build a socialist state. Contrasts also existed in the economic well-being of the people. It was an obviously poor country, yet there were some well-dressed people in the streets of Warsaw who ate as much caviar as they could manage. Finally, after three weeks in Poland, Elizabeth felt an “accumulation of drabness in her soul,” brought on by the greyness and dustiness and absence of anything well designed or in good working order. So it was with relief and a light heart that she moved on to Sweden and Finland. “They know a bit about colour and design,” she wrote her mother.

While in Helsinki, Elizabeth was at the train station, press pass in hand, when Bulganin and Khrushchev arrived from Russia. It was a strange sensation to witness, stepping down from the train, a man whose picture she had seen a million times before – the president of the USSR. Later in the week, she spent an hour seated just below the two men at a union rally in the Olympic Stadium and, at a government reception, Bulganin actually smiled at her. She sensed a certain coldness in this man with his blank pale-blue eyes, but she found Khrushchev to be amiable, with shrewd and piercing deep-set eyes.

From Helsinki, she took the train to Leningrad for a long-awaited, month-long trip to the USSR. She visited Moscow, Stalingrad (now Volgograd) and the provinces, always accompanied by a guide interpreter who seemed to think Elizabeth was some kind of working journalist in disguise. Therefore, he made sure she saw only the “best” sights. As always, she arranged to connect with people living in the area.

She floated down the Volga and the romantic Don River to Rostov, and then ventured on to Georgia. On the flight to Tbilisi, Georgia, the snowcapped Caucasus Mountains and the deep, sun-baked valleys were impressive. Everything about this part of the world intrigued her, particularly the dark, fierce-looking Georgians. She tromped through monasteries and fortresses from the second and fifth centuries and visited Gori, where Stalin was born and where the crude house in which he spent the first four years of his life still stood, carefully preserved.

Then it was on to Kiev and finally the long train journey back to Moscow. She was joined in her double compartment by a Muscovite, who became amorous during the night and attempted to molest her. She managed to fend him off, but found the event unnerving. It wasn’t the first time she had encountered this kind of harassment when travelling, but she recalls that it was rare. In general, she met a lot of men and most of them were intriguing. In fact, she preferred men. She didn’t meet many women in her travels and admits she found few among them to interest her. It was unusual at the time for a woman to travel alone, especially to such remote places, but Elizabeth was undaunted.

Back in Moscow she met up with some friends from the New York Times who were gathering the pieces of a story about recent political machinations in the Central Committee. She tagged along with them to the telegraph office, fascinated to watch how they filed their stories, submitted them to the censors, waited for telephone lines to London to send them off and finally retired to a reporter’s apartment for a late evening of conversation, scrambled eggs and whisky. Here was her first taste of a foreign correspondent’s life and she loved it.

By July 12 Elizabeth was relieved to arrive in Vienna, a city she knew, a language that was at least a bit familiar, newspapers that carried stories that made sense to her, a comfortable room with a splendid bath featuring hot and cold running water, and a bed with a reading lamp! Life in Vienna was luxuriously lazy. She slept each day until 10:00 a.m., enjoyed hot chocolate and rolls in her room, read the New York Times and the Herald Tribune in a nearby park and then ate lunch. She worked a little on her report on Finnish socialism for Life, but more often than not became distracted by a book.

She was also planning the next leg of her trip, this time to Romania and Czechoslovakia. She was disappointed when the Romanians informed her they weren’t accepting individual tourists that year. She had more luck with the Czechs and was in Prague by the end of July. Fortunate to have escaped a lot of destruction during the war, the city was mostly intact, with fabulous castles, towers, old bridges, palaces and churches.

The next few months found Elizabeth travelling throughout Czechoslovakia, West Germany, Greece, Italy and Yugoslavia. Back in Belgrade she met up with New York Times reporter Elie Abel, so she was able to get in on the latest happenings and social functions. The city had transformed itself since her visit six years earlier: her hotel now had soap and stationery for its guests, street lights were working, new buildings had gone up and the shops were full of goods, many of them imported from Germany, Italy and France.

She continued to hound the Romanian embassy for a visa to visit that country, only to be frustrated with endless delay tactics, along with a need to do everything multiple times. She described her Belgrade visit to her mother: “Just a mad social whirl by night – and the interior of the Romanian embassy by day.”

She remained in Belgrade until mid-December and watched winter descend on the city with a blanket of snow. Walking in the streets was a joy. Each morning she strolled to a newsstand selling the international edition of the New York Times, which she would devour cover to cover. It was her way of keeping in touch with the rest of the world, a daily routine she treasured. It was a habit she would never break.

CHAPTER 5

Halfway to Asia

There’s no reason I know of to hurry away.

— Elizabeth Hawley

By the end of 1957, tired of waiting for a decision from the Romanians, Elizabeth decided to move on to the next stage of her travels – the Middle East. Her mother’s interest in the life of British explorer and political power broker Gertrude Bell sparked her initial attraction to the region. Elizabeth had read Bell’s published letters recounting her desert escapades and nation building in the Middle East, and now she wanted to see this part of the world for herself. Beyond Gertrude Bell, however, a whole parade of wandering women inspired Elizabeth: Isak Dinesen, who had moved to Kenya and struggled to build a farm in Africa; Alexandra David-Néel, who had disguised herself as a pilgrim to wander throughout the wildest parts of Asia; and others. Years later she met Freya Stark in Kathmandu, where she listened to her tales of adventure. Elizabeth devoured all of their yarns, admired their bravery and curiosity and proceeded to create some stories of her own.

She took the Balkan Express from Vienna to Yugoslavia and Greece and finally to Istanbul. It was a long journey made entertaining by the people she met. The Greeks were friendly to her, giving her advice and introducing her to Greek red wine. But they were critical of her plans to go to Turkey and warned her that Turkey was dirty, the Turks themselves were dirty and Istanbul smelled. She didn’t take them too seriously, though, because none of them had actually been to Turkey. In fact, most of those travelling through Greece to Turkey were Yugoslavian emigrants looking for a better life.

In Istanbul Elizabeth marvelled at the skyline of minarets and rounded domes. The view up close was less romantic, since it was impossible to ignore the dirty alleys, the buildings in disrepair and a general state of grime. But it was lovely from a distance. Upon seeing the harem section of the old sultan’s palace, she confided to her mother that it must have been “fantastically lovely in its heyday, but an awful bore for the ladies.” And she was amused one afternoon to observe Premier Nuri al-Said of Iraq enjoying a parfait in the Hilton coffee shop. She wondered what he thought of it.

From Istanbul she took a berth on the Taurus Express to Aleppo, Syria, home of desert explorer Gertrude Bell’s much-loved servant, and the beginning of some of Bell’s desert wanderings. In Aleppo Elizabeth befriended a young Armenian boy who took her around the city to mosques and palaces, the souk and a 13th-century citadel.

From there she took a seven-hour dolmush (car) ride to Beirut, where she settled in. Before a week had passed, she was reacquainted with old friends and had acquired a few new ones, including a curious young man named Kim Philby, who later became famous as a double agent for British Intelligence and the Soviet KGB. She also met his father, the famous Arabist John Philby, who had been the first European to visit the southern provinces of the Nejd. John had known Gertrude Bell, and commented to Elizabeth that he thought Gertrude’s much-lauded Arabic language skills were questionable. Elizabeth thought he was being a chauvinist.

But the world’s politics were urging her to move on. February 21, 1958, was the date set for a plebiscite in Syria and Egypt to confirm the new union of the two countries; although the results were more or less a foregone conclusion, she was sure the event would be memorable and she wanted to be in Damascus to see it. Just then, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) offered her a six-month job writing articles about the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and the work being done for them by UNRWA. The job would entail travelling to places where the refugees lived, such as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. To support the refugees, UNRWA needed to raise money; therefore, they needed to raise their profile, particularly in the English-speaking world. How could she resist? She was pleased, not only because of the financial implications, but also because she wanted to see what she could accomplish as a writer.

Before the job began, she had just enough time to go to Damascus for the plebiscite. She was disappointed with the city, which had been described to her as the loveliest Arab city. But the plebiscite produced the effect she was expecting. The city came alive when Egyptian president Nasser flew in from Cairo, with tens of thousands pouring in from all over Syria. Huge groups marched, shouting slogans in favour of Nasser, the Union and Arabism in general, and against Israel, Hussein of Jordan, Eisenhower and other symbols of imperialism. It spun out of control and eight small children were trampled to death in this spontaneous outpouring of support for Nasser. She found him to be tall, dark and handsome, a striking person with a commanding presence.

But the atmosphere was tense. She believed she was being watched constantly, as in the Soviet Union. A military policeman even asked her to turn over the film in her camera. When she refused, she ended up arguing her case at military police headquarters – successfully, as it turned out. During the mob scene, a kind man had taken her under his wing to ensure she wasn’t swept away by the masses, but she later learned he too was a secret-police officer. Even her hotel concierge constantly asked where she was going and with whom.

Back in Beirut Elizabeth luxuriated in the lack of surveillance, enjoying relaxing conversations in her hotel lobby and on the outdoor veranda, discussing current events with anyone of interest who came through. Subjects ranged from Nasser’s future to charges of Saudi plots, rumours of the assassination of Jordan’s King Hussein, the strengths and weaknesses of Iraq’s Premier Nuri Said and the general state of the Middle East. She was also looking forward to her new job, but then came an unpleasant surprise. While she was in Damascus, the job had vanished into thin air. Disappointed, she went back to her original plan and headed to Egypt on an Italian boat.

She arrived in Cairo on March 17 and settled into the Semiramis Hotel, where she had a private veranda with a commanding view of the broad and placid Nile. She was immediately greeted by an Egyptian doctor she had met on her 1955 trip. Her rarely seen romantic side surfaced, and she plotted the next three weeks with an eye to ensuring she would be in Cairo when the full moon cast its magical light on the pyramids. She had worried that Cairo would be “another slightly quaint, slightly annoyingly Eastern city,” but that was not the case. It had many attributes: the Nile, palm trees, the sandy desert, the pyramids and the vivid colours of sand, sky and palm.

Donning blue jeans, she climbed to the top of the highest pyramid, amazed by the views. Unused to physical exertion, her muscles protested with each step the following day. She attended political rallies, visited new friends at their homes, attended the Bolshoi Ballet and was entertained by her Egyptian doctor friend. The time passed agreeably and she decided to stay longer than originally planned. “There’s no reason that I know of to hurry away,” she wrote her mother. It was a cosmopolitan city filled with people of many nationalities, bringing with them many different ways of thinking. To Elizabeth, it felt like a meeting place experiencing a three-way awakening: Arab, Asian and African, all at the same time.

One of her most memorable experiences was a trip to St. Catherine’s Monastery on the Sinai Peninsula. The Sinai wilderness was the bleakest, driest, hottest, sandiest, most inhospitable place she had ever seen, a mass of steep, jagged, barren mountains rising out of the sand. While at the monastery, she exerted herself more than usual, ascending two mountains in the vicinity, mostly by camel, but on foot for the top difficult bits. One of them was Moses Mountain, where the prophet was said to have received the Ten Commandments. The second was St. Catherine’s Mountain, about 2438 metres in height. She enjoyed the magnificent views, composed of wonderful hues of yellow, brown and red with small patches of the Red Sea in the distance. Once again, her muscles demanded a few days to recover.

Her mother, travelling at the same time in Western Europe, expressed concerns over Elizabeth’s safety, having heard of an element of fanaticism in the country. Elizabeth assured her that she was conducting herself properly and prudently and there was absolutely nothing to worry about. But she couldn’t be completely honest with her mother, because the Arabs censored all letters leaving Egypt. It was only later, during a 10-day boat trip to Beirut, Cyprus, Rhodes, Istanbul and Izmir, that she was able to write freely about her plans to travel on to Israel. It was impossible to mention this in a letter read by Arab censors, because she would not have been allowed back in again. To facilitate her freedom of movement, she carried some curious documents with her, including her Methodist Sunday School certificate. This humble scrap of paper was sufficient proof that she wasn’t Jewish. When she travelled between Arab countries and Jerusalem, the authorities stamped her visa on a separate piece of paper, so it wouldn’t appear in her passport.

In southern Turkey, she travelled to Izmir and Antalya, which became her jumping-off point to explore the ruins in the surrounding mountains. Together with a Danish architect, she decided to visit a ruin called Side. They took a taxi for a certain distance and then got out and walked about five kilometres from the highway to its seaside location. After exploring the ruin, they took a swim and enjoyed a good lunch at a seaside café. They began their return at about 5:00 p.m., walking back to the highway to wait for a bus or a taxi. At 6:45 p.m., a tractor came by, pulling a farm wagon loaded with several men and boys. They climbed in and went as far as he was going – about half an hour to his village. He explained to them in sign language that they were still a long way from Antalya, and as there were no more buses, why not spend the night at his place. They declined, as Elizabeth had a plane to catch the next morning. They began to walk. Soon a private Jeep came by filled with two men, one woman and four children, along with two large suitcases, various bundles, gasoline cans and tool kits.

Despite the congestion, everyone adjusted to make room for the two strangers – Elizabeth perched on the lap of the Dane. Then the engine died. While one of the two men attempted to fix it, a taxi came by, but it too was overloaded. However, the taxi driver said – again by sign language – he was dropping off a couple of passengers shortly and he promised to come back for them. As a guarantee, he left one of his other passengers to assist with the Jeep repairs. He returned, but in the process of turning around, his car also died. Finally, an ancient Vauxhall drove up. Elizabeth and the Dane climbed in and proceeded to the next town, where they decided to revive themselves with a meal. The local schoolmaster treated them to dinner and several rakis (a local liquor) because he wanted to chat with them in English. The newly repaired taxi showed up and at last they made their way back to Antalya, arriving at about 10:30 p.m. Such was travel off the beaten track in Turkey, mid-20th-century style. She made the flight the next morning.

What most impressed her about that day – and many others in Turkey – were the unexpected acts of kindness from fierce-looking characters. She had observed this characteristic in a bus driver who swerved to miss a pigeon, and in another bus driver who, at the sight of a legless beggar, stopped his vehicle so that all the male passengers, who were poor themselves, could disembark and give the man some money. She wondered if this would be the case in militant Israel.

She arrived in Haifa on June 18 to find a city that felt more European than Middle Eastern, with many modern buildings and a splendid location on the slopes of Mount Carmel. As always, Elizabeth had prepared herself by reading related literature well in advance of her visit. In this case, she was enlightened by Sholem Asch’s controversial novel The Nazarene, in which he sought to reconcile Judaism and Christianity.

One Friday evening in Jerusalem, as the sun set and the Sabbath was proclaimed, men and boys began to emerge from their small homes and walk slowly and with dignity to nearby synagogues. They were dressed in the medieval garb they had worn in the ghettos of Eastern Europe, and their quiet procession of devotion impressed her.

When people learned of her recent trip to Lebanon, they engaged her in intense conversations about the situation there. They wanted to know if it was true that the Lebanese might like to make peace with Israel. She sensed they had real hope that peace might have a chance. She couldn’t respond positively, though, because she was convinced it was unlikely, especially since it would be impossible for any one Arab country to make peace with Israel for fear of retribution from its Arab neighbours. She was curious about the other side of the Arab–Israeli conflict; she wanted to better understand it. And she was impressed with the speed at which the Israelis were building a country for their citizens, although the development was largely financed, she knew, by outside sources. She found the social, religious and political conflict complex, intriguing and disturbing, but she didn’t imagine it would still wrack the region many decades later.

By September Elizabeth was off to Amman, Jordan – a village that seemed to have grown up overnight to become the capital of a struggling nation. No ancient walls confined its growth, and its modern buildings were rapidly creeping up the seven hills on which it was built. With introductions to friends of Mahmoud Abu Reish, the city opened its doors to her. “Here in Jordan I am beginning to find the charm of the Arab as described by the romantic orientalists of earlier times,” she tantalized her mother.

She learned about the complexity of the various brands of Arab nationalism still alive, in competition with each other: the Hashemite family, which led the Arab revolt of the First World War; the religiously fanatical Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia; the followers of the ex-mufti of Jerusalem, whose family quarrelled with the Hashemites in Palestine and who led the Arab terrorist activities in Palestine under the Mandate; and the pan-Arabists, who idolized Nasser. These family feuds were complicated by power politics and a general high state of emotional tension, made worse by the existence of Israel on the western border. In Jordan she found that these were not just theoretical discussions, but life-and-death struggles for power, wealth and glory.

Through her connections, Elizabeth arranged a trip through the southern part of Jordan as the guest of an Arab Legion colonel who was based in Ma’an. Now she would see T.E. Lawrence country: Ma’an, Petra, Aqaba and the great southern desert. It began in an unorthodox manner, driving with the colonel to a camp outside of Kerak, where she was fed. That night, she slept on a hospital cot. They continued on to Ma’an, a scraggly, mud-brick town in an oasis, inhabited by conservative Muslims who forbade movies or liquor in their town and who locked the women in their houses when the men went out. She explored the ancient city of Petra on horseback and foot with another army major, and went to Aqaba, Jordan’s single tenuous contact with the sea. She drove across a wide expanse of the Wadi Rum desert, where she paused beside a fresh spring a few hundred metres up a slope from a group of black Bedouin and ate freshly killed pigeons roasted over a fire. The trip back to Amman turned into a marathon of driving the rough desert route for 14 hours to arrive at 4:00 a.m. After a bath and a few hours’ sleep, she reconnected with Mahmoud and returned to Jerusalem.

Elizabeth continued on her Middle East journey, arriving in Baghdad by the end of October. Armed with introductions to friends and contacts at the American embassy, she set about seeing the country she’d read about in Gertrude Bell’s travels and the Bible: the Tower of Babel, Nineveh, Ur, the supposed location of the Garden of Eden. She saw many evocative ruins in a state of recent excavation; some of the contents were in the archeological museum in Baghdad, a place she visited frequently and thoroughly.

Slightly farther afield, she managed to get permits from the security department to visit the important Islamic center of Karbala, 105 kilometres southwest of Baghdad, as well as the well-preserved ruins of Al-Ukhaidir and Basra. She was almost the only tourist in Baghdad, according to the locals, but she didn’t mind, because she found that “most of the Americans one meets travelling in these parts are better kept at home.” From Basra, she flew to the sheikhdom of Kuwait.

Kuwait was fascinating because of the contrasts between the old, traditional and poor Eastern way of life and the new, brash and rich Western style that had burst upon the land with the discovery of massive oil deposits. There were barefoot men in desert garb driving gigantic Cadillacs, traffic jams of huge American cars in narrow, winding alleys, and men dressed in Western suits alongside women completely veiled and draped in black. She met Egyptians working in Kuwait who earned 10 times what they could make in Cairo. She was amused to see the first two and a half pages in the telephone book devoted to “sheikhs.”

An unusual invitation arrived from the secretary of the deputy ruler, Sheikh Abdullah Mubarak es Sabbah, to visit him at his seaside palace (one of several). She didn’t know why she was invited, but she had a pleasant time at his sumptuous palace, particularly enjoying the ceiling of one remarkable room painted with portraits of lovely European ladies – a rare sight in a country that hides its women. As she travelled through the area, she read Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, connecting and comparing his famous stories with her own observations.

By mid-December she was in Tehran, just in time for winter. Nighttime temperatures plummeted and snow draped the mountains in white, providing a spectacular backdrop to the city. Her friend Judy Friedberg arrived in mid-January and they made plans to depart for India. Their first stop en route to India was Karachi, which Elizabeth described as an “overgrown, ugly town” with nothing to hold the interest of the casual tourist. Having gone there only because of Judy’s freelance assignment, they continued on to Bombay as soon as they were able. Elizabeth and Judy found themselves sharing a taxi with a man who looked remarkably like Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon. In fact, he was Arthur Koestler. Travelling alone, he was keen to share their company and provided many hours of good conversation. Particularly interesting were his views on the totalitarian tactics of the Soviet Union, provoking lively discussions on the relationship between the state and the individual. From there, it was on to Delhi and finally – Kathmandu.

CHAPTER 6

Nepal Beckons

... a place where you can see what the world is becoming.

— Elizabeth Hawley

Elizabeth arrived in Kathmandu on February 8, 1959, near the end of her two-year, round-the-world trip. It was to be a short visit – only a couple of weeks – but Nepal had been in her mind since 1955 when she read a New York Times article about the first tourists to the kingdom. Thinking it would be an interesting place to visit, she had tucked the information away for future reference.

Her excitement grew as her plane from Benares (now known as Varanasi), India, approached the southern border of Nepal. She was captivated by the dark forests of the Terai, imagining the wildlife prowling in what appeared to be an impassable barrier. As the flight continued north, the landscape changed and brown hillsides emerged from the jungle depths. A jigsaw maze of terraced fields was dotted with small thatched cottages, and the hills were laced with pathways connecting remote villages. Suddenly, a broad valley opened up and the city of Kathmandu appeared. Surrounded by hills and the shining Himalayan peaks in the distance, it appeared, she said in a letter, as “a kind of fairy tale mirage, an oasis of fertility in a sea of verticality.” The scene had a sense of intimacy, as though cut off from the rest of the planet by the towering peaks. Her first impression was one of remoteness – remote in the sense that the 20th century was less apparent here than in most of the other countries she had visited. “Here one really feels oneself to be in Asia – timeless Asia,” she wrote her mother.

Kathmandu felt medieval. Ancient three-storey houses leaned over the narrow streets, their intricately carved wooden window frames testament to the skills of local craftsmen. Above every lintel were carved the gods of Nepal, offering countless opportunities for ordinary Nepalis to stop momentarily and offer pujas (Hindu prayers). Tiny shops with brightly coloured fruits and vegetables and startling slabs of meat provided a visual feast as she made her way through the streets. The proportions of the city were balanced, giving a sense of harmony and prosperity. The relative prosperity was real: the valley’s strategic location between Tibet and India had made its Newari citizens wealthy from trade between the two countries for centuries.

Elizabeth visited the government offices, housed in the then 50-year-old Singha Durbar palace. The great structure presented an impressive gateway at its entrance, but the gardens were neglected. Lavish banquet rooms with gleaming marble floors and sparkling chandeliers were used for special occasions, but the only rooms accessible to the public were the administrative offices – a rabbit warren of small, badly lit rooms that had been used by the palace concubines in days gone by. As the residence of the prime minister, it had been a marvel of opulence. Four storeys high, reflected in the still waters of a lake, it appeared to float in space.

She discovered Durbar Square and the Tundikhel, a huge grass parade ground. Alive with activity, the maidan was an ideal place to get a sense of the pulse of Kathmandu. Young boys came by the dozen, marching and exercising under the watchful eyes of Royal Nepal Army soldiers. Cows grazed contentedly and squealing children competed in sporting events and gymnastics.

The other lifeline in Kathmandu was the sacred Bagmati River. It was here, rather than on the streets, that she saw the women of Kathmandu, washing their hair, their bodies and their clothing. The Kathmandu bazaar was a place of mass confusion and activity. Bicycle shops, beggars, cows and the occasional Rolls-Royce all shared street space. Mounds of spices and rice, piles of peppers and bananas, bolts of brilliant silk and cotton, cheap plastic jewellery and the all-important moneychangers caught her eyes. The smells and sounds were overwhelming: bells rang ceaselessly from more than five thousand temples in the valley, drums drummed and horns honked. Even though there were few cars, each seemed to have a fully functioning horn and a highly motivated operator. The evenings were strangely silent.

But Elizabeth Hawley’s arrival in Nepal was of a professional as well as personal nature. Before she left India, she had learned that Nepal was about to hold its first general election in history, so she dropped in at the Time Inc. bureau in Delhi and asked the correspondent if he would like her to do some work for him there. He said yes, so she teamed up with two journalists, her friend Elie Abel from the New York Times, a man she described as wonderfully bright, and a correspondent for the London Observer, Cyril Dunn, who struck her as gentle and witty. The three of them travelled as a pack, doing interviews with leading Nepalese politicians and others. Watching the two experienced journalists work, Elizabeth was exactly where she wanted to be – on the inside track of an interesting period in the political history of Nepal, when King Mahendra would institute the nation’s first constitution.

The chronology leading to the first parliamentary elections was one of intrigue and a massive shift in power that was centuries old. The Ranas had ruled Nepal since the mid-19th century, and the Rana prime minister normally held his position until death. To accomplish their stranglehold on power, they had devised a crafty refinement of the caste system that split the powerful Rana clan into A, B and C classifications. Only the A’s could rise to the upper levels of power, and of course it was an A-class Rana who devised the system. They were known for their keen interest in women, whisky and hunting. They didn’t tolerate freedom of speech in religion or politics, and the prison was full of political prisoners to prove it.

Under the Ranas, the members of the royal family were powerless and lived as virtual prisoners in their own palace. Needless to say, there was some tension between these two most powerful forces in Nepal. Just before Elizabeth arrived in Nepal, Tribhuvan – meaning “dweller of three worlds”: material, spiritual and human – was king. His son, Mahendra, was crowned in 1955. The new king lived in a palace which, while not as the prime minister’s palace, was nevertheless impressive, Elizabeth wrote, with grounds resembling a “fairyland version of an English country garden.” His title was hollow, but the throne was maintained because, to the Nepalis, he was a deity. The Ranas arranged his marriage and by the time he was 14 he had fathered two children by two wives who were sisters. To foreigners, he was a symbol of self-indulgence, rumoured to be interested only in opium and women. In fact, this was not the case, and history would prove he had intelligence, self-discipline and the courage to mobilize his people to a new way of governance and life that would emerge at just about the time Elizabeth arrived in Kathmandu. The nation had begun its rebellion against the Ranas and was about to embark on its long road to democracy.

By 1950 King Tribhuvan and his family had escaped bondage in their palace, finding refuge in the Indian embassy at Kathmandu and then in India itself. There, they were welcomed by Pandit Nehru. While the king was in India, armed Nepali Congress supporters invaded southern Nepal and captured the Rana government, setting up a provisional government. In the west, peasant guerrillas leapt into action. Nehru’s opinion was made clear in his statement: “We are anxious that there should be peace and stability in Nepal. At the same time, we felt that the introduction of substantial political reforms was essential for this purpose.” With the fall of the Ranas, the king returned as constitutional head of the country. He announced that an interim cabinet would be set up with seven Ranas and seven representatives of the popular party. All political prisoners would be freed and there would be a constituent assembly chosen by adult suffrage the next year.

It was a strange kind of revolution – in part inspired by the population, in part by the monarchy. But despite his best intentions, Tribhuvan seemed unable to replace the oppressive Rana rule with anything other than unworkable, short-lived, compromise governing councils. To make things more complicated, his son, Crown Prince Mahendra, insisted on marrying a Rana woman named Indra. Defying his parents on an issue as important as marriage was unheard of, but Mahendra did it, marrying first Indra and then her sister Ratna after his first wife died. After several years of recurring illness (and probably exhaustion from his recent efforts at reform), King Tribhuvan died in a Swiss hospital.

In 1955 Prince Mahendra was crowned king and his second wife became Queen Ratna. A precedent had been set – it was possible for a crown prince to choose his own princess. The significance of this became clear 50 years later when Queen Ratna was the septuagenarian queen mother in residence at the palace when yet another crown prince rebelled against his parents’ marriage plans. Only this time, it would end in a bloodbath such as the country could hardly comprehend, the slaughter of almost the entire royal family. But now, after a century of Rana rule, King Mahendra was keen to move his country into the 20th century, and so he gave his country its first constitution and held the first general election in Nepal’s history. It was these events that Elizabeth had come to observe.

After several weeks of voting, victory was declared by the Nepali Congress Party (NCP), which won 70 per cent of the votes. Elie Abel of the New York Times had to leave Nepal, but not before he told his foreign news editor in New York about Elizabeth. She was flattered, and also pleased from a practical point of view because she was running out of money. She flew to Calcutta, where she wrote a report to the Time bureau chief in New Delhi and then began her long journey home. She took a cargo ship to Hong Kong via Rangoon, Penang, Singapore and Pusan, then from Hong Kong to Osaka on another ship, overland to Tokyo and its port of Yokohama, and finally San Francisco, arriving in time for spring.

Elizabeth recalls a mélange of sensory pleasures upon returning to American soil after two years abroad – a rush of familiarity, but also the dawning awareness that her home country had less to offer her than before. After sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco – an event she remembers vividly – she went directly to Blum’s candy shop and soda fountain in Union Square and ordered a sundae smothered in chocolate sauce and walnuts. With that treat in hand, she wandered around the square, feasting her eyes on scenes of “typical” America that she hadn’t seen for two years. It was a pivotal moment. During that wander, she had a little discussion with herself: “This is a great place, but it’s not the real world. I would like to live a few years in the real world – a world that’s like what most people live in.” Her travels had made an impact. Her life would never be the same.

But she was also practical. She wanted to live comfortably and it dawned on her that Kathmandu was the place. It had a pleasant climate, a low cost of living, beautiful hills that reminded her of Vermont and she would be able to hire staff to look after her everyday needs. (No need to cook!) At no point did climbing and exploration enter the equation in her decision-making process. She was blissfully unaware of the Herculean efforts taking place on the Himalayan peaks. The names Herzog and Buhl meant nothing to her. But in order to mobilize this new plan, she first needed to return to New York and find a job.

She moved back into her apartment on Madison Avenue, settling in with the treasures she had accumulated in the far-flung corners of the world. She worked at a series of temporary jobs, just until she had enough money to depart for good. One of these was for Life magazine’s new book-publishing arm. As always, she did research. Then she did a stint for Nelson Rockefeller’s brief presidential campaign, where she proved to be a useful member of the staff because of her access to the morgue and all those files.

In the meantime, she applied for a job at the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) within the State Department. This was the domestic name for what was known abroad as the USIS (United States Information Service). Its role was to understand, inform and influence foreign policies in promotion of U.S. national interests. Information activities in overseas operations included reading rooms and libraries, and personnel in missions, embassies and field posts around the world. President Eisenhower set up an Operations Coordinating Board to run the USIA, which consisted of several high-level people: the Undersecretary of State, the Undersecretary of Defense, the head of the Foreign Aid Agency, the head of the CIA and the head of the USIA. This tight group met for lunch once a week, speaking freely about what was going on in the world, which at the time included atomic energy tests, secret information relating to the Soviet Union, shifts in political regimes, and citizens movements.

Although she had good credentials to work for the USIA, it didn’t look promising, as revealed in a letter from Deputy Director Washburn: “She made a very good impression here, but jobs for women in the Foreign Service are extremely limited.” This was tough to accept for a woman as independent, experienced, knowledgeable and capable as Elizabeth. She was also waiting on a decision from the Ford Foundation Foreign Area Training Fellowship, for which she had applied. She proposed a study of Nepal’s postwar history – its political and economic development since World War II, with particular emphasis on its penetration by influences from outside its borders, specifically India and Tibet. Albert Furth, assistant to Time magazine founder and editor Henry R. Luce, wrote an effusive reference letter for her:

Elizabeth Hawley was among the top few researchers on Fortune’s staff … she was always in demand by our ablest writers.… The writer knew he would not only have the benefit of thorough, penetrating reportage; he also knew he would have the benefit of a mature and uncommonly intelligent mind in debating the implications of the material gathered.

In early December Elizabeth was asked to come to Washington to appear before a panel of three USIA men: one from personnel, one from the press section and one from the cultural-affairs section. They grilled her for an hour and a half about her past experience, her views on American foreign policy, what she would do if she were running the USIA and whether she understood what her duties would be. She obviously made an impression because 10 days later she received a letter asking her to proceed to the next steps: a security check, medical examination and psychological–psychiatric examination. She was being seriously considered for a Foreign Service appointment.

In April 1960 she received a “no” from the Ford Foundation because they felt she didn’t have enough academic background in South Asia. The USIA eventually did offer her a foreign posting, but because she was not allowed to choose the country, she turned it down. Her mother also discouraged her from working for the USIA, as she was convinced it would be too bureaucratic for Elizabeth’s free spirit.

By this time, Elizabeth had become fixated on Nepal. Fascinated by the country’s politics and the idea of an isolated state emerging into the 20th century, she decided to live there for a few years. She wanted to watch the country change and develop. She described it as “a place where you can see what the world is becoming.” During the summer, she hammered out an arrangement with Time Inc. in which she would return to Kathmandu in September of 1960, accredited as their part-time correspondent. Two years later her accreditation would be for the Reuters news agency. In the meantime she was also offered fairly lucrative work with an organization calling itself the Knickerbocker Foundation. She accepted the offer – an arrangement that would cause some raised eyebrows back in New York, since many of her colleagues and friends assumed she was really doing intelligence work for the U.S. government under the cloak of a foundation. With her contacts made and her contracts signed, Elizabeth was off.

CHAPTER 7

A New Life

The mountains hereabouts are infested with men mad enough to want to slog to the tops.

— Elizabeth Hawley

Now that she was to make it her new home, Elizabeth explored Kathmandu and its environs with even keener interest. She discovered the adjoining ancient city of Patan. Bazaars filled with tiny shops selling exquisite silk, silver and gems were the reward for navigating its maze of narrow lanes and alleys. Along each brick-paved street, spacious houses were decorated with dragons, gods and goddesses carved into wooden frames.

She drove to Bhadgaon, where hundreds of gilded roofs glared in the harsh sunlight. The distinctive styles of both Buddhist and Hindu temples intertwined in evocative imagery. Religious festivals were common and it seemed to Elizabeth that the entire valley seemed to embrace ancient religions of all kinds.

And of course she went to Bodhnath, the holiest Tibetan sanctuary outside Tibet. The cone-shaped Buddhist shrine, known as a stupa, was dazzling in its whiteness, topped with gold and emblazoned with the unblinking blue eyes of Lord Buddha at its base. Surrounded by prayer wheels, it resonated with the sound of their turning, and the smell of lamps floating in clarified butter permeated the air. Elizabeth observed the great number of Buddhist pilgrims milling around the stupa. What a sight: monks in maroon robes, pig-tailed hermits, scholars and peasants crowding to the sacred site, accompanied by the sounds of bells, gongs and horns – and the ever-present smell of butter. It wasn’t just pilgrims who thronged the site; Tibetan refugees had flooded into the area after the Chinese takeover of Tibet, and the streets swarmed with fierce-looking warrior figures.

Her new home seemed uncomplicated, peaceful and contented, centuries removed from the hustle and bustle, strife and warfare and rapid rate of change in the rest of the world. Of course, that was not the case, as Elizabeth would discover. But for now, she revelled in the novelty of making a home in such a foreign place.

While staying at the Royal Hotel, she began searching for an apartment. Within a week she found what she was looking for – a two-bedroom apartment in a central part of town. It had spacious rooms and plenty of windows, three of which had balconies. She was pleased to find electricity in every room although the power was a bit feeble. The kitchen was somewhat spartan, with just a sink and cold running water. The bathroom boasted a small hot-water tank, as well as a flush toilet. This place could be hers for $95 a month. She rearranged the basic furniture, removed the heavy draperies off windows and doors and purchased some brass vases to fill with colourful flowers from her garden. The overall effect pleased her.

To make it feel like home, she had brought a few “essentials” with her from the United States, such as the record albums My Fair Lady, Oklahoma and The King and I. She had her autographed copy of The Joy of Cooking and a recording of Handel’s Messiah. She had also brought a Bible, but joked to her mother, “God knows what reason.” On the practical front, she had a plastic dinner set, some sheets and towels, an atlas, the Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, a thesaurus, a condensed paperback encyclopedia, a book on English usage and a Finnish hot plate.

By mid-October she reported to her mother that she had not only settled in, but had acquired a cook, a general-purpose servant, a man to do her laundry and another to tend her very small garden. Her staff was complete. She soon moved on to her second cook, Kumar, who had worked previously for some Americans and spoke a little English. She reported that he was already trained in “our ways of cooking and cleanliness.” She was pleased he could bake bread and sugar cookies, make soup and mayonnaise, keep the household accounts and “do all sorts of things I couldn’t possibly do.”

Kumar was soon replaced by Ram Krishna as cook, but he remained to take on other responsibilities. Kumar and Elizabeth had what can only be described as a “difficult” relationship. Looking back, she admits she treated him badly: “He simply exasperated the hell out of me.” According to Elizabeth, he was completely disorganized. This was a recipe for disaster because Elizabeth is extremely organized. She mocked him routinely, but now acknowledges her behaviour was inexcusable. The simple fact was that he annoyed her, and in return, she was mean to him. Still, they continued to work together for 40 long years. Many of Elizabeth’s friends describe her as “very much memsahib,” or someone who thinks of Nepalis as people you hire to get work done. Her cousin’s son, Will Kneerim, views her relationship with her Nepali staff as classic 19th-century master–servant style. When Kumar retired in 2003, he thoughtfully hired his replacement, his well-educated and organized grandson Baween, six months in advance in order to fully train him. She appreciated that parting gesture and realized she had underestimated Kumar all along.

Kathmandu at that time had only a couple of shopping streets and few “useful” stores. One was called The Blue Bucket. It was somewhat like a country general store, with tinned and packaged foods. Most foodstuffs came from the markets and street vendors. The choices of vegetables were limited: cauliflower, carrots, radishes, potatoes, onions and garlic. There was a bakery (it still exists) named Krishna Loaf that was the first to bake bread in the valley. Western-style clothing was unavailable, since there was no place to buy it; everything was individually tailored or brought in from abroad. There were no streetlights and few paved roads. Most people walked or rode bikes. There was no international mail service, although there was a post office for domestic mail. Elizabeth sent and received her mail through the American embassy and sent telegrams at the Indian embassy.

It was unusual to see a single Western woman in the streets in 1960. Once, when she encountered some Tibetan refugees on the street near her house, her knee-length skirt and nylon stockings caused them to flee, giggling like schoolgirls as they scampered away. Years later she was chatting with a young office clerk who admitted, “I remember you from when I was a little boy 20 years ago.” Elizabeth initially rode about town on a bicycle, but that all changed when she borrowed a bluish-green, 1952 Fiat 500 convertible. She was thrilled to get out of the rain and it was the perfect size for her. Finally, in 1965, she bought a used robin’s-egg-blue Volkswagen Beetle from Prince Basundhara. It was two years old and she paid him $1,500 for it. That car became her trademark in Kathmandu and it was still parked proudly in her garage in the spring of 2004. She drove it herself until 1996, after which she employed a driver.

As a young, single, American woman, Elizabeth was embraced by the Kathmandu social scene. Social occasions took place in private homes rather than restaurants or hotels. One hotel she did frequent, however, was the Royal, run by the famous Boris Lissanevitch. This spacious but not very comfortable watering hole occupied one wing of a former Rana palace named Bahadur Bhawan. Most often it wasn’t the hotel or restaurant that she frequented, but Boris’s fabulous apartment above, the scene of many parties. Of all the fascinating characters she would know in Kathmandu, Boris was one of the more colourful. He was dark and good-looking in a mysterious kind of way, with hair parted straight down the middle. His past was almost unbelievable: he had grown up in Russia, escaped during the Russian Revolution, became a celebrated dancer with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, travelled the world as a performer, launched the exclusive 300 Club in Calcutta and befriended royalty and adventurers alike. While running the 300 Club, he became a close friend and confidant of Nepal’s King Tribhuvan, as well as a number of the people who assisted Tribhuvan in overturning the Rana rule. It was this friendship that brought him to Nepal. Now he was in partnership with Tribhuvan’s son, Prince Basundhara, running the Royal Hotel, which was sometimes described as “Kathmandu baroque.”

Despite his royal connections and friendships with the most powerful people in the country, Boris had already done a stint in prison for bad debt. Debt was something he was familiar with, since he had an extremely impractical business sense. Shortly after being released from prison, he was asked to produce a series of lavish banquets for the coronation of King Mahendra. Entertaining on a scale never before seen in Nepal, Boris quickly became the centre of the social elite.

His scene also included mountain climbers, since virtually all the expeditions coming through the valley stayed with Boris. He boasted a unique rock collection in connection with his mountaineering friends: a bit of the summit of Everest from Barry Bishop, a rock from the top of Makalu from Jean Franco, and more. In return for high-altitude rocks, he gave the alpinists fruitcake; his famous Genoa fruitcake was standard fare on the early expeditions to all the highest peaks. It was in Boris’s apartment that Elizabeth first glimpsed the exciting things that were happening up in the mountains. And it was there that she began to meet climbers.

Elizabeth supported her lifestyle with two sources of income. The first was as a stringer for her former employer Time Inc., the publishers of Fortune, Time, Life and other magazines. Her job was to research political news and other stories and send that research to New York or the New Delhi bureau so that one of their writers could do a story.

The rest of her income came from the Knickerbocker Foundation, which hired her to send them regular reports on the political scene in Nepal. Elizabeth was uncharacteristically incurious about the work she did for Knickerbocker. During the early 1960s, in many parts of the world and particularly in strategically located Nepal, there was an enormous amount of intelligence-gathering going on – by Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and others. This mountain region was considered an essential buffer between powerful nations and had long been a place of intrigue. Every foreigner living in Kathmandu was aware of this. According to the 1967 Facts on File yearbook, the Knickerbocker Foundation was suspected of being a cover organization for the CIA. But Elizabeth remains adamant that if her monthly reports to the Knickerbocker Foundation were used for government purposes and analysis, it didn’t bother her. “Why not? What’s wrong with that?” she asks. She never thought of her work as “espionage.” She believes it is natural – and expected – that governments will gather intelligence in other countries in whatever way they can. She was happy to help.

Elizabeth’s daily routine included listening to the newscasts on BBC Radio and reading the International Herald Tribune. She began calling on some of the top political figures she had met the previous year and was soon being invited to embassy cocktail receptions. Her network continued to expand. Then the United Nations Association of Nepal held a series of meetings in celebration of the UN’s birthday, and as a representative for Time and Life, she was invited to attend. One of her appointments was with Prime Minister B.P. Koirala.

In her free time, she explored the nearby countryside with Jeeps and motor scooters. In mid-November, she embarked on her first trek: 10 days of hiking north of Kathmandu as far as the village of Melamchi. It was definitely roughing it, with long days of walking, steep trails and cold nights. Although she enjoyed herself, she recalls that it felt considerably longer than just 10 days. But the compensations were numerous: the scenery, which she described to her mother as magnificent, and the people she met, particularly the Sherpas, who were unaware of the political changes in Kathmandu and whose isolated existence included considerable hardship. She was pleasantly surprised at how quickly she became physically fit.

Fresh from her mountain experience, Elizabeth learned that B.P. Koirala (B.P., as she later called him) was planning a trek of his own in December. He was an informal, intelligent and friendly man, and one who knew how to flatter, informing Elizabeth that he thought her pretty. She suggested to his office, and to the prime minister himself, that she accompany him on the trek and do a story for Life about how the head of government must overcome all kinds of obstacles to make democracy work. He was enthusiastic and she was hopeful.

All of Elizabeth’s well-laid plans vanished into thin air the day before they were to leave, however, for the simple reason that Koirala was no longer prime minister. At noon on December 15, 1960, all cabinet members who could be found (some were in hiding, some were out of the country) were taken into custody on orders from King Mahendra, who had lost patience with what he considered gross inefficiency and erroneous policy making. It was just a year and a half since Koirala had been elected. Elizabeth believed the confrontation was the result of a power struggle between the king and the prime minister. Koirala understood that the king had no intention of stepping back to become a symbolic leader, because that would negate everything his father, Tribhuvan, had believed in.

The king assumed sweeping powers in emergencies, and since he was the one who determined what was an emergency, this was deemed to be just that. He promised to carry out the policies of his predecessor, but to do so scientifically and efficiently, without corruption and without the pressures of political parties. This meant all parties were now banned for an indefinite period. There remained a constitution and parliament, but they were there simply to rubber-stamp decisions that came down from the palace. It was the king who nominated the cabinet ministers as well as the prime minister.

Mahendra adopted a system of government, also used in India, called panchayat, essentially a council of five advisors. He released a few politicians from jail and recycled them into the council. Koirala was not appointed, and after being confined to quarters, he fled the country and remained abroad for several years. Elizabeth now had some really interesting news worth reporting for Time Inc., but she worried about what they would do with the information – would their interpretation of her material make it difficult for her to work in Nepal in the future? It was a tricky situation because on one hand the king was moving his country forward, opening it up to foreign aid and development programs. But he was doing so with an iron glove; the royal palace had become the centre of power. The juxtaposition of his open-minded goals for Nepal and his inward-looking style of rule fascinated Elizabeth.

Despite the delicate nature of the situation, Elizabeth was excited by the fact that this wasn’t small-time politics in an isolated corner of the world. Because of its strategic position between China and India, Nepal became skilled at playing the big powers against one another. The king’s main goal was to retain Nepal’s independence – a feat he managed in part by playing China against India and the Soviet Union against the United States, all while ruling with his own brand of autocracy. As a wire-service reporter, Elizabeth had to stick to the facts, being careful not to voice an opinion regardless of what she thought of the goings-on.

Professionally, Elizabeth managed a small coup in January 1962 when Time Inc.’s chairman of the board and the Delhi bureau chief arrived, expecting Elizabeth to entertain them and introduce them to all the important people. Thanks to her infiltration of the upper echelons of Nepalese society, she was able to secure interviews and lunches for them with important ministers and, more impressively, a half-hour interview with the king – his first press interviews since taking over the government. She was fascinated to hear him articulate his thoughts in his soft-spoken manner.

Then, in early February she met an Englishman named Micky Weatherall on a plane heading south to Simra near the Indian border. He lived in an enormous palace belonging to one of the most prominent members of the Rana family. A civil engineer, Weatherall was in business with his Rana host to build bridges under contract to the Nepalese government. He had grown up in Darjeeling and spoke Nepali, Hindi and half a dozen other languages. Elizabeth and he decided to drive back overland from Simra together. It turned into an adventure of several days, for they were hauling enormous steel girders behind a couple of tractors, one of which was driven by Weatherall. Elizabeth pulled up the rear in a Land Rover. They travelled through steep, rough country with some challenging driving, becoming good friends in the process. Upon their return, Weatherall invited Elizabeth to his palace, Baber Mahal, for a party he was throwing for one of the Rana family members. It was an introduction into a part of Nepalese society that Elizabeth otherwise would have had difficulty penetrating. In particular, it opened the door to a friendship with General Mrigendra Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana, his wife and their children.

Elizabeth and Weatherall became close, spending a lot of time together in Kathmandu, as well as heading into the nether regions of the country where he had construction projects. They were also friends with American journalist Barbara Adams and Prince Basundhara, brother of the king. Barbara was something of a curiosity in Kathmandu. She had first arrived in 1961 from Rome with her husband, an Italian photographer. After a brief vacation in the country, he was ready to leave and she wasn’t – so she stayed. Shortly after, she became romantically involved with the prince. Barbara Adams did some reporting work in Nepal, but spent most of her time socializing. She was flamboyant, and talented in linguistics, speaking at least four languages.

The two couples often gallivanted around the country together, which usually meant an adventure. Barbara and her prince wanted to marry, but it was not to be. The prince, who was already married, had to ask permission from the king to remarry under the recently created remarriage laws. The king said yes, but only if Basundhara’s wife agreed to the divorce. She refused – apparently she didn’t want to give up being a princess. So the prince and Barbara were forced to remain lovers for years.

When Barbara and her prince finally split up, both Weatherall and Elizabeth tried to mediate, but it was irreconcilable. Elizabeth thought Barbara was egocentric and their friendship eventually waned, but not before they’d had a few more adventures. Many years later, the friction between them finally exploded at a garden party. Barbara had been writing regular columns for a local newspaper about political and environmental issues and was openly critical of the current prime minister and the cabinet. At the garden party, she complained bitterly about problems she was having trying to renew her visa for Nepal. Elizabeth remarked, “Well what do you expect when you write that kind of stuff?” Insulted, Barbara threw her out. But as difficult as their friendship sometimes was, they continued to see each other occasionally and were polite.

Kathmandu had a small social community in those days; everyone in the expatriate circles knew each other. One of the more unusual characters was an American named Father Moran. A Jesuit, he was affectionately called the “American Lama.” He had set up a primary, and later a secondary, school for boys in the valley and was recognized by everyone as a scholar, a diplomat and a man about town – racing around the city, sometimes in a Jeep, sometimes on his motorcycle, but always in a hurry.

Another local character was the Swiss geologist Toni Hagen. Here was a man who knew his way around not only Kathmandu but the entire country, as Elizabeth would learn. For 12 years he had roamed Nepal, exploring hundreds of valleys, covering thousands of miles of trail, identifying dozens of different dialects and infiltrating places no foreigner had ever been. Many speculated on ulterior motives for his extensive wanderings, especially near the Tibetan border, but he was a true explorer and had the stories to prove it.

A much quieter man, though no less intriguing to Elizabeth, was the Austrian Peter Aufschnaiter. Famous for the seven years he had spent in Tibet with fellow Austrian Heinrich Harrer, Aufschnaiter wasn’t a willing storyteller. But occasionally Elizabeth coaxed him into sharing stories of his unusual experiences. After escaping from a prison camp in India into forbidden Tibet, he and Harrer had worked with the citizens of Lhasa long before the country was open to foreigners, building infrastructure and growing close to the Dalai Lama’s family before they were eventually forced to flee the country.

At the beginning of March 1961, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth arrived with a contingent of foreign press in her wake, some of whom stayed with Elizabeth. In the course of covering the events herself she even managed a brief chat with “the other Elizabeth,” as some of her friends called the queen. But her biggest story was a “human interest” piece about a Sherpa couple from the Khumbu valley who wanted to come to Kathmandu to see the queen. The only problem was that the Sherpa woman was extremely pregnant and expecting to deliver any day. They came anyway, walking several days down from the hills. En route to Kathmandu, the appointed time arrived. They stopped for an hour, she had their baby and then they continued for another week to Kathmandu. In honour of the royal visit, they named their newborn baby Philip, after Queen Elizabeth’s husband.

The royal visit provided Boris Lissanevitch of the Royal Hotel with an ideal opportunity to display his talents. He did it all: banquets, picnics, tent camps, a model of Mount Everest and more. And for the coup de grâce, he organized a royal tiger shoot, a tradition for any foreign dignitary coming to Nepal. But there was a problem. The Duke of Edinburgh was closely linked with several international conservation bodies and he simply could not be seen shooting a tiger or – even worse – photographed standing over a slain one. At the same time, he couldn’t insult his royal hosts. A diplomatic solution was found. On the morning of the shoot, the duke emerged from his tent with an allegedly infected trigger finger firmly encased in plaster. Elizabeth was amused that an international “incident” had been averted.

There are many Boris stories, but the one that put him on the international map was his elephant salute. As the queen, Prince Phillip and their entourage left their tiger shoot camp, Boris arranged no fewer than 376 elephants, lavishly decorated and painted with gold and silver, into one immense, breathing wall. When the queen drove away from her jungle adventure, each elephant lifted its trunk one after the other in a solemn and majestic royal salute. As Elizabeth (Hawley) recalled the moment, “nobody thought on the same scale as Boris.”

On her first New Year’s Eve in Nepal, Elizabeth attended a gala party at the Royal Hotel, where she met New Zealand climber Sir Edmund Hillary. He had just come out of the mountains with what was alleged to be the skin of an abominable snowman. Hillary’s yeti expedition was one of the largest and most international ever to enter the Himalaya to that point. More than 20 expedition members had come from New Zealand, England, India, the United States and Australia. The team included five journalists and photographers, 11 scientists, one radioman, one builder and seven veterans of one or more Himalayan expeditions. The primary objectives were scientific research in high-altitude physiology, meteorology and glaciology. But the much-publicized “yeti fur” brought back by Hillary ultimately proved to be the skin of a Tibetan blue bear.

The most important of the expedition’s scientific objectives was to research and document the effects of high altitude on the human body. They erected a hut at 5791 metres and equipped it with a physiological laboratory manned by a team of eight physicians and physiologists for five months. They also climbed Ama Dablam, angering the Nepalese government by doing so without a permit. The disgruntled government ordered them to leave the country, but Ed Hillary flew back to Kathmandu and successfully negotiated permission to stay, as well as a permit for the 8481-metre Makalu, fifth highest mountain in the world and situated 20 kilometres east of Everest. Their attempt on Makalu was without bottled oxygen, and although they did not reach the summit, they did manage a high point of 8350 metres as well as a rescue operation when Hillary became ill. The climbing party included three strong New Zealand climbers: Hillary, Peter Mulgrew and George Lowe.

Later that spring, Elizabeth was asked to do a story on Hillary’s health, since he had experienced a mild stroke while at high altitude. She was convinced the famous climber’s climbing days were over, and she wondered whether he would go back to New Zealand and perhaps run for Parliament. Or maybe “he’ll just go back to his bees,” she wrote to her mother, referencing his previous means of livelihood.

These early days of mountaineering in Nepal were exciting, as there were major peaks still to be climbed. For example, nobody had tried to climb 7855-metre Nuptse. Although photographic evidence by Sir John Hunt had suggested a possible summit route by the South Ridge, British climber Chris Bonington and expedition leader Joseph Walmsley found a better route on the Central Ridge that led more directly to the summit. Within a six-week period in 1961, two summit teams reached the top, enjoying some difficult technical climbing as well as a view of nearby Everest.

Although Elizabeth was increasingly drawn into the world of mountaineering, with its daring stories of courage to report, the politics of Nepal continued to occupy her time. In October she was assigned a Time story to ascertain the contents of a boundary treaty signed by the king of Nepal on a state visit to China, in which he and the president of the People’s Republic of China had “disposed of the question of who owns Everest.” Nobody in Kathmandu knew the answer, so it took some behind-the-scenes digging to discover that the treaty stated that the border followed the ridge line of Everest: “What we see from Nepal, i.e., the southern side, is Sagarmatha, the Nepalese name for Everest, and what they see from the Tibetan region of China is Chomolungma, the Chinese–Tibetan name for the mountain,” she was told. Her network of highly placed contacts served her well in getting an answer and getting it in time for the deadline.

At this time, Elizabeth began the frustrating exercise of trying to learn Nepali. Confessing to not having a good ear for languages, she also bridled against the inflexibility of scheduled lesson times. It was a half-hearted attempt from the beginning; secretly she was convinced that anyone she really needed to speak with would speak English much better than she could ever speak Nepali. All of which added up to her decision, after only a few lessons, to give up the struggle for good. Years later, when her assistant Heather Macdonald informed her that she was learning Nepali, Elizabeth asked why. Heather responded that she wanted to understand the culture better, but Elizabeth patiently explained that “everyone here speaks English.” Heather describes her attitude as a combination of New York cosmopolitan and British raj. Elizabeth never did learn to speak Nepali.

In May 1962 her professional life changed once again, although not dramatically. At the time, Reuters had a part-time correspondent stationed in Kathmandu, an Indian man who also worked for the Times of India. When King Mahendra put a sudden end to the constitution, slapped all the members of the government that he could find in jail and declared political parties illegal, the Reuters correspondent naturally reported on it. The authorities were not pleased with what appeared in print, so they demanded that he leave. One day soon after this, Elizabeth was sitting in her office when two Reuters executives and the Reuters bureau chief in Delhi appeared at the top of her stairs. They were looking for a replacement and asked Elizabeth if she would do it. She knew the job would not pay well, but it would allow her even more access to the inner circles of current affairs in Nepal. She said yes.

Initially it meant little more than having a young Nepali arrive at her door each morning to tell her what was in the local newspapers and the government’s publicity department bulletin, as well as the National News Agency report. Her job was to check for accuracy, which she did on her newly acquired telephone. But with the upcoming week-long celebration of King Mahendra’s birthday starting June 11, she knew her Reuters work would increase.

Her first news exclusive was not about politics, however, but about a small climbing expedition headed by Woodrow Wilson Sayre (the president’s grandson). Sayre was thought to be lost in bad weather on a remote mountain. The climbers eventually showed up, but upon interviewing Sayre, Elizabeth declared him to be a strange and irresponsible sort of person. Privately to her mother, she suggested that the expedition had been asking for trouble, as they were not especially experienced, had never been to the Himalaya before and had left their Sherpas at base camp to go alone into dangerous terrain. She was not impressed, particularly when she later learned from her mother that he was planning to write a book – which he eventually did, entitled Four Against Everest. She suggested it wouldn’t be worth buying, ending her tirade with “God preserve us from more climbers like Sayre.”

And while her work was changing, so was her domestic scene, for she had acquired a dog, a male Lhasa apso, black except for white paws and a bit of white on his breast. She described him as a shaggy-dog type, with “much hair falling down over his eyes and a bushy tail that curls up over his rear end when he’s walking, and isn’t noticeable until he wags it.” His name was Sindhu – Sherpa for “little lion.” To Elizabeth, he looked more like a bear.

Elizabeth left her new housemate to spend Christmas in the United States with her family. She returned to Nepal to find that her relationship with Micky Weatherall was winding down, much to her disappointment, for he was choosing to spend more of his time with the British ambassador’s secretary. Over the past two years, they had developed an easy pattern of spending time together, sharing thoughts, problems, feelings and good times. They continued to see each other because they were in the same social circle, but they no longer attended parties together.

To further complicate her personal life, Elizabeth had the awkward task of declining an offer of marriage from a pleasant American highways engineer, for whom she had no strong personal feelings. And a short time later, she was surprised to be the object of considerable affection from the foreign secretary, Major General Padma Bahadur Khatri, whom she described as “sweet, quite bright and amazingly well read.” She went on to tell her mother, “He’s a terribly nice person, who has the one major drawback of possessing a wife.” Despite the wife, they did see a lot of each other.

Another friend whose company she enjoyed was General Surendra Bahadur Shah. He had a good command of English and they delighted in banter: puns, double entendres and generally joking around at the endless banquets and cocktail parties. He had a silly saying that she can still recite 40 years later:

What a man can do, a cat can’t do,

What a cat can do, a man can’t do,

But here is a man from Kathmandu.

Elizabeth’s lively, and complicated, personal life did not go unnoticed in Kathmandu, where rumours circulated swiftly. One was that she was going to marry Weatherall as a cover-up for an affair she was having with his closest friend, General Mrigendra. It wasn’t true. But it made for good conversation at the parties.

An important expedition was now occupying her time as a reporter: the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition led by Norman Dyhrenfurth, including climbers Jim Whittaker, Barry Bishop, Lute Jerstad, Willi Unsoeld, Colonel Jimmy Roberts and Tom Hornbein. Before they headed off to Everest, Elizabeth met Bishop and Unsoeld and learned of their ambitious plans for a complete traverse of the mountain.

During the expedition, daily press briefings were based on regular reports coming in from base camp. But Elizabeth was privy to additional information when she gained access to ham radio communications from Everest base camp through a friend of hers, Bill Gresham, who was the military attaché at the U.S. embassy. Through these radio transmissions, she obtained interesting bits of information to file at the telegraph office. Reuters used these bits, and at a press briefing the next day, the other reporters protested her “special treatment.” She then had to admit she had listened to the ham operator, pointing out that “the airwaves are free.” But in fact they weren’t. The other reporters didn’t have the access that she had, and she took considerable criticism for that and was discouraged from going into the embassy entirely.

Luckily, her friend loaned her an extra ham radio, which she promptly set up in her bedroom, continuing to listen. Progress on the mountain went smoothly as far as her work was concerned, until the first summit was achieved. Then all hell broke loose. She learned that the American team had not only climbed the summit but later also made the first ascent of a new route and the first traverse of the peak. This was now a really significant and newsworthy climb. Elizabeth knew the other reporters would call the Americans for current information, but she wanted the scoop. So she had her assistant call the American office and tie up the phone line so nobody else could get through. At the same time, she called the telegraph office on an outside line and filed the story. It gave her just a few minutes’ advantage, but it worked. Elizabeth’s Reuters dispatch was the first message out to the world, and it was her story that Pierre Salinger showed to President Kennedy to break the news. As a result, she was in good standing with Reuters but extremely unpopular with her colleagues in Kathmandu. Soon after, Time and Life offered her work covering the story in depth.

Elizabeth considers this the most important climb of the 1960s. It was also one of the first expeditions for which she kept massive and detailed notes. It was not only the first American ascent of Everest, but also the first attempt to traverse the mountain. Their strategy was to tackle the mountain from the normal route to ensure that someone reached the top, and then two members, Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld, split off to make an attempt on the West Ridge. Nobody had seriously looked at it before, so this was a true pioneering effort. It wasn’t without its serious moments – they were running out of time and supplies and they were nearly blown off the ridge – but they made the complete traverse, descending the normal route without fixed lines. The original plan of having the two teams climbing different routes to meet at the summit didn’t work out, because the West Ridge team was slower. On May 1, Jim Whittaker and Nawang Gombu summited. Then, on May 22, the second southside team, consisting of Lute Jerstad and Barry Bishop, reached the summit, waited a bit before beginning their descent and were soon overtaken by darkness. This unplanned bivouac gave them a chance to flash their flashlights and shout to the others coming over from the West Ridge. Finally, the two teams joined for an uncomfortable bivouac in which Willi Unsoeld and Barry Bishop suffered severe frostbite to their feet.

Willi was living in Kathmandu at the time, working as deputy director of the newly established Peace Corps in Nepal. Elizabeth knew him quite well and was friendly with his family. She recalls visiting their house after the Everest climb: “I remember he was lying on his bed. He would play with his toe – one of his little toes – as though it were a loose tooth, just like a child would play with a loose tooth, until finally it came off.” The unexpected bivouac high on Everest eventually cost him nine toes to frostbite.

Shortly after the expedition’s success, Elizabeth threw a cocktail party, with Unsoeld enthroned on a bed as the guest of honour. Other important guests included Prince Basundhara, ex-minister Rishikesh Shaha and General Mrigendra. Unsoeld was interesting, well educated, articulate and passionate about mountaineering and his work in the Peace Corps. He could well express the mystique of climbing. In a letter to her mother, Elizabeth contrasted his style with Ed Hillary’s, whom she affectionately described as “the ex-beekeeper who doesn’t appear to be the least introspective and has quite a hard time with anything more complicated than straight narrative.”

Willi Unsoeld would eventually die in the mountains while guiding a group on Mount Rainier in the United Sates. His daughter, Nanda Devi, also died climbing, on an expedition to the mountain after which she was named. Elizabeth was fond of Willi and describes him as a “very memorable person in my life.”

After the expedition members had all gone home and the press conferences had ended, Elizabeth reflected on the excitement of her Reuters scoop and on the personalities she had encountered, writing to her mother on June 21, “The mountains hereabouts are infested with men mad enough to want to slog to the tops. I sometimes wish they’d all stay home with their wives and kiddies.”

For her 40th birthday, in November 1963, Elizabeth threw a cocktail party. As with all the evening parties in Kathmandu at the time, dress was formal and she appeared in a long gown. Her guest list was impressive: Ranas, royalty, diplomats, political figures, painters, climbers and all the “characters” of Kathmandu. Among them was Micky Weatherall – and his new wife. In three short years, Elizabeth had emerged as an integral part of Kathmandu: she had interesting work, she met fascinating people and she had enough money to live comfortably. She had no intention of leaving.

CHAPTER 8

Learning the Ropes

He would rant and she would go on with her work. It seemed to work for both of them.

In the early spring of 1964, Elizabeth’s routine was interrupted by a two-week adventure when she covered King Mahendra’s tour of western Nepal for Time and Life. They flew to the town of Nepalganj, then jeeped to the nearby jungle. From their camp they helicoptered northward into the wild, rugged hills, where they hunted. Perched high on an elephant, Elizabeth watched while the king indulged himself by killing three tigers and two deer. Their hunting technique was unusual. They would first erect a white cloth fence around a large area that tigers were known to frequent. Then beaters would enter the ring and make enough noise to scare the tiger out into the open. The white cloth created a psychological barrier to the tiger so it was essentially trapped, easy prey for the hunters. Although this method was usually effective, Elizabeth also saw what could happen when a tiger was shot but only wounded. The tiger would become half-crazy from the wound, crashing through the white barrier followed by dozens of army personnel “gallumping” off on their elephants to finish it off.

In the evenings, the king sat for hours while long lines of humble petitioners presented themselves to tell him their needs. A program of song and dance performed by local people would follow. Although Elizabeth realized that travelling in the wilds of Nepal with the king was a unique experience, she was glad to return to the comforts of her apartment and wash off the fatigue and dust. It wasn’t only Elizabeth who found the journey rugged; the king’s frenetic schedule was wearing on him too. But ignoring his doctor’s warnings (his father had died of a heart attack at a young age and Mahendra seemed to have inherited his frailty), he insisted on pursuing his favourite sport.

An expedition of the true adventuring kind came to Elizabeth’s attention when a British group led by Dennis Gray came to town. After weeks of trekking, hacking trails through wild country, fixing ropes and discovering ever more valleys hidden between them and their peak, the team, which included Don Whillans, finally reached the slopes of the 7134-metre Gaurishankar. But horrific ice conditions and avalanches defeated their goal of a first ascent. It was Elizabeth’s first meeting with Don Whillans, someone who would come through Kathmandu again in the ensuing years. He was already famous for his combination of gruffness, great skill and cruel wit. She was amused by him and would sit with him as he smoked cigars and told humorous tales. She told him she thought he was too fat to be a climber, and she was amazed that he added to his calorie intake by drinking enormous quantities of beer in Kathmandu. He explained to her that he’d lose the extra pounds on the expedition, which he did. Questioned about a persistent rumour that she and Whillans were romantically involved, she howls, “I can’t believe that!” She goes on to say that if he was smitten with her, it was not mutual. And so fell the first of the Elizabeth Hawley “lover of famous climbers” myths.

Because of the delicate relations between Nepal and Chinese-occupied Tibet, climbing was banned in Nepal from 1965 to 1969. China regarded all climbers along the border region as spies, and some of them were. Elizabeth thought Sayre’s foray into Tibet in 1962 factored into Nepal’s declaring a halt to all mountaineering. In 1955 a Welsh expedition led by Sydney Wignall went into the far northwestern corner of Nepal and was arrested in Tibet. Forty years later Wignall wrote a book, Spy on the Roof of the World, about his daring deeds for Indian intelligence. And in 1963 a Japanese expedition went into the same area and was also caught. Then, in the mid-1960s, a Scottish missionary ventured across the border to film the brave rebellion of Tibetans in the Kham region against the repressive Chinese and returned to the west with his images. During the Cultural Revolution, the Chinese grew even more paranoid about the border; because of Nepal’s close proximity to China and sensitivity to China’s wishes, Nepal closed its border with Tibet.

It was during this time that a new kind of tourism began to emerge in Kathmandu. As early as 1963, British defence attaché Colonel Jimmy Roberts began to hatch a plan to create a means of employment in Nepal that would enable him to remain there after he retired from the army. He had fond memories of the old days in Kashmir, when agents organized hunting trips with camping gear, porters, guides and equipment, so he decided to try it on a commercial basis. He gathered the necessary gear, placed an ad in Holiday magazine and the world of trekking was born. Mountain Travel was Nepal’s first trekking company and likely the first trekking company in the world.

In his first Mountain Travel newsletter, produced in 1965, Roberts described himself to prospective clients: “With nearly thirty years’ experience of Himalayan exploration and travel, ten years’ residence in or on the border of Nepal and a more or less intimate knowledge of large tracts of the mountains, I can claim to be fairly well qualified to undertake this task.” In a supplement to the newsletter, dated March 1965, he included his price list for the Everest Trek: $500 per person for a 30-day trek. After many requests, he organized and accompanied a small trekking party comprising three American women.

Roberts had a colourful history that prepared him well for this new venture. He was born in India of a doctor in the Indian army. Asia was his home. He too became an army man, spending his first career with the British Gurkhas and finishing as a military attaché. He told Elizabeth ghastly stories of his time in the jungles of Burma with the Gurkhas. It was clear the experience had been harrowing. He went on countless expeditions into the mountains, sending back a certain amount of military intelligence: information about the sentiments of the local people, the border situation, what Nepalis thought about their government, and the general feel of things. When that career wound up, he found himself at loose ends, drinking too much whisky and growing depressed. Then he came up with the idea of a trekking industry and virtually saved his own life. It was during this time that he and Elizabeth became friends.

Roberts’s passion was the mountains – climbing and exploration. His knowledge of climbing history in Nepal was prodigious and he was generous in sharing that knowledge with Elizabeth. He helped familiarize her with the mountaineering world. He was also shy and sensitive, and Elizabeth observed that his feelings were easily hurt. Many people misjudged this shyness, thinking he was a bit dazed or vague. In 1953 John Hunt invited him to join the famous Everest expedition, but only after the expedition had arrived in Nepal. In fact, it wasn’t until Roberts arrived at base camp with some late-arriving oxygen that he was invited to take part. He declined. Considering his already stellar climbing record in the Nepal Himalaya, he was insulted by the belated invitation, and many in Kathmandu thought he was justified.

Roberts was a confirmed bachelor and did not have lady friends. Another rumour made the rounds of Kathmandu that he and Elizabeth were romantically involved, but she sets that one straight too. She doesn’t think he ever made passes at women and believes he didn’t care for women at all. She saw him at parties, often drinking heavily, but never with a woman. One of his closest friends was Pertemba Sherpa, and they adored each other, according to Elizabeth. Pertemba worked with him in the trekking business but eventually left for another company. Roberts was hurt by this apparent betrayal. But he was a brilliant organizer and his idea was not only original but also right for the times, and so the business began to grow.

As it grew, Roberts needed someone in Kathmandu to handle correspondence, because he preferred to be with clients on the treks. He asked Elizabeth for help and she said yes. Her first assignment for the company was to help organize a trek into the region between Dhaulagiri and Annapurna for a physiologist from the University of California’s oceanography lab. She met the client at the plane, took him shopping for a bath towel, soap and other personal things for the trip, answered endless questions and saw him off on the plane. “The helpless scientific type,” she concluded. Other clients began trickling in, attracted by the description of exotic locales, as well as the chance to meet famous explorers such as Eric Shipton (another rumoured lover of Elizabeth’s – also firmly denied), who worked briefly as a Mountain Travel guide.

In the early days of climbing in Nepal, there was no legal requirement for an expedition to be represented by a trekking agent, but even then Mountain Travel coordinated a lot of expedition logistics. Now an employee of Mountain Travel, Elizabeth handled their mail while they were on the mountain. In return, she asked them to send her regular correspondence from the climb, letting her know how they were doing. They did this exchange via a simple cloth mailbag lined with plastic. Using planes, trucks and runners, she stayed on top of each expedition’s progress.

At the same time that Mountain Travel was growing in Kathmandu, a private American investment company named Tiger Tops was bringing travellers to the southern Terai region of Nepal. It was the creation of two Texas oil investors, Herb Klein and Toddy Wynne Jr. They hired John Coapman, the son of missionary schoolteachers in India, to go to the Terai and build a lodge in what was then a game preserve but which later became a park (after the royal family had systematically killed much of the wildlife). This lodge became the first jungle lodge in Nepal.

Tiger Tops quickly became famous as an adventure destination. Between Christmas of 1964 and New Year’s, Elizabeth was a guest at the lodge, where she viewed big game, including tigers, from the back of an elephant. The lodge itself was attractive, with a sleeping building on stilts and a huge circular fireplace in the middle of the dining and lounge building.

By February 1966 business was picking up for Tiger Tops; it was then that John Coapman asked Elizabeth to help out with lodge bookings from her home office in Kathmandu. The lodge only had eight rooms at the time, so she used a school copybook in which she ruled out lines for eight spaces for each day of the week. Although she was already working as a stringer for Time, Life and Reuters, and in her new job at Mountain Travel, she was happy to have the extra income. She answered telegrams, handled Coapman’s correspondence and answered questions from local hotels and travel agencies about Tiger Tops reservations. Within a year, this job began to take an inordinate amount of her time. But though the business was growing, the profits, strangely, were not.

By 1971 the Texas backers of Tiger Tops were tiring of the logistical and administrative problems and questionable profits, although they remained convinced it was a good idea. They were used to making money, not losing it. Tiger Tops was not even able to pay its staff during this time, and Coapman had the unpleasant experience of a general strike. So he fled, not just from Tiger Tops but from Kathmandu altogether. This didn’t affect Elizabeth as much as it could have, because Coapman had fired her shortly before the company went bust. He had a terrific temper and Elizabeth’s strong and stubborn character had been too much for him.

In the meantime, another Kathmandu resident and keen hunter, Jim Edwards, joined up with Chuck McDougal to start a hunting company in Nepal. Jim had had his eye on Tiger Tops, so when Coapman fled, Jim met with the Texans and was appointed manager of the company in 1972. He knew Elizabeth and wooed her back to the company, after which they set about trying to straighten out the mess John had left behind. There were unpaid salaries, dead elephants, staff on strike, no credit in Kathmandu and more. But within a short time they dramatically increased the business.

With their newfound success, they even managed to coax Royal Nepal Airlines into offering daily flights to their lodge – not an easy task. Jim had worked for Pan Am in New York before he came to Nepal, and he was a successful salesperson, not only selling the lodge to tourists but also bringing in more investors. He was generally a charming man, but not always, and Elizabeth didn’t find him to be the easiest person to work for. She recalls that when he became angry with her he would rant and rave on the office intercom, but she knew how to turn the intercom off. He did not. So he would rant and she would go on with her work. It seemed to work for both of them.

At the same time, Jim wanted to open a trekking agency. Elizabeth happened to know that Jimmy Roberts was getting bored with the management of Mountain Travel, so she introduced them to each other with a merger in mind. It worked. Jim continued to bring in new investors for the expanded company. Mountain Travel maintained its own name, as did Tiger Tops, and Jim then went on to open Himalayan River Exploration and two more jungle lodges. It was an exciting time for the travel industry: Mountain Travel was the first adventure travel company in Nepal and the world; Tiger Tops was the first jungle lodge in Nepal. Together they were not only successful, but they changed the way people thought of travel. The company eventually became known as Tiger Mountain.

In 1975 a young British woman, Lisa van Greisen, now Lisa Choegyal, joined Tiger Tops and began to invite a number of high-profile customers to the company, building its international reputation and having some interesting times in the process. It was a parade of stars: Robert Redford, Henry Kissinger, Goldie Hawn and Jimmy Carter. Lisa remembers that for the most part they tried to steer the guests clear of Elizabeth, since she had a brusque manner that the guests did not find endearing. But perhaps Elizabeth was just selective – somehow she managed to sufficiently charm Jimmy Carter into lobbying on her behalf to the king when she had some problems with her journalist accreditation. It didn’t work but she appreciated his efforts. Carter found himself in a curious situation when his round-the-clock bodyguards, who accompanied him to Everest base camp, almost dropped dead from the combined effects of altitude and sheer exhaustion. Kissinger had his own problems down at the Tiger Tops lodge when he attempted to get on an elephant. He couldn’t bring himself to climb on – it turned out he suffered from vertigo. He ended up taking a Jeep tour instead, regaling Lisa Choegyal with stories of high-level intrigue and diplomacy.

Years later, in 1995, one of the Tiger Tops celebrities was Hillary Clinton. Lisa came up with the idea of introducing Hillary to the other Hillary – the knighted one – who happened to be in town. Elizabeth and Lisa choreographed the event, which ended up taking place on the hot tarmac of the airport. Hillary Clinton was particularly enthusiastic, gushing about how excited she was, announcing that her mother had named her after Sir Edmund. Former president Bill Clinton’s bestselling biography of 2004, My Life, repeats the story of his wife being named after the man who first climbed Everest. There is only one problem with this anecdote: Sir Edmund Hillary did not reach the summit of Everest until May 29, 1953, when Hillary Clinton was already five years old. At the time of her birth, he was an obscure New Zealand beekeeper. Both Lisa and Elizabeth doubted her story at the time, but basked in the ink the event produced with headlines like “Hillary meets Hillary.”

As the company matured, Jim created an executive committee, employing Elizabeth in that capacity. Then she became an executive advisor and finally more of a consultant, providing a monthly report that outlined the political, economic and major tourism news in the country.

Elizabeth finally had an opportunity to see a part of Nepal she had frequently written about – the Khumbu, land of the Sherpas and jumping-off point for many important expeditions. It was a place she was eager to experience first-hand. In 1965 she and her friend Barbara Adams joined a small group of Americans living in Kathmandu to fly to Lukla and trek for a couple of weeks. In a letter informing her mother of her plans, Elizabeth reassured her in a postscript: “I won’t be doing any attempts at climbing, you understand – only trekking or hiking.” Back in Kathmandu, having trekked to Namche Bazaar, Thyangboche and Khumjung, she was tired, describing the experience to her mother: “This slogging up steep mountainsides and back down again for hours on end when one is not in training is bound to be tiring.” But she thought it was worth the struggle – for the scenery and to see where and how the Sherpas lived.

March 9, 1967, was an exciting day for those living in Kathmandu, and the beginning of even greater exposure and business for Tiger Tops. A Boeing 707 landed at the Kathmandu airport, the first time an intercontinental jet had ever landed there. Experts had said it was impossible to land a jet on the short, 2103-metre runway in a small valley surrounded by tall mountains, but the Lufthansa jet did it in just 1067 metres. Only a test flight, it was expected to pave the way for more in the future, which is exactly what happened a few months later when the Nepal government opened the airport to Thai International flights direct from Bangkok twice a week. As the Thai flights became established, they became an important supplier of clients for Tiger Tops. But Royal Nepal Airlines wasn’t pleased with the competition and demanded that Thai International pay a substantial fee to keep operating in Nepal. Elizabeth became involved and arranged a meeting between the crown prince’s secretary and some of the senior Thai officials, resulting in a smoothing of relations and a free ticket for Elizabeth on Thai to an Asian city of her choice. By the beginning of June, yet another important transportation link had opened up – a paved road from Kathmandu to the Tibetan border. And in March, a casino opened in Kathmandu’s newest hotel. The owners were a mixed group: Bhutanese, Albanian and Anglo-Indian, and the manager was a former acting prime minister of Bhutan – a real “man about town,” according to Elizabeth. The secret of Nepal was leaking out.

But even as the city became more accessible and cosmopolitan with each passing month, the political situation took a major setback in March 1968 when King Mahendra had a heart attack while hunting tigers in western Nepal. He took two months off to convalesce and made his first public speech in May, sounding perfectly normal. Perhaps it was his brush with mortality that prompted the next momentous political event.

To give the event some context, it is necessary to reflect back to 1960 when the prime minister of Nepal, B.P. Koirala, was arrested and his authority replaced by that of the king. Koirala had been in custody without a trial or in exile ever since. One morning near the end of January, Elizabeth received a call from Koirala’s former home minister, who had lived quietly in Kathmandu since his own release from prison seven years earlier. He invited her to come and have tea with Mrs. Koirala that evening at her home. Elizabeth knew something was up when she arrived to find several other journalists there as well. At about 8:00 p.m., a Russian Jeep belonging to the Nepalese army pulled up with two familiar faces: Koirala and his transport and communications minister, both of whom had been in jail or in exile all these years.

Koirala looked thinner but healthy, despite his prison ordeal. Now some interesting times would unfold, she thought, as these two men, the king and the former prime minister, would once again have to figure out how they were going to join forces – or not – in running the country. She was disappointed when, instead of Koirala, a deputy prime minister who had been suddenly dropped from the cabinet the preceding year was appointed prime minister. Although Kirtinidhi Bista was a pleasant man, she doubted he had the experience and vision of Koirala.

The political intrigue continued when a close political friend of Elizabeth’s, Rishikesh Shaha, who had been arrested three months before under a vague Security Act, was suddenly released on technical grounds. On his way home from court, he was re-arrested, this time with all the technicalities worked out. She concluded that the present government considered him to be a very real political threat and wanted him well and truly out of the way. Personally, it was a discouraging development, as he had always been a reliable source of inside information for her.

With her beloved dog Sindhu showing signs of age, Elizabeth decided to get a nine-month-old Lhasa apso, a male bundle of brown, black and white fur with a face remarkably like an owl’s. He was sweet and affectionate and she named him Tigger. Sindhu wasn’t overjoyed by this new addition and was rather cool to Tigger. But Tigger didn’t notice and initiated endless play with Sindhu and Elizabeth or, if all else failed, with his ball, which he would chase around the apartment, leaping on it, letting it roll away, skidding to a stop to catch it, and sliding beyond it. He was excellent entertainment for Elizabeth, who described him as “so cute it almost hurts.” Sindhu eventually allowed himself the indignity of playing with Tigger, although he appeared to tire easily of the silliness. During an important Hindu festival that fall, poor neurotic Sindhu had to endure fireworks, loud bangs and strange light flashes that scared him half to death. Tigger slept through it all. Sindhu was beginning to show his age. Several of his front teeth had shifted position by 45 degrees and now pointed outward, giving him a bucktoothed effect. At least he could still chew.

In the spring of 1969 a young Fortune researcher from New York, Elaine King, showed up on Elizabeth’s doorstep, stayed a while and eventually worked for her. For the first few days, Elaine explored the sights of Kathmandu. The evening before she left, Elizabeth invited her for a drink at the Annapurna Hotel and asked, “Well, what do you think?” Elaine responded, “I think it’s wonderful.” Then Elizabeth announced she had a job opening at Tiger Tops and offered it to Elaine. It was a foreign-correspondence position in charge of reservations for the company. Initially Elaine said no – she had a definite itinerary in mind for her travels and it didn’t include settling in Nepal. But the offer dangled in front of her and by the time she reached Iran she was seriously questioning her decision. “How many times in your life do you get the chance to run away from home?” she wondered. She had a strong desire to break from the mould and so, at the age of 24, she went back to Kathmandu.

Unfortunately, she neglected to contact Elizabeth in advance. So when they met in Kathmandu, Elizabeth had to break the bad news that the job opening was gone. In the two weeks that had transpired, it had been farmed out to a travel agency. Elaine was devastated. But she “suspended her emotions” and decided she would cope. She obtained a few names from Elizabeth and started looking for work.

She eventually found a position that combined teaching English and helping out with an English-language newsletter. Returning to Elizabeth to let her know, she learned that her friend had spoken to the travel agency and suggested that if they hadn’t found anyone to do the work, she might have just the person for them. Now Elaine had two offers. She weighed the difference between a position teaching English and a job that would give her an opportunity to ride an elephant on occasion. She chose the elephants.

So she went to work for Tiger Tops in the same office as Elizabeth. It was exciting, with clients coming in from all over the world. Sir Edmund Hillary popped in frequently to see Elizabeth – Elaine remembers that she called him Ed.

Elaine’s impression was that Elizabeth always adhered to her standards. She had two staff working for her, a cook and a bearer. “Elizabeth stayed Elizabeth – she didn’t become Nepali.” Although Elizabeth maintained a tough exterior, Elaine believes she was one of the few people allowed to see her softer side. They shared a similar sense of humour and enjoyed hilarious times together. Through Elizabeth, Elaine met a cross section of Kathmandu society, including politicians, royalty, climbers and writers.

But when Tiger Tops went through its darkest hour and Coapman fled, there was no money left to pay staff, so Elaine was let go. She hated to leave and it was a sad day for both of them when Elaine left Kathmandu. Over the years they remained in touch, partially through the “newsy” Christmas letters that Elizabeth claims to send. Elaine laughingly describes them as more “cryptic” than “newsy.”

In addition to Elizabeth’s work in the travel industry, she was still a reporter. One of her dispatches was on an important American delegation in Kathmandu, led by U.S. Vice-president Spiro Agnew. She actually dreaded the event because, in her opinion, “the man involved doesn’t deserve all this attention.” But she was expected to be intimately involved with the advance arrangements, as well as the visit itself. There were rumours of impending student demonstrations and hippie protests, but they didn’t come to pass and the visit came off quite well. “He put his foot in his mouth only once,” she reported to her mother, and then it wasn’t that important. He referred to Nepal as India, a common occurrence for visiting dignitaries. His speechwriters had prepared him well and the visit was mercifully short.

Elizabeth was beginning to realize that mountaineering news was an important part of reporting for an international wire service correspondent in Nepal. In those pioneering days of first ascents and mountain exploration, there was a lot of media interest in expeditions, much more so than now. So she began meeting all the expeditions coming into Kathmandu and keeping files on them. This work, and the personalities involved, became a bigger part of her life each year, consuming a huge amount of time. Her life became devoted to mountaineering and it became increasingly difficult to separate Elizabeth Hawley from mountaineering in Nepal.

Her education in history and her experience as a researcher in New York prepared her for precise data collection, and statistics appealed to her. Her Reuters stories were objective, but her real opinions often came through when writing to her mother about the various expeditions and personalities. In the spring of 1969 she told her mother about an American expedition tackling Dhaulagiri I, on the western side of the Kali Gandaki Valley in the Central Himalaya. The leader was Boyd Everett, a securities analyst when he wasn’t climbing. She described him as “the coldest person in a body that’s still alive whom I’ve ever met.” She thought he would have been more at home among his stocks and bonds than in the mountains of Nepal. News began to trickle out from the expedition that things had gone disastrously wrong: an ice cliff high on the mountain had collapsed on seven climbers, sending them all to their deaths. As climber Al Read recounted in his report for the American Alpine Journal, “Death is not uncommon in mountaineering. Its cold fingers follow you into the rotton [sic] couloir. You see it above as you traverse below the cornice.… Most certainly it stalks in the incessant animation of an active Himalayan glacier.” But on Dhaulagiri he saw something on another scale. “This was annihilation.”

Elizabeth was thoroughly involved in this tragedy. She arranged rescue flights, filed news reports and made arrangements with the next of kin. She saw a great deal of the expedition members, both before and after, and, except for the leader, thought they were a pleasant bunch of men. She was convinced they hadn’t fully understood the immensity of the mountain before they tackled it.

By this time Mountain Travel was handling all climbing expeditions’ logistical needs in Kathmandu, and Jimmy Roberts sent much of the work in Elizabeth’s direction. They worked as a team. She credits him as an important influence, helping her in the early days of mountaineering reporting and giving her important archival materials. He explained the significance of certain expeditions and gave her a solid grounding in the history of Himalayan climbing.

It was he who told her about how Nepal had opened its doors to climbing in 1950, and of the early expeditions with climbers and explorers like Maurice Herzog on Annapurna and Charles Houston and Bill Tilman, and later Raymond Lambert, on Everest. She didn’t arrive in Nepal an expert on mountaineering; she became one, largely with the help of Jimmy Roberts.

While she was still learning the ropes from Roberts, it was Mike Cheney who did most of the actual reporting to the various alpine journals. Elizabeth gave him the basic information from her meetings with the climbers and he crafted it into a report. She found Cheney to be a peculiar gentleman. He was an ex-Gurkha like Roberts, but she didn’t consider his climbing background to be impressive and thought he misrepresented himself as an expert in his reports.

In the American Alpine Journal in the 1970s and ’80s, it was Cheney’s byline at first, then both his and Elizabeth’s, and finally only Elizabeth’s after Cheney died in the late ’80s. Upon his death, she contacted the journals and magazines to offer her services, although pointing out that she would follow a different style. The difference in style had to do with editorializing. Cheney often included his own commentary. Elizabeth thought personal opinion was inappropriate and said she would be happy to provide a list of all expeditions, a list of expedition leaders, basic information on each climb and a list of deaths, as well as a narrative of the season’s climbs – but no editorial comment. Although she suspects her opinion may have surfaced between the lines at times, she avoided overt editorializing. She didn’t feel qualified to provide subjective commentary because she wasn’t a climber and she didn’t have the “big picture” that some people thought she did. She didn’t feel entitled. Over time, this approach became a point of discussion – and a bone of contention – for climbers who read her work.

However, Elizabeth was generous about sharing her knowledge, particularly with climbers, and especially if she sensed a pioneering effort in the making. American climber Carlos Buhler remembers an example when he was searching for specific information about an obscure face on Annapurna. He questioned Elizabeth and was surprised to be entrusted with a file from her collection, handed to him with, “Carlos, promise that you will bring this back in perfect condition. You may take it down and get it photocopied.” He was astounded by the gesture – her complete folder on Annapurna, a piece of her life’s work, entrusted to him. He vowed at that moment to never, ever withhold a piece of information from Elizabeth Hawley, because he finally understood that it wasn’t just for her records and her reporting; it was for the climbers of the future – those who would come and tell her about their dreams and be helped by her in turn.

But if she was going to share information, she insisted on intelligent, well-researched questions. She was impatient with people who would demand, “Liz, tell us all about Dhaulagiri.” She interacted best with people who were prepared and specific in their needs.

CHAPTER 9

A Friend for Life

“Memshab, we have accident.”

“What happened, Kumar?”

“We have bad accident – plane crash.”

One of the most outstanding friends from Elizabeth’s years in Nepal was Sir Edmund Hillary. He was already a celebrity in Kathmandu when she first arrived because of his 1953 ascent of Everest, and it was inevitable the two would meet.

She grasped the significance of his climb in several ways. First, of course, was the fact that Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had reached the summit and come back alive. Second, she understood the difficulty of the section high on the mountain, named the Hillary Step, and that by solving this particular riddle Hillary had found the key to the summit. “He forged a route using his knuckles, and God knows what all, to go up a crack and find himself at the top of it and pull himself over,” she wrote to her mother.

Elizabeth understood that Hillary’s background had prepared him for this achievement: his climbing experiences, his fitness level and his ambition. But she also instinctively recognized the difficulty he faced being thrust so quickly onto the world stage. “So here he was, going from a humble, modest beekeeper to a world hero.” As she grew to know him, her respect grew. “This man has been a remarkable person in many ways, but one facet of his being remarkable is that he has never lost his modesty, he has never lost his unassuming ways and it didn’t go to his head.”

In Elizabeth’s early days in Kathmandu, Hillary returned to Nepal to climb, but it wasn’t just for climbing that he was drawn back. He began bringing New Zealanders with him who were capable of building things. Using local materials and local help, they began building schools at the urging of Nepalis. This developed into the Himalayan Trust, which became another link in the deep and complex friendship between Hillary and Elizabeth, and another important source of work for her. Her responsibilities grew over the years to include the logistics of shipping, travel arrangements, scheduling, hiring, finances and much more.

The Himalayan Trust started modestly, as befits a modest man. Hillary had developed a great affection for the Sherpa people. He wanted to give something back to them in return for their help and friendship, so he enlisted the financial backing of the World Book Encyclopedia company to build a school in the village of Khumjung in 1961. It was the first of many schools he built, as well as bridges, pipelines for fresh water, hospitals and airfields. The funding for these projects was always a challenge and it occupied much of Hillary’s time and effort. By 1972 Elizabeth’s official role was to manage the finances and negotiate the necessary permissions from the government for all the trust’s projects.

Another of Elizabeth’s close friends, Boris Lissanevitch, met with trouble in early 1970 when he was arrested for collecting Nepalese and Tibetan works of art. He and his wife were avid collectors of statues, woodcarvings and thankas, and recently there had been a concerted hunt for people dealing in items stolen from temples. Elizabeth thought it was strange that the authorities went after him. She knew his mother-in-law dealt in antiques, but this was hardly unusual in Kathmandu. She was convinced it was an excuse to get Boris out of the way. Prior to this, he had done all of the catering for royal functions. Then the king and his brother opened the Soaltee Hotel, and it occurred to the wife of one of his brothers that perhaps the Soaltee, rather than Boris, should do the catering. So they effectively moved him aside. While he was in custody, he closed down the Royal Hotel.

It took some time and negotiating, but by April he was free. What did he do? He created the Yak and Yeti Hotel. But Boris was not a businessman. All his businesses were financial failures. Prince Basundhara had bankrolled the Royal Hotel, and it was the prince who found an Indian investor, as well as the World Bank, for the Yak and Yeti. Boris hired architects and designers to realize his vision, and for a while it looked promising. But he eventually fell out with his major investor and was not even present when the hotel opened.

Boris then opened a series of failing restaurants. Many said they were unsuccessful because his middle son had his hand in the till to feed his drug habit. Boris once confided to Elizabeth, “Look at my three sons. One’s a nymphomaniac, one’s a kleptomaniac and one’s a dipsomaniac.” Elizabeth was inclined to agree, but blamed their upbringing. They grew up in the upstairs apartments of the Royal Hotel and were raised by a woman she described as an “ignorant, superstitious, illiterate, fat Newari nurse” who had no control over the boys.

Boris himself was tremendous company and a great entertainer. In his apartment was a huge living room, often full of fabulous guests: Agatha Christie, Freya Stark, movie stars, politicians, climbers and royalty. Sir Edmund was impressed and amused by Elizabeth’s eclectic friends. “No question, she really liked people who were interesting, who had done things, who were not stuffy … she liked the unusual.” She relished the friendships she made with these quirky characters, as well as her acquaintances with the more established and important members of the community. Although she was friendly with several royals, Sir Edmund recalled that those closest to her were not the “most respected members of the royal family.” They were a little on the outside of the circle of power, and he doubted she had much to do with the king and queen themselves. Hillary never understood her friendship with Barbara Adams, though. He saw Barbara as a “real character, although … not one that fit into Liz Hawley’s sort of ideas.” Many saw Adams as Elizabeth’s polar opposite: she was flamboyant, outgoing and outrageous. Nevertheless, the two were close friends for a long time. They even went on an adventurous train trip across Russia together, something that was regarded as quite a challenge in those days and something Hillary suspected they endured rather than enjoyed.

Two decades after Hillary’s ascent of Everest, climbers were already contriving various stunts, hoping to be remembered in the history of the highest mountain. The mountaineering world was amused in 1970 when the Japanese skier Yuichiro Miura attempted to ski down Everest. A film titled The Man Who Skied Down Everest was made, but according to Elizabeth he did nothing of the sort. “He didn’t ski down Everest. He didn’t start at the top, and he damned near killed himself skidding to a lucky halt just before a gaping crevasse at the start of the icefall.”

At the same time, a climb of real significance was taking place on the great South Face of Annapurna. Chris Bonington put together a strong team: British climbers Don Whillans, Martin Boysen, Mick Burke, Dougal Haston and Nick Estcourt, as well as American Tom Frost. They struggled and pushed their way through a dangerous, technical route (and some difficult interpersonal wrangling), finally placing a potential summit pair – Haston and Whillans – in place. High on the mountain they endured screaming winds and extreme cold, but they kept going. With a superhuman effort, they reached the top at 2:30 p.m. on May 27, 1970. It was a great mountaineering story, marred by the death of Ian Clough, who was killed by falling ice as the team was leaving the mountain. Reports of the expedition reverberated in the mountaineering world and throughout Britain. Elizabeth, a relatively neophyte reporter on mountaineering matters at that time, understood the significance of this climb – a fundamental shift from the Himalayan ridges onto the more difficult and dangerous faces – and reported it accordingly.

One year later, in 1971, the disastrous International Himalayan Expedition came to Everest. Elizabeth was involved with the team, in charge of their communications with the outside world. In return for this work, she was given their exclusive reports, which she sent directly to Reuters.

The expedition was something of an experiment in understanding and cooperation among nations. There were representatives from 13 countries, plus a BBC film crew of nine and an Australian journalist, bringing the total to 30. It was co-led by Norman Dyhrenfurth and Colonel Jimmy Roberts. Their approach was two-pronged: one team would attempt the Southwest Face and the other would ascend the West Ridge along its entire length. But relationships came unravelled, with expedition members refusing to carry loads, leaving the mountain or trying to change objectives to the South Col route, while Dyhrenfurth remained adamant that it was the Southwest Face route they needed to climb. An Indian member of the expedition was killed early on during the ascent of the Southwest Face, a tragic event that added momentum to the resistance. Two Swiss, one Italian and one French climber quit early – referred to by Dyhrenfurth as “the revolt of the Latins.” The Frenchman, Pierre Mazeaud, said to Elizabeth, “I will not be a Sherpa for the Anglo-Saxons” (the Anglo-Saxons being the Americans and Japanese). Elizabeth’s wry comment was, “That’s the first time I ever heard of a Japanese described as an Anglo-Saxon.” He continued at a press conference, “It is not only I, Pierre Mazeaud, a member of the Chamber of Deputies, who has been insulted, but is La France!”

Eventually, Elizabeth’s private opinion of the group turned to scorn, not just for the leader, Norman Dyhrenfurth, but for members of the team as well. “It was a shame that Norman didn’t choose his team much more carefully and get them still in their primes and without such enormous egos,” she commented.

Dyhrenfurth defended the team and his leadership and, although he did a certain amount of finger-pointing (particularly at the Latins), tried to take the high road and examine why individual priorities and objectives changed during the course of the difficult climb. There are some who said that the harsh criticism from Elizabeth was somewhat opportunistic and that her commentary would have been completely the opposite had the expedition succeeded. But she defends herself, saying she never printed anything other than the facts. “And if the facts tell the story, then so be it!”

Elizabeth herself was getting an international reputation. The Bangkok World wrote a flattering piece about her in August 1970 titled “She Wears Two Hats.” And the Kuala Lumpur Straits Times headlined an article about her with “A Hippie Though She Does Not Look Like It.” During a visit with her parents in California in 1973, Elizabeth did an interview in their home with the San Jose Mercury News. The questions for this “Socially Yours” column indicate a reporter with no real knowledge of Nepal but a great deal of curiosity for Elizabeth. She was asked the usual questions about why she went to Nepal, why she stayed and how she made a living. Showing her journalistic savvy of what readers of such a column might like to know, Elizabeth answered with some quaint anecdotes and exotic images. In describing her various “hats,” one of which was Tiger Tops, she explained, “It’s the only airport in the world where the passengers are met by elephants.” On her work with mountaineering expeditions: “They rely upon me if they need something such as a rescue aircraft.…” And on Hillary’s Himalayan Trust, the reporter wrote, “We sensed her enthusiasm for its founder, Sir Edmund Hillary, conqueror of Mount Everest.…” Elizabeth made sure they understood his contribution. “He is one man who has taken something out of a country and is giving something back.” She went on to describe him: “Sir Edmund is a casual, genial, friendly sort of person, but he is no puppy dog wagging his tail. He knows where he is going. He is the guiding light of the Himalayan Trust, whose purpose is to help the people of Nepal.” Asked about her social life, she explained that a lot of her friends were foreigners, but she was also close to several members of the Rana family, which had ruled Nepal for more than a hundred years. She described the social whirl of cocktail and dinner parties and tried to give readers some understanding of life without television. It was a feature article with a large photo of a smiling Elizabeth reclining on her mother’s sofa.

But the reality of Elizabeth’s life in Nepal was a little less romantic. By the end of 1971 most flights into and out of Nepal had ceased. The country was more or less cut off due to the conflict between India and Pakistan. Virtually everything came into Nepal through India, but India’s preoccupation with the war meant that Nepal was a low priority. Banks in Nepal no longer accepted foreign cheques; the mail and newspapers arrived only erratically and gasoline shortages were common. The tourism industry temporarily ground to a halt.

Then Nepal was stunned in January 1972 when King Mahendra, at the age of fifty-one, had a heart attack and died less than twenty-four hours later. It happened while on a hunting expedition, his greatest passion. Mahendra’s sudden disappearance from public life affected everyone, as there was not a single political decision in Nepal that had not required his approval. He was cremated at Pashupatinath, where all royal family members are cremated. Elizabeth stood with other members of the press on a knoll across the river from the site. They had a perfect view of the ceremony, which she described as unforgettable. It was dark when Prince Basundhara brought the late king’s body to the cremation site. The body was placed on the cedar wood pyre, which was then solemnly lit. As the fire came to life, cedar and incense combined to produce a pungent fragrance that billowed across the river. Suddenly, the fire exploded into a huge flame and soared skyward as a great orange full moon gradually rose over the hills.

The new king, 26-year-old Birendra, was not present; he was in the palace, since kings of Nepal do not participate in their predecessor’s cremation ceremony or in any other way publicly grieve. He was expected to make some changes and Elizabeth wondered how difficult it would be for him. He seemed to be an impatient man who would probably not tolerate the delays Mahendra had allowed, although she understood that many of those delays were caused by Mahendra’s inability to delegate authority. But there were other major differences between the two. Birendra had been raised in a different era. He had only just been born when the Rana rule was drawing to a close. He had travelled widely and spent five years at Eton, one at Harvard and part of a year at the University of Tokyo. Despite his exposure to the modern world, Birendra had an ominous connection with an ancient prophecy. Two centuries earlier a prophet had predicted that the direct descendants of the founding monarch, Prithvi Narayan Shah, would rule for 10 generations – and no more. If this were true, Birendra would be the last.

Another expedition was in town, again for the Southwest Face of Everest. Elizabeth was very involved, dealing with their mail, film shipments and entertainment. The British team members included Don Whillans, Doug Scott and Hamish MacInnes. But difficulties arose, particularly between the British members and their leader, Dr. Karl Herrligkoffer.

Elizabeth speculated privately whether these multination attempts were doomed before they set out. It was easy to understand why Herrligkoffer had included the three Brits, for they were experienced on Everest and had climbed high on this face the previous year. But their climbing strategies were not compatible and this led to misunderstandings. The Brits thought the Germans were squandering their energy and resources, and the Germans thought the Brits were lazy. “Whillans, for instance, likes a lie-in, a cup of tea and a cigar or two before he starts work, and it is after 11:00 a.m. or even noon before he sets out for the day’s climb at great altitudes,” she wrote.

The expedition was also plagued by strikes by the Sherpas, and Herrligkoffer had to fly back to Munich twice during the climb to get more climbing equipment to satisfy these demands. He finally left the expedition early and it fell apart soon after.

By fall of 1972 the Brits were back again on the Southwest Face route. Led by Chris Bonington, the strong British team included Jimmy Roberts as co-leader, Doug Scott, Mick Burke, Dougal Haston, Hamish MacInnes and Nick Estcourt. Elizabeth was in charge of their communications, receiving letters from them periodically and reporting their progress. But by November they too gave up, at 8230 metres, because of terrible cold and wind. She sympathized with them and felt they had deserved the summit.

A death in the Khumbu Icefall strained her friendship with Chris Bonington. It was near the end of the expedition, and though Bonington did not have permission for Australian Tony Tighe to go any farther than base camp, he had allowed him to go into the icefall a couple of times. The last time in the icefall, a sérac collapsed, burying Tighe under hundreds of tons of ice. Bonington received some terse reprimands from the authorities in Kathmandu for defying their regulations, and he felt Elizabeth had made too big a story of the “non-permission” part of the tragedy. The headline in the London Daily Telegraph on November 16, 1972, read “Bonington May Face Ban Over Everest Death,” referring to a threat by Nepalese authorities to restrict Bonington’s chances of returning to Nepal. He was saddened by Tighe’s death but irritated with Elizabeth for her troublesome reporting. They had words. As Elizabeth remembers the incident, “He has a hot temper. I have felt the wrath of his temper once or twice. But I have forgiven him.”

Her work was not limited to tourism and climbing, however, for she was still reporting political news for Reuters. A big event early in 1973 was Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s visit to Kathmandu. Elizabeth was impressed with her, particularly at a press conference where she and other reporters were asking difficult questions. Gandhi managed to evade their questions, yet kept them all happy. “She may be short, but she packs plenty of poise and mental agility,” she wrote her mother.

The expeditions continued to arrive. Next was a huge Italian team with 64 members led by Guido Monzino, bound for Everest. Two helicopters were enlisted to airlift food and equipment over the icefall from base camp to Camp II in the Western Cwm. Early in the expedition one of the helicopters crashed, so another was requested. They were supposed to use the helicopters strictly for rescue, but the climbers openly ignored the order, having fresh vegetables delivered on a regular basis to Camp II.

Elizabeth didn’t think much of the size of the enterprise, and she was supported in her thinking by Hillary, who was in the country working on his hospital and school construction projects. Hillary was outspoken about it, providing excellent grist for the Reuters mill: “What Signor Monzino has shown is that if you have a couple of platoons of alpine troops, which is what he has, and a couple of helicopters, which is what he has, and unlimited equipment and funds, which he also has, then the climbing of Everest by the South Col route is a relatively straightforward procedure. We shouldn’t regard this as a mountaineering expedition … it’s more of a training program … it has nothing to do with mountaineering.” The Italian embassy subsequently asked for an apology from Hillary. In 1993 at the celebration in Kathmandu of the 40th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest, a delegate from Italy stood up and denounced him. Hillary responded that he hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, but his opinion remained unchanged.

At the other end of the mountaineering spectrum, Elizabeth was also reporting on a small American expedition to Dhaulagiri I. One of the climbers was the young John Roskelley from Spokane, Washington. After 20 days above 7132 metres, Roskelley, Lou Reichardt and Nawang Samden summited, but the price was high for Roskelley. Back in base camp, the expedition doctors thawed his frozen feet, and over the next three days Sherpas carried him down the glacier and across two passes to the village of Tukche, where a plane arrived carrying the finance minister of Nepal to an event in the district. The minister graciously offered to walk the 70 miles back to Pokhara so that Roskelley wouldn’t have to. When Elizabeth saw him back in Kathmandu, his toes were badly frostbitten. But from what she observed of this outspoken American climber, she was sure he would recover and return to Nepal.

A Hawley Reuters scoop occurred in 1973 when Elizabeth enlisted the help of a Himalayan Trust doctor. A Japanese team was on Everest trying to be the first to climb the Southwest Face and the first to climb the mountain in autumn. As a result, the Japanese media was giving it a lot of coverage. The team was providing media reports direct from base camp via a runner. As in 1963 with the American Everest expedition, Elizabeth was determined not to be outdone. So she asked the Kunde Hospital doctor to engage a local Sherpa runner to go up to the base camp to find out what was going on. The Sherpa befriended the runner hired by the Japanese, who was on his way to the Lukla airport to report that a Japanese climber had reached the top (not by the Southwest Face). Elizabeth’s Sherpa runner obtained the details of the climb from the expedition’s runner and then sped down the trail to the hospital, leaving the other runner enjoying drinks in a bar. Her runner gave the news to the doctor, who wrote down what the Sherpa told him and sent the news in a hospital mailbag by air to Kathmandu. Elizabeth received the bag with pleasure, but then she had to decipher the somewhat confusing contents. The two climbers’ names had been transmitted orally from a Japanese to a Sherpa to another Sherpa to a New Zealand doctor to an American correspondent – one Elizabeth Hawley. One particularly confusing name could have been Kartok, Kato, Kano or Kondo. She decided on Kato and filed the story. Thirty years later, Elizabeth describes the incident with glee. “Their expedition had a mail runner, too, but my guy was faster – by a day. We got that story! The other reporters complained and the AFP guy was a particular moaner and groaner … I got chastised … I was naughty!”

In fact, the moaning Agence France-Presse guy did more than groan; he caused Elizabeth serious trouble. Within a year the Ministry of Tourism banned her from reporting on mountaineering expeditions. By 1975 her “very friendly competitors,” as she described them, had lodged a complaint with the minister of tourism, and that cinched it. She was not even allowed on the ministry premises to learn of mountaineering news. She solved that problem through a friendly Kyoto correspondent she had previously cooperated with. He would go to the ministry and pick things up for her, but she could still not report on what she learned.

The first expedition attempting to climb one of the highest peaks in winter arrived in Nepal in December 1974. The Polish team led by the famous mountaineer Andrzej Zawada had 8516-metre Lhotse as its goal. They reached 8250 metres by Christmas Day, but continuous high winds and bitterly cold temperatures finally defeated them. A new variation on the Himalayan climbing theme was born – winter ascents.

By spring the Hawley household was facing serious problems, as both Tigger and Sindhu were sick with distemper. The vet attended to them both, but within two weeks her “dear, lovable, lively Tigger” died during the night. She missed him terribly. The indestructible Sindhu hung on, although his near blindness caused him to wander from one piece of furniture to the next, bouncing and colliding as he went. It didn’t seem to bother him, though – he would simply change direction and carry on. Now age 17, he had become an institution.

Upon returning from a short trip to Europe, Elizabeth became the proud owner of a new apso dog. The three-month-old puppy was “lively,” causing considerable annoyance to poor old Sindhu but providing endless entertainment value for Elizabeth, chasing and chewing everything in sight. She couldn’t think of anything better to name him, so finally settled on Tigger II.

She had also been tasked with finding the Hillarys a house in Kathmandu, which she did by mid-January. When Sir Edmund, his wife, Louise, and their daughter Belinda arrived, Elizabeth threw a fabulous welcoming party. One of her goals was to ensure that the country’s powerful and elite were aware of the important work Hillary was doing in Nepal, and to that end she stacked the party with notables such as Prince Basundhara, the chairman of the newly formed Nepal Mountaineering Association, the American ambassador and others. The big event of the season, though, was the king’s coronation, which took place on February 24, 1975. The city dressed itself up for the who’s who of the world’s leaders arriving for the event: Prince Charles of England, the crown prince and crown princess of Japan, the husband of the queen of Denmark, the president of Sri Lanka, the crown prince of Laos and many others. The city was aglow with decorative lights and coloured lanterns. The round of official parties and receptions and black-tie dinners was endless, and Elizabeth was in the thick of it. She watched the colourful, elephant-back procession and the king’s speech to the public, where he spoke about his country’s needs and aspirations. It was very festive and she felt a little let down when it was over.

Shortly after, she received the sad news that her father had finally succumbed to the wear and tear of a number of illnesses. Although he had been ill for years, the end came quite quickly. Elizabeth was concerned about her mother and her ability to cope with the logistical and legal matters she was now faced with. Elizabeth offered to come over to help, but her mother managed it on her own, efficiently and competently. She urged her mother to come to Nepal for an extended visit, and to this suggestion Florelle said yes, she would come later in the year.

No sooner had her father died than Elizabeth became a major player in yet another tragedy, this one closer to home. Hillary was in the Solu region building the Phaphlu hospital, and his wife and daughter were in Kathmandu, so he decided to charter a Royal Nepal Airlines flight to bring them and their dog to Phaphlu. The New Zealand pilot, Peter Shand, had met them the night before at the British embassy and was thrilled to have them as his passengers. But his fatal mistake the next morning was that in his haste to get going he failed to do a walk around the plane – wiggling the flaps, turning the propeller, jiggling the rudder and checking everything as pilots of small planes do. They piled in and took off in a southerly direction. He immediately had trouble negotiating a turn to the east, so he attempted to return to the airfield. He managed the turn to the north but was unable to finish the turn to land the plane. At the north end of the runway was a steep drop-off to the river, and it was into that great hole that the plane crashed. The pilot had failed to remove the wedge from one or both ailerons, and the plane’s ability to fly was tragically compromised.

At 7:30 a.m., Elizabeth’s helper, Kumar, was at the airport and Elizabeth was at home asleep. The phone rang.

“Memshab, we have accident.”

“What happened, Kumar?”

“We have bad accident – plane crash.”

Impatient, she demanded that someone else come to the phone to verify – but it was true, the plane had crashed and everyone had been killed. She rushed to the airport and came upon an American helicopter pilot who was about to take his mother out sightseeing. Elizabeth knew him and implored him to take her to Phaphlu where Hillary was working. She returned home, changed her clothes, wrote and filed the story for Reuters and flew to Phaphlu. She landed at the Phaphlu airfield, and Hillary later told her that when he saw the helicopter fly in and her get off, he knew something terrible had happened. She told him the news and his first response was, “Oh shit, how will I tell the parents?”

His in-laws had been helping him with the building project, so he had to get on with the sad task – immediately. A few days later, Louise and Belinda were cremated on the banks of the Bagmati River in the untouchables area because, of course, they were not caste people.

Hillary’s other children, daughter Sarah and son Peter, were summoned to Nepal and they now huddled together trying to grasp the significance of what had happened, to contemplate a future without two members of their family. Initially they went back to Hillary’s rented house, but he soon retreated to Elizabeth’s place. He couldn’t sleep. Every night they ate at Elizabeth’s apartment or another friend’s house. Everyone wanted to feed them and look after them, but what they really needed was privacy and a good friend. After some days in Kathmandu, they returned to Phaphlu as a family group, trying to find some peace in the mountains, in their work and through each other.

Years later, Elizabeth sadly recalled that watching her friend struggle with such a monumental loss was the most difficult week of her life. She was swamped with arrangements regarding the tragedy. She arranged for last-minute flight changes for family members, tried to get reimbursements for flights not used, negotiated the termination of the rental contract for their house and answered numerous letters of condolence on his behalf. She did her best to protect them from all the people who wanted to be around them, including the press.

Though Hillary busied himself with construction projects, they kept in close touch and he was deeply grateful for her help. In a letter written shortly after the accident, he said, “I can’t claim that all is light and joy here but life goes steadily on and we have many happy moments amongst our family group.… We hear few Sherpa laughs, I fear, and I find the nights rather long but I have been assured that time cures all that sort of thing. Thanks for your terrific help – it’s something I won’t easily forget. I am very much in your debt.”

After a couple of weeks, Hillary and his children were back in Kathmandu staying with Elizabeth before heading to the United States and New Zealand. She found him to be somewhat improved, although suffering from lack of sleep and depression. She was worried about him going back to his home in New Zealand. Her worries were justified, as he wrote to her shortly after: “Everything could almost be normal if the house didn’t seem so empty without Louise and Belinda … and if I didn’t have this unworthy ambition to be dead. No doubt I will become all jolly again in due course but it does seem to be taking a little time.”

It was apparent to Elizabeth that some of the Hillary spirit had been broken; whether it was temporary or permanent she wasn’t sure. He referred to it as a loss of the “Hillary dynamo,” although he wondered if it had ever existed other than in the minds of the press. His health was poor and he was impatient with situations he would have coped with easily in the past.

One such incident involved his sister, who, while helping him build the hospital at Phaphlu, was nearly killed by soldiers using live ammunition while engaged in military exercises. A small bomb landed near her, nearly blowing her off a high trestle. Metal shrapnel flew overhead, barely missing a number of Sherpas and patients awaiting treatment. Hillary lost his patience and rushed to censure the soldiers, but immediately felt bad that he had lost his temper. He wrote to Elizabeth: “Tell me, Liz – should one be calm when one’s sister is nearly blown up? Clearly I would never have made it in the diplomatic world.” He underestimated himself on that point, as time would tell.

By 1984 Hillary had been invited by the New Zealand government to become high commissioner to India and Nepal. It was a great honour, but Elizabeth wondered how he would handle both this and his Himalayan Trust responsibilities, speculating that more of them would fall her way. He accepted the post and was duly installed in Delhi as high commissioner, a title that was the equivalent in rank to ambassador.

In May 1975 Elizabeth met Junko Tabei, the Japanese climber who had just become the first woman to climb Everest. It was an all-women expedition except for the Sherpas. Because of the male Sherpas, there was speculation that Tabei was “pulled and pushed” by the men to get to the summit, but Elizabeth didn’t buy it. She could see that Tabei was a strong climber and a determined lady. “She had her eye on Everest and she went out and climbed it.”

Although Elizabeth was impressed with Tabei’s determination to climb the mountain, she was somewhat cynical about the “first woman to climb Everest” objective. To her mother, she confided that she didn’t consider it the most exciting event she could think of, but conceded that it did sell newspapers. Her Reuters report opened with: “The first woman to conquer Mount Everest has come down from the clouds around the summit and talked of her love of adventure, science and music – and of her dislike of public life.”

As Elizabeth grew to know Tabei better over the years, her respect grew, and some of that respect came from what Tabei did after Everest. She continued climbing, including two more 8000-metre peaks – Shishapangma and Cho Oyu – and in other mountain ranges all over the world. Tabei stays in touch with Elizabeth by sending her an annual Christmas card filled with lists of the climbing she has done in the previous year. Elizabeth Hawley, master keeper of lists, views Tabei’s annual climbing list with approval. She also approves of Tabei’s efforts to help fight pollution in the Everest region with her donation of an incinerator at the Lukla airfield. Her assessment of this diminutive, record-breaking woman was surprisingly measured: “Quite modest … not a great climber in terms of expedition climbing abilities, but a good climber and a determined one.”

The great climbing accomplishment of the year, though, was the British Everest Southwest Face Expedition led by Chris Bonington. The team was a hand-picked group that functioned well throughout most of the expedition, advancing the lines up increasingly difficult pitches on or ahead of schedule. By September 24, Doug Scott and Dougal Haston were on the summit. They arrived at the top in the twilight, noting the strange metal structure the Chinese had brought to the summit earlier that year. Now began their ordeal – the reality of a high-altitude bivouac. They reached the South Summit and dug a hole for some shelter, boiled up some tea and spent most of the rest of the night rubbing each other’s feet to avoid frostbite. They survived the night at an astonishing 8748 metres.

Two days later, still ahead of schedule, Bonington okayed a second summit attempt, by Martin Boysen, Mick Burke, Pete Boardman and Pertemba Sherpa. Boardman and Pertemba made the summit and on the way down met Mick Burke resting a bit before continuing on. Boysen had already turned back. Within an hour, weather conditions had deteriorated dramatically and it was the last anyone saw of Mick Burke. What had seemed an uncontested success was now marred by tragedy.

Despite the death of Burke, Bonington took an enormous amount of pleasure – and pride – in this effort, proud of his team and of his own logistical and climbing performance on the mountain. He credited a lot of the success to the team of Sherpas, whom he had never seen carry such heavy loads and bring with them such an excitement and positive spirit.

Elizabeth gave a lot of credit to Bonington, who was, in her opinion, the most outstanding climber of the 1970s. Even though he did not summit on either of his signature climbs, the South Face of Annapurna or the Southwest Face of Everest, she believes he was the force behind their success. “He showed the way to great face climbs on 8000-metre mountains, instead of just going up ridges in accordance with the history of mountaineering development.” She laughs at her memory of Bonington after the Annapurna climb, when he said to her, “Never again a high mountain, never again a big expedition.” Of course, he was back two years later. She learned never to believe a mountaineer when he says never! The 1970s and ’80s were not kind to these pioneers, though. As Elizabeth points out, “A whole generation of British climbing has been decimated … Bonington is alive, but most of his friends are gone.”

Their relationship has had its ups and downs. Bonington remembers her being “a bit of a battle-axe” in the early ’70s but says she has definitely softened and has contributed a great service to the mountaineering community in sharing information and going the extra mile to help. He recalls their interviews as “very intense” because she knew the terrain and was precise in her questioning. One of the star climbers on the Everest expedition, according to Bonington, was Pertemba Sherpa. A frequent partner of Bonington’s, Pertemba told Elizabeth some years later that he had since been forbidden to climb by his wife, who was afraid he would be killed. But, says Elizabeth, “He’s snuck in an expedition or two since then!”

As excited as she was about the British Everest Southwest Face Expedition, Elizabeth wasn’t allowed to report on it, because she was still being punished for her earlier indiscretions. She was learning the fine art of patience – and diplomacy. It would take her a while. The reporting ban was not the last time Elizabeth would run into trouble with the authorities. The next would be much more serious.

CHAPTER 10

A Break with the Past

Two mountaineers from Austria and Italy have conquered Mount Everest without oxygen for the first time....

— Elizabeth Hawley

The political face of Nepal changed again when the king accepted his prime minister’s resignation in September 1977. Later in the year, B.P. Koirala, the former prime minister who had assumed power shortly after Elizabeth’s arrival in Nepal and who had been imprisoned or in exile for much of the time since then, returned to Asia from the United States, where he had been receiving medical attention. His arrival in India elicited a warm reception from his old supporters, who were now in power in India. This irritated the Nepalese authorities. When Koirala arrived in Nepal he was promptly arrested. He was later acquitted on five of the seven charges brought against him, and the two remaining ones were postponed indefinitely because the prosecution’s evidence was incomplete.

Elizabeth was shocked at Koirala’s physical state. He appeared thin and weary. She hoped he and the king would get together and find a way to solve what she saw as a process fraught with endemic problems – the endeavour to combine democracy with a hierarchical system of family relationships. She recalled how diplomats and other foreigners would send invitations to Nepalese notables and then be insulted when they never received a reply. But the invitees couldn’t answer, because they never knew whether their father, uncle or someone else would suddenly demand that they be somewhere else. She realized it was unrealistic to think the road to democracy would be smooth.

In fact, there was greater unrest in Nepal now than at any time in the last 50 years. Even when the Rana family had been relieved of power, Kathmandu had remained peaceful. The cause of the current unrest was hard to pinpoint, but seemed to be a combination of general discontent with inflation and corruption; unfulfilled – and rising – expectations; and the restlessness of youth. By the spring of 1979, student demonstrations had taken a violent turn. In the southern town of Hetauda, three people died when police opened fire on them. Following that violence, many leading politicians were arrested and Koirala was again placed under house arrest.

The king swiftly defused the unrest by announcing a referendum to determine whether to keep the present panchayat system under which political parties were forbidden, or to establish a multiparty system similar to what existed before his father ended it in 1960. This was considered an amazing announcement, since, from the very moment he ascended the throne in 1972, this very king had insisted that the panchayat system was permanent. Political manoeuvring began immediately, with leaders campaigning for or against a new system. Political activity that had been dormant or clandestine for two decades now burst into the open. Sporadic violence occurred. A group of men and women tried to assassinate Koirala by rolling boulders down a steep hillside toward his car. Uninjured in the incident, Koirala was nevertheless shaken by it, citing the dangers of the upcoming referendum. Some of those dangers, he believed, were coming from outside the country, as there was foreign interest in sabotaging the referendum and creating instability in a country that lay strategically between China and India. The king was undoubtedly aware of this too, and he made official visits to both India and China, emphasizing his country’s good relations with both.

The referendum was held in 1980. Elizabeth was convinced that many voters would not understand what they were voting for or against, confusing the issues of multiparty vs. panchayat with problems of corruption, inflation, bureaucracy and monarchy. Reporters flocked to Nepal to see what would happen. Despite the violence of the previous year, the referendum was peaceful. Long lines of voters had formed by 7:00 a.m., more than two hours before the polls opened. Seeing the huge voter turnout, Elizabeth was sure it signalled a switch to a multiparty system. But when all the results were in, the panchayat system had won – narrowly – with 55 per cent of the votes. With such a narrow margin of victory, it was clear that some kind of constitutional change was needed, so the king announced he would consult with various leaders on the nature and timing of reform.

The process of consultation produced many additional layers of administrative structure. The grander the machine became, the greater number of resources were required to maintain it. In a country as poor as Nepal, Elizabeth thought it preposterous that this self-perpetuating bureaucratic organ could occupy so much money, time, ink and effort when it appeared to be largely insensitive to what was going on in the rest of the country. With rapid and frequent changes in the top political positions, actually making a decision was one of the most dangerous things a senior politician could do. Commissions and councils resorted to delegating decision-making up, and up – ultimately to the king, where the sheer volume of decisions often resulted in stagnation. The paternal nature of this kind of rule flew in the face of genuine democratic reform, but it was a fact of life in Nepal – deeply rooted in the national character of patriarchal dependency.

The government’s preoccupation with reform may have contributed to its reluctance to decide the fate of Elizabeth’s journalist accreditation. Although the ban hadn’t stopped her from doing the annual mountaineering reports, she was cut off from the excitement of a potential journalistic scoop. She heard rumblings from her Nepali journalist friends that the decision would be reversed, giving her the freedom to work again, but the decision was slow in coming and the waiting was frustrating. After more than a year, the prime minister and the king finally came to an agreement to renew her licence, just in time for the 1976 spring climbing season.

Elizabeth’s work with mountaineering expeditions was growing and looked likely to continue to do so in the future, as the Nepalese government announced it would grant a total of 26 permits for the 1978 season. This would be by far the greatest number of permits issued for one season. The most interesting of the spring expeditions was that of two men attempting to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen. The two were Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler.

The climbers reached the summit without incident – or bottled oxygen – and with a small movie camera to record the historic event. Some people expressed doubts that they had not succumbed to dipping into the oxygen supplies at the South Col, but other team members later checked the supplies and found them to tally perfectly with the amount recorded prior to their ascent. Others were concerned over the anticipated “brain damage” the two would experience, but a physician who examined them after their descent found them to be tired but in excellent physical and mental condition, except for Messner’s painful eye condition caused by removing his sunglasses while filming on the summit ridge.

Elizabeth’s Reuters account announced: “Two mountaineers from Austria and Italy have conquered Mount Everest without oxygen for the first time.…” She went on to add that this climb should settle once and for all the debate over whether humans could survive without oxygen at such rarified heights. But it didn’t – as she soon found out.

After Messner and Habeler’s ascent of Everest, a strange situation arose in Kathmandu. Some Sherpas called a press conference to denounce Messner as a liar. They didn’t believe his claim to have climbed without bottled oxygen, asserting he had hidden tiny bottles of oxygen under his down jacket and had breathed it all the way to the top. It became clear to Elizabeth that the Sherpas believed that if they couldn’t do it, nobody could. At the press conference she noticed it was “Messner this and Messner that.” She challenged the Sherpas with “what about Peter Habeler?” No answer. She realized they didn’t like Messner – at all. He was perceived as condescending and demanding – “get my food, get my sleeping bag” – and they were determined to give him a hard time in return.

The fall season brought an all-women’s team to Annapurna led by American climber Arlene Blum. Elizabeth had met Arlene before and was intrigued by her. This time Arlene was taking on a much more onerous role as leader, and Elizabeth expressed to her mother that she was glad she wasn’t going with them. After making the first American ascent of Annapurna I, the expedition came to a tragic end when two members of the second ascent team fell to their deaths on October 17, 1978. There was speculation in various publications about whether their deaths could have been prevented if other (male, it was implied) climbers had been with them, but Elizabeth thought that the two who died were experienced and knew what they were doing, and that the nature of their fall would not have been prevented by having more people around. She responded to criticism of Arlene Blum not going high on the mountain with the logical observation that expedition leaders often do not go high on the mountain, due to their logistical responsibilities down low. All of this was captured in a long piece about the expedition that Elizabeth submitted to People magazine.

This era in climbing, which began in the late ’70s, saw an increasing number of experienced and often smaller expeditions attempting, and sometimes succeeding on, significantly difficult objectives – new routes on previously climbed peaks as well as unclimbed peaks. This was a marked shift away from the large, siege-style expeditions that had produced notable successes on routes such as the Southwest Face of Everest. Now climbers began to bring a new, lightweight aesthetic to the Himalaya. They came from Britain, the United States, Yugoslavia and Japan. Some of the most experienced climbers almost lived in Nepal now, going from one mountain to the next, seemingly having abandoned their lives back home in favour of the forbidding Himalayan faces. Many were familiar to Elizabeth and a few she counted as her friends.

In 1979 one of the most impressive of the spring’s mountaineering objectives was a Yugoslav effort on a new route on the true West Ridge of Everest, which forms the border between Nepal and China. The team was led by Tone Škarja and included strong climbers like Andrej and Marko Štremfelj and Viktor Grošelj. They found the difficult climbing was sustained almost to the top, and the entire route was exposed to horrific winds. However, five climbers reached the summit on this impressive effort.

British climber Doug Scott was back with a small team that included Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker to attempt a new route on the 8586-metre Kangchenjunga from the glacier northwest of the peak. Not only were they trying a new route, they were doing it without oxygen or radios and they limited their support to two Sherpas. The four team members had a total of more than 20 Himalayan expeditions under their belt, so they were well qualified for the task. After 10 weeks, two serious summit attempts, frighteningly high bivouacs and variable weather, they reached the summit in time for sunset on May 16.

The beautiful and remote, twin-summited Gaurishankar, located on the frontier between Nepal and Tibet, had just been opened to climbing after a 20-year ban, with the provision that any climb be a joint effort with Nepalese climbers. At 7134 metres, it was one of the last major unclimbed summits in the Nepal Himalaya. Its two revered summits represented two Hindu deities: Gauri, goddess of love; and Shankar, god of destruction. Not only was it remote, its approaches were largely unexplored since the Japanese reconnaissance in 1959, and it was expected to be tremendously difficult. Al Read of Mountain Travel put together a formidable team including Nepal’s most experienced Sherpa, Pertemba Sherpa, and America’s most experienced Himalayan climber, John Roskelley.

Once on the mountain, the climbers changed their route a couple of times, once because the border delineation with China changed, making the Northwest Ridge part of Tibet, and once because the West Face looked slightly more feasible than their other ridge alternative. Extremely difficult climbing at high altitude, rockfall, threatening ice bulges, aid climbing on shifting pitons and uncomfortable camps were the norm, but on May 8 Roskelley and Dorje Sherpa fought their way to the summit. The last great Himalayan summit in Nepal had been climbed.

It was during this time that Elizabeth became better acquainted with Roskelley, a young, somewhat controversial climber from Spokane, Washington. Since his 1973 Dhaulagiri expedition, he had been racing up peaks in the Soviet Union, Bolivia, India, Pakistan and Nepal. Roskelley was a professional climber, so logically he should have been interested in having as much publicity for his climbs as possible. But he was a private person and didn’t like the fact that Elizabeth’s Reuters reports were being picked up by newspapers everywhere, particularly back home in Spokane, where he avoided talking about his plans. It embarrassed him, as he described his motivation as “just to go with some friends and do a good climb.” But Elizabeth did report on his climbs and her reports undoubtedly helped his career. She understood the significance of his achievements, although she wouldn’t tell him directly, saying to him only that he had done a “worthwhile ascent – not a great ascent.” And that was fine with him. He accepted her taciturn style, partly because it reminded him of his father, who was also an old-school journalist.

A climbing event that made a big impression on Elizabeth was the death of Hannelore Schmatz in 1979. Her husband, Gerhard Schmatz, was the leader of the Everest expedition and Hannelore was in charge of the logistics and trekking arrangements. She was not a terribly experienced climber, according to Elizabeth, but she did reach the summit with about nine other team members. It was on the descent that she died from exposure and exhaustion. Her body would be seen for years to come, lying beside the trail of the normal South Col–Southeast Ridge route, providing an unnerving sight because her head and upper torso were completely out of the snow. Climbers reported that her eyes appeared to follow them as they approached and passed her. Elizabeth remains caustic in her assessment of Gerhard Schmatz: “It didn’t seem to unnerve her husband. He found consolation with somebody else, another woman.” Elizabeth characterized Hannelore as a “hard-working woman,” perhaps not with the charm of the beautiful French climber Chantal Mauduit, or the skill of Polish climber Wanda Rutkiewicz, but nevertheless a determined climber. “Her determination got her up the mountain, but not down.”

Then, on October 25, 1979, Elizabeth was awakened by a telephone call from the airport saying that a radio message had come through from the New Zealand expedition on Ama Dablam requesting a rescue helicopter. Peter Hillary was on that team, and she agonized for several hours until she saw Peter emerge from the helicopter with a broken arm, cracked rib, broken finger and sprained ankle. She shuddered to think of how Ed Hillary would have handled yet another death in the family. The team had been hit by falling ice; luckily, however, a predominantly Austrian team was nearby and came to their rescue. On that team was Reinhold Messner, who, much to Peter Hillary’s chagrin, not only rescued him but left with Hillary’s Canadian girlfriend! Elizabeth found this amusing.

From the other end of the world, another accident, again connected with the Hillary family, was reported. An Air New Zealand sightseeing flight in Antarctica crashed and initial reports claimed that Ed Hillary was on it. They were mistaken. But although Hillary was safe, his good friend and climbing partner Peter Mulgrew was on the flight and was killed. Elizabeth had met Mulgrew’s wife, June, several times in Kathmandu and knew she would be devastated. Already on the board of directors for the Himalayan Trust, June began spending much more time in Nepal, working on the trust’s projects, supporting Hillary in his work and becoming close to him in the process. Eventually, June Mulgrew became Hillary’s second wife.

CHAPTER 11

Great Achievements

When I came with crazy ideas to Kathmandu, she was listening – she never said it was impossible.

— Reinhold Messner

The early ’80s saw some exciting new developments and notable climbing achievements in Nepal: winter climbs, difficult face climbs, a solo climb of Everest. According to Elizabeth, a few leading personalities stood out, and they made her work rewarding.

One of those characters was the Polish climber Andrzej Zawada, whom Elizabeth remembered as tall, courtly and charming. Polish climbers were the first to climb to a height of over 7000 metres in winter in 1973 on the 7492-metre Noshaq, and they did it again in 1974 when they reached 8250 metres on Lhotse. In both cases, Zawada was leading. Zawada was a great innovator, the first to approach the Nepalese government about opening a winter climbing season; and for the 1979–80 season, he convinced the ministry to open Everest in winter.

Zawada’s mission looked hopeless almost from the start. Winds roared in from the north at up to 160 kilometres per hour and temperatures averaged –25°C in the Western Cwm. The peaks grew dark as the winds stripped them of snow. The short winter days were even darker. Elizabeth heard horrific tales of hardship: throats inflamed from the cold, dry air; clear, rock-hard ice; and camps destroyed by incessant, hurricane-force winds. To make matters worse, the team received word from the government that they would need to vacate the mountain by February 15. They negotiated a two-day extension, and with this new deadline and the desire to write a new chapter in mountaineering history spurring them on, Leszek Cichy and Krzysztof Wielicki reached the summit at 2:25 p.m. on February 17.

Two days later they were off the mountain and heading back to Kathmandu, where they reported in to Elizabeth. As she listened to their story, she shuddered to imagine what they had endured. Some of the Poles stayed on in Nepal and by March, again under the leadership of Zawada, a team reinforced with several new members headed back to Everest for a successful ascent of a new route via the South Pillar. On May 19, Andrzej Czok and Jerzy Kukuczka reached the summit. The Poles were dominating. Some were calling it the Golden Age of Polish mountaineering in Nepal and Elizabeth was inclined to agree.

Nearby on Makalu, an American team led by John Roskelley was attempting a route on the West Pillar. Roskelley described this expedition as one in which they were going to try and rise to the level of the mountain rather than pull the mountain down to theirs. That meant no bottled oxygen, a small team of four climbers and no Sherpas above base camp. It was Roskelley’s tenth trip to Asia in seven years and his third time as leader of an expedition, so he was clearly qualified to make the call.

Despite leading a team of highly experienced climbers who were as tenacious as he was, in the end it was up to Roskelley to actually tag the summit. In an impressive solo effort, with frighteningly technical and exposed climbing, he reached the summit in late afternoon on May 15. His descent was wracked with indecision about whether to bivouac or continue. His progress was sometimes interrupted by involuntary lapses into a restless sleep. On his return to Kathmandu, he told Elizabeth an amusing story about how, as he emerged from one of these stupor-like states, he thought he heard voices. He called down to his teammate, Chris Kopczynski, who yelled back, “John, is that you?” Even in his hypoxic state, John couldn’t help laughing as he thought, “Who the hell else could it be?”

Then, on August 20, 1980, Messner created another first: Mount Everest solo, partially by the Great Couloir on the Tibetan side, without supplemental oxygen. He did the climb in just three days after a six-week acclimatization period. He carried a 15-kilogram pack that included a small tent. For the final summit sprint, he took only his camera and ice ax. Many would refer to this ascent as the ultimate alpine-style climb: elegant, pure and bold.

Messner was back in October, going from the 5395-metre base camp to 7399 metres in two mornings’ climbing on a solo attempt of the South Face of Lhotse. On the third morning, he climbed to 7803 metres, where bad weather defeated him, forcing him back down to base camp.

In Elizabeth’s opinion, Messner was the climber who stood out the most in the 1980s. She remembered their first meeting in 1972, when he made his ascent of Manaslu. He remembers it too, having immediately sensed she was serious about chronicling the history of mountaineering. She admired Messner’s philosophy of “fair means,” which meant no supplemental oxygen; limited fixed rope, if any; and few camps, Sherpas or support team members. Messner and Peter Habeler had shattered preconceived ideas of what was possible with their ascent of Everest in 1978 without bottled oxygen.

But it was during the ’80s that Messner excelled: he made his historic solo ascent of Everest; he proved you could climb two 8000ers in one season and that you could traverse two 8000ers if they were close enough. Elizabeth regards him as a pioneer because he showed the mountaineering world new ways of doing things – ways that were thought to be impossible.

Elizabeth is fond of Messner. Many don’t share her opinion, but she thinks they simply envy his skills and successes. The two of them enjoyed long conversations about his expeditions and about others’ as well. As he began to trust her with his plans and dreams, he found she was an invaluable source of consistently accurate information. Perhaps more important than just sharing information, she encouraged him. “When I came with crazy ideas to Kathmandu, she was listening – she never said it was impossible.”

As his career blossomed and peaked, Messner became more interested in what others were doing in the Himalaya – the next wave. They spent hours discussing the young, up-and-coming climbers. He says she had a good understanding of what was new and exciting in climbing, and that she had a good sense of who the outstanding new climbers would be. “We never disagreed on this point – never,” he says.

They shared many enjoyable evenings together, exchanging ideas and stories. “I have to be thankful to her for her ideas,” Messner says; “in some cases it helped me decide my projects.” This is high praise coming from the man who is often described as the greatest Himalayan climber of all time. In addition to ideas, he obtained valuable information from her – details about who was planning to do what, where and when – and this helped determine the order in which Messner launched his own plans. He describes their meetings as “giving and getting, giving and getting,” and their relationship was one of equals.

When Elizabeth recollects her relationship with Messner, she admits a feeling of satisfaction in having inadvertently influenced his climbing plans. At one point, she had read in a newspaper that Naomi Uemura was planning a solo attempt of Everest. She mentioned it to Messner, noting, “This is going to be a very interesting climb, isn’t it.” He didn’t say anything at the time, but told her later that he had been thinking of doing just that. And with this bit of information, he decided to advance the timing of his solo attempt.

One of Elizabeth’s favourite stories about Messner had nothing to do with climbing. She was watching him fill out the biography form she used for each and every climber. On the form, she asked each expedition member for basic data such as name, address, birth date, nationality and marital status. Marital status had four possible categories: single, married, living with girlfriend or divorced. On this particular day, Messner ticked all four boxes! She asked him why, and he responded, “I was married in Italy and divorced in Germany, but Italy doesn’t recognize divorce, so in one country I am married and in the other country I am divorced. I am also living with a girlfriend.” Elizabeth acquiesced, saying, “Okay, I understand all that, fair enough. But single?” Messner responded, “I feel single.”

A less gregarious yet equally accomplished alpinist during this time was the Polish climber Jerzy Kukuczka. The second person to climb all 14 of the 8000-metre peaks, Kukuczka did several of them in winter and even more by new and difficult routes. Elizabeth remembered Kukuczka as a tenacious and patient climber, recalling his Manaslu expedition where he sat in base camp for over three weeks waiting for the weather to improve. And when it did, he got his summit. She knew that most climbers would have lost patience long before and gone home. She considered him a real mountaineer and blamed his eventual death on the South Face of Lhotse to an inferior grade of rope.

Elizabeth’s close friendship with Messner and other famous climbers sparked discussion about the true nature of her “relationship” with the climbers on whom she reported. American filmmaker David Breashears suggests that, for the majority of climbers, her reporting style was somewhat critical. He thinks it would have been difficult, but perhaps more useful, if she had developed a more constructive, or even congratulatory, style. Breashears also felt she could be somewhat “hung up” on high-profile climbers and big achievements like Messner’s while losing sight of some of the smaller, subtler accomplishments. He admits she displayed good instincts and judgment for exceptional mountaineering achievements, but added that that was so long as the achievements took place on a really big peak. He was convinced that the depth and scope of her reporting was linked to her personal interest in the climber – that her reports were not just pure historical data, but a way of connecting to the personalities she felt closest to – personalities like Messner.

Dr. Charles Houston didn’t agree. He described Elizabeth’s reporting as unbiased and scrupulously accurate. He did, however, remember the sharp tongue and pointed criticism in her conversations. “She didn’t hesitate to say that so and so was a fool, so and so ran a terrible expedition and so and so made terrible mistakes.”

Elizabeth agrees she was interested in meeting climbers and learning about the human dimension of why people climb mountains and how mountains affect them. Over the years, she says, she became close to a few climbers and watched them change. She singles out Messner with his “articulate passion and ecstasy for the mountains,” as well as the great leadership qualities of Chris Bonington. But on the topic of biased reporting she says, “I guess I’m human, but I try not to be influenced by the personalities. I would hope the answer is no. I try not to.” She believes that her most detailed seasonal mountaineering reports reflected the most interesting climbs. She is amazed that the climbing community would even bother to have this discussion, and is genuinely surprised by their interest. “I’m astonished that all these people would even think of this stuff. They must have something better to do than this.”

Elizabeth seems unaware of just how enigmatic she has been. People enjoy speculating about those who keep so much beneath the surface. One person who found Elizabeth mysterious was American author Broughton Coburn, who was working in Nepal on the Namche micro-hydroelectric project. The Himalayan Trust was involved with their shipping logistics, so he coordinated them with Elizabeth. Coburn found her to be difficult to work with and thought there might be a couple of reasons for her non-cooperation. First, he didn’t think she related to or was interested in men who weren’t climbers. He recalled seeing her with Reinhold Messner and a few Austrian climbers at a Kathmandu restaurant and was astonished to see her lively and smiling and almost flirtatious. He was seated a few tables away and couldn’t take his eyes off her. He had never seen her like this! Although Coburn climbed, he wasn’t in Nepal in that capacity and never presented himself to her as a climber.

Second, he was working for UNESCO and as a consultant to Sagarmatha National Park, and he thought that Elizabeth had her loyalties so firmly placed in Himalayan Trust projects that she regarded other agencies as somewhat suspect. Other people involved with aid agencies also observed that the Himalayan Trust group had subtly appointed themselves as the “colonists of Sagarmatha National Park” – expressing a kind of noblesse oblige toward that area. They sometimes gave the appearance of having staked their claim in the area of helping Sherpas, and everyone else was an intruder. These observers hastened to add that the work done by the trust was admirable and valuable, but a perception persisted that the trust was the self-appointed “royal envoy” to the area and Elizabeth Hawley, as the Trust’s Kathmandu manager, was the self-appointed “queen of good work.”

However, Elizabeth’s and Coburn’s inability to get along may have been simply due to a difference in style. As Coburn recalled, he was trying to coordinate flights into Lukla and Elizabeth was extremely particular about how it should be done. He described his style as “winging it.” It apparently drove her crazy that he didn’t know the precise weights of things. After decades of working closely with her in Nepal, he admitted he never became close to Elizabeth. She remained an enigma to him.

Canadian parks specialist Frances Klatzel brought her skills to Sagarmatha National Park in the 1980s and developed a close working relationship with Elizabeth, too. Frances first arrived in Nepal in 1980. While trekking in the Khumbu area, she jokingly volunteered her assistance to help the newly emerging park. They took her up on it and thus began a long and fruitful relationship. For years she worked in the Khumbu and had her mail delivered to the Himalayan Trust’s mailbox in Kathmandu. The Himalayan Trust employed a mail runner who would make the trip from Kunde, back and forth to Kathmandu, with short rests in between. It was the only way to get mail in the area at the time. Frances moved back to Canada from 1989 to 1995, but Elizabeth kept the little pigeonhole mailbox for her. “I guess she was expecting me back,” Frances laughed.

And back she came. After some years, Frances began giving Elizabeth a bottle of red wine for Christmas, a gesture that seemed to surprise Elizabeth. But the annual gift created a connection in Elizabeth’s mind between Frances and wine. Years later, they were at a party thrown by Ang Rita of the Himalayan Trust for Sir Edmund Hillary, and Ang Rita’s wife, holding a glass of red wine, approached Elizabeth and Frances. Elizabeth acted surprised and wondered aloud where she had found red wine, commenting that only diplomats and foreigners could source red wine. She then looked at Frances, “Did you bring it?” Frances laughed and explained that red wine had been available in the supermarkets for several years now. Since Elizabeth never bought her own food, she had no idea red wine was openly available in the supermarkets of Kathmandu. To Frances, it was a sign of Elizabeth’s self-imposed isolation from real life in Kathmandu.

After 20 years of knowing each other, there were very few situations that Frances could describe as “personal” moments with Elizabeth Hawley: “She was cut-and-dried with me.” But she did remember one incident that might just qualify as approval. After working with Sagarmatha National Park for a number of years, Frances became an expert on the Sherpas, learning the language and gaining a deep understanding of the culture. She was also leading treks to various parts of the country. After hearing that Frances was about to lead a trek to the Annapurna region – far away from the land of the Sherpas – Elizabeth ranted, “Why on earth are they sending you there? You’re one of the world’s leading experts on Sherpas. Why don’t they just keep sending you to the Khumbu?” Frances wasn’t absolutely certain, but she thought Elizabeth’s comment might qualify as a compliment.

It had been a while since Elizabeth had been on an adventure of her own, and so in 1980, shortly after China opened its doors to tourism, she decided to visit it, the long slow way: by train. Barbara Adams joined her. They travelled by train from London all the way to Hong Kong, stopping in East Berlin, Poland and Russia. From Moscow, they took the Trans-Siberian Railway to Novosibirsk, and from there took another rail line south into Mongolia and on into China, ending up in Hong Kong. It was an adventure worthy of Paul Theroux or Eric Newby.

But all was not as it could be. By the time they arrived in Moscow, tensions had flared between the two friends and Barbara insisted on a single room. She hadn’t paid for a single room, but, as Elizabeth recalled, Barbara was sufficiently persistent that the tour guide took pity on the situation and invited Elizabeth to share her room. The tour guide was reprimanded by her supervisors for that decision, but at least she kept the peace between Barbara and Elizabeth.

They continued east and boarded a twice-weekly train to Ulan Bator. It was a slow but determined train, which chugged and steamed its way across the never-ending Mongolian hills and plains. The most vivid memory Elizabeth had of this trip was the vast sameness of the Siberian landscape. “I like birch trees, but this was something else!” she commented about the limitless stunted forests. Elizabeth loved surface travel; the train was full of colourful characters, most carrying passenger-crushing loads of consumer goods from Russia, for which they must have traded Mongolian wool. From their faces and dress, they appeared Tibetan. The stations thronged with people arriving from the countryside, many with horse-drawn carts. Elizabeth and Barbara enjoyed the best the train could offer: a two-person compartment. This too became a source of irritation when “Princess Barbara,” as Elizabeth was wont to call her, insisted on taking the preferred lower berth. But there was more: Elizabeth often felt she was babysitting Barbara, picking up after her, finding her lost this, her forgotten that. It was not a style of travel that the fiercely independent Elizabeth enjoyed. She concluded that she preferred travelling alone.

The problem with the train was that it had no dining car and, worse yet, had neglected to stock any food or drink for the long, grinding journey. Finally, perhaps due to the protests of passengers, or maybe because the staff themselves were hungry, the train ground to a halt at what looked like an oasis in the desert. In fact, it was a momo tent set up in the middle of nowhere and was almost the last human habitation the train passed until they reached Ulan Bator.

Barbara and Elizabeth appeared to be the only tourists in the typically Stalinist-style hotel in Ulan Bator, and except for the faces of the staff, they could have been anywhere in the world. This was a letdown for both of them, having read tales of horse races on the steppes, exotic yurts in the wild, fermented mare’s milk and colourful costumes. Instead, they were installed in a comfortable but plain square block of a cement room, with only one magazine to read.

Elizabeth admired the richly adorned monasteries filled with golden brocade and statues scattered around the country, much as in Tibet. In Communist Mongolia, however, the monasteries were treated as museums of past history and were kept locked, except for the occasional tourist group. She remembered one unusual experience while visiting the most important monastery in Ulan Bator. Their professional but unfriendly guide unlocked the monastery and they entered. Before he had time to lock the door, an old, bent couple in traditional Mongolian dress followed them in.

As Barbara and Elizabeth listened to their guide’s explanation of what they were seeing (similar to what one sees in the Buddhist monasteries of Kathmandu), the elderly couple made their religious rounds, touching their heads to the feet of the golden Buddhas and chanting prayers. The guide was noticeably irritated by the appearance and genuflections of these relics from an earlier, feudal era, and he lashed out at them, ordering them to leave. Nervous and afraid, they interrupted their devotions, gathered their belongings and scrambled out the door. When Elizabeth and Barbara tried to intervene on their behalf, the guide suggested they should mind their own business. She remembered the expressions on their wrinkled, careworn faces – from fear to fervour, then back again to fear.

Shortly after returning home, Elizabeth visited with Mother Theresa, who had started a mission in Nepal to care for the destitute. Speaking to an impromptu gathering at the Indian embassy, the honoured guest asked everyone to “storm heaven” with prayers, that she might be given a house in which to do her work in Nepal. Elizabeth was impressed by her firm voice and fluent English.

Another international visitor to Kathmandu was Britain’s Prince Charles. While in the city, Prince Charles attended a press conference and noticed Elizabeth speaking with a couple of Nepalese reporters. He was surprised to see a white woman in this context, so he came over and introduced himself. When she introduced him to the two Nepalese reporters he asked them if they enjoyed freedom of speech in Nepal. They assured him they did. Elizabeth pounced on them: “Manindra, you know you were shut down twice last week!” Prince Charles was amused by her retort and was charming to Elizabeth. She sensed he possessed an ability to connect with all kinds of people and appeared to be truly enjoying himself.

Jimmy Roberts of Mountain Travel organized a special trek for the prince, and Lisa van Greisen and Pertemba trekked the entire route ahead of time to ensure it would provide good locations for sketching – Prince Charles’s passion. The prince completed the trek and proclaimed it ideal. Mountain Travel subsequently named it the “Royal Trek” and packaged it as such.

The fall 1981 mountaineering season saw 45 expeditions in Nepal. Elizabeth could remember when 17 was considered outrageous and wondered how she would deal with so many climbers. Despite the numbers, she continued to find the work interesting, the people fascinating and the climbing “family” one that she felt comfortable with. One of the highlights of the year was a climb of Manaslu, which had remained a less popular objective while other peaks attracted numerous expeditions. H.W. Tilman’s comment, when he saw it in the 1950s, was that it was “impossible without wings.” Maybe so, but a four-person French team led by Pierre Béghin came to see what they could do with the West Face in the fall of 1981. One of the highest faces in the Himalaya, rising 3962 metres above the moraines to 7498 metres, it was complex and was routinely scoured by avalanches. To make it even more challenging, a sérac barrier at the top blocked escape from the entire face. Throughout the trip, the team endured demoralizing and dangerous avalanches, but it was during the night of September 27 that all hell broke loose. A violent storm struck Nepal, flooding valleys, destroying villages and homes, eventually killing 1500 people. The team retreated from the mountain and waited for conditions to calm down. When the weather cleared and cooled at the end of the month they got their chance, and on October 7 they succeeded.

Meanwhile, on the Tibetan side of Everest, a large American expedition was attempting an ambitious new route: the vast Kangshung Face. The team, led by Dick Blum of San Francisco, included Himalayan heavyweights like John Roskelley and Lou Reichardt, with David Breashears doing camera work. Even Hillary joined them as far as base camp. Fairly early in the trip, Roskelley declared the route too dangerous and argued for a change of plans to the north side. Arguments ensued and tempers flared, with Hillary weighing in as well, imploring the team not to abandon their original objective. He obviously inspired them, because most opted to stay with the face. But Roskelley left, and others followed, after expending significant energy on the route. A weakened team continued to pick away at it, but they ultimately failed. After hearing all of the reports, Elizabeth thought the expedition (like so many others) failed because they tried to function as a group of prima donnas rather than as a cohesive team.

Hillary was forced to return to New Zealand because of cerebral edema he experienced while at base camp with the team. He wrote in a letter to Elizabeth that he would probably not be able to go higher than 3962 metres in the future. His altitude ceiling had decreased steadily ever since his first trouble in 1961 on Makalu. Sadly, he was correct; as time went on he even had to limit his time in the Solu Khumbu from two weeks to one. And then he was unable to go as high as Kunde, but only to Phaphlu and finally not even to Phaphlu. Elizabeth worried that some day he might not be able to come to Kathmandu.

There were still first ascents to be done in Nepal, and in the spring of 1982 Roskelley and his team managed one. Cholatse was only 6440 metres high, but it was the last unclimbed peak in the Mount Everest region and a prize worth pursuing. But the team underestimated the severity of its difficulties. Hidden high in the Gokyo Valley, it didn’t appear on the permitted list until Al Read of Mountain Travel finally convinced the government in late 1981 for the following year. Roskelley assembled a five-person team and, despite some bizarre equipment failures and questionable weather, they made the summit. Roskelley explained that, in order to save time, he led all of the top 15 pitches of steep ice, often with completely unprotected belays. They reached the top on April 22 in a howling blizzard with electricity crackling the air. Elizabeth arranged a grand party to celebrate their achievement, but while they were celebrating, she received a report from Rome that Reinhold Messner had been killed on Kangchenjunga. Much to her relief, he turned up in Kathmandu a couple of days later, thoroughly alive and triumphant after having reached the summit without the use of artificial oxygen. This was his seventh 8000er.

Soon after, an important figure in Elizabeth’s life passed away. Elizabeth was on her way back to Nepal from the United States after her annual trip to see her mother, when she ran into the brother of former prime minister B.P. Koirala at the Bangkok airport boarding gate. She greeted him, only to learn he was taking Koirala to Kathmandu. She asked where B.P. was and was informed he was in an ambulance. The charismatic Koirala was near death; he had been in hospital in Bangkok and had been told his throat cancer was terminal. His brother was taking him home to die. Before the plane left, Elizabeth spent almost an hour talking with the brother and with Koirala’s son, who was a doctor. She wrote her Reuters story on the plane and began filing it as soon as she reached home. Before she could finish, she received a phone call that he had died. The sad news became her biggest scoop. Reuters had the news before any other agency; as far as she knows, it was the only time a story of hers hit the front page of the New York Times.

Koirala’s impact on Nepal had been huge. In 1947 he founded the Nepali National Congress, which in 1950 became the Nepali Congress Party; he led the armed revolution of 1951, which overthrew 104 years of Rana rule; and he became Nepal’s first elected prime minister in 1959. But Koirala was too powerful and too influential for the ruling monarchy, and his career became a series of confrontations, almost always leading to arrest and imprisonment. In addition to several stints in Nepalese prisons, he spent years living in exile. Yet each time he returned, his influence was felt. Tens of thousands of Nepalis revered him, forming a huge procession as they took his body through the streets of Kathmandu to Pashipatinath for cremation. Elizabeth admired him and wondered who would have the leadership abilities and clear political vision to take his place.

When the People’s Republic of China opened its autonomous regions, including Tibet, to non-Chinese mountaineers in 1979, new opportunities opened up on the north side of Mount Everest. Two important expeditions with different objectives found themselves in Tibet in the summer and fall of 1982. One was from the United States, led by Lou Whittaker, and the second was from England, under the leadership of Chris Bonington. Although the teams travelled through China, Elizabeth kept close track of their progress.

The American team consisted of a strong group of Mount Rainier guides from Washington, and Bonington’s British team had only four climbers, a sign that he was moving away from the big-expedition ethos. The British team included some of his most reliable climbing companions, including Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker. The Americans chose the striking Great Couloir as their route, while the Brits were after the long, unclimbed Northeast Ridge. They were climbing without oxygen and knew that the major difficulties on the route would be high on the mountain between 7925 and 8382 metres.

The two teams enjoyed a festive evening together before heading their separate ways. Their next meeting would not be at all festive, as both teams experienced tragedy in the course of their climbs. While searching for a campsite at 8016 metres and while attached to a fixed line, American team member Marty Hoey inexplicably and without warning fell 1829 metres down the face. Her teammates were horrified to see that her harness and jumar were still attached to the fixed line, indicating some kind of buckle failure or human error. Much higher on the mountain, Boardman and Tasker were performing exceptionally well on the difficult terrain – as had been expected – and were poised for the summit. As the rest of the team watched through the telescope, they made steady progress, but after several missed radio calls and their disappearance around a corner, the team assumed something had gone wrong. A search party was dispatched to the area where they were last seen, but to no avail. Bonington concluded they had fallen, and it would be years before Peter Boardman’s body was found lying alone on the ridge with no sign of his companion. Bonington later confided to Elizabeth that although the trip had a tragic end and two of Britain’s top Himalayan climbers were dead, it had been one of the happiest expeditions of his life. She was sympathetic, but he sensed a disapproving concern from Elizabeth for this clan of climbers she had adopted. Once again, people she knew and liked had gone off to the mountains and hadn’t come back. Such deaths took their toll.

CHAPTER 12

The Horse Race

Can a climb be described as successful if one man does reach the summit but all four die in the descent?

— Elizabeth Hawley

Elizabeth once characterized the 1980s as belonging to Reinhold Messner, the “supreme star of the Himalaya,” and it was the spring of 1985 that truly belonged to him. He and his teammate, Hans Kammerlander, climbed a new route on the Northwest Face of Annapurna I in five days from base camp to summit, and then went on to climb Dhaulagiri I by its normal route in only three days. This brought his quest to summit all 14 of the 8000-metre peaks to a total of 12.

The previous winter, Polish climber Jerzy Kukuczka had achieved an even greater feat with two 8000-metre summits in one month – in winter. The only person with more 8000-metre summits than Kukuczka was Messner, and so the “horse race” had begun. The phrase, first coined by Austrian climber Kurt Diemberger, became Elizabeth’s preferred descriptor for the unofficial race between Messner and Kukuczka. Although they were two very different climbers, it appeared they had the same ambition.

Elizabeth watched with great interest as the pressure mounted. In January 1986, Kukuczka and Krzysztof Wielicki completed an impressive winter ascent of Kangchenjunga without supplementary oxygen, bringing Kukuczka’s total to ten and Wielicki’s to four.

One of Kurt Diemberger’s favourite images of Elizabeth was in connection with the “horse race,” which he described in his book, Spirits of the Air: “This charming lady, who you would be justified in calling a landmark of Kathmandu and who knows really everything that’s happened in the Himalaya, having painstakingly recorded it over many years – such as the ‘horse race’ … she keeps a table of all the mountaineers who have climbed 8000-metre peaks. You can see quite clearly how they are proceeding from year to year – this one has two, that one in the meantime has three, one has four … And then there are two who have five each.…”

Although there were important political elections in Nepal in the spring of 1986, the biggest race in town was not political; it was the mountaineering race that captured Elizabeth’s imagination and dominated her reporting headlines. She wrote, “Himalayan mountaineering is not ordinarily considered to be a highly competitive sport. But last autumn’s climbing season in the Nepalese Himalaya had much of the drama of the World Cup Final, when the race to be first to conquer all of the world’s 8000-metre mountains was finally won by Italy’s Reinhold Messner, by the relatively narrow margin of 14 to 11.” By the end of that season, the runner-up, Jerzy Kukuczka of Poland, had moved his score from 11 to 12, Swiss climber Marcel Rüedi scored 10 and then died the next day on his descent, possibly from pulmonary or cerebral edema, and Swiss climber Erhard Loretan suffered the first failure of his career on what he had hoped would be his tenth 8000er.

Elizabeth believed Messner did not conceive of the idea as a race, but merely a personal challenge. But it caught on, particularly with Kukuczka, making it difficult for Messner to achieve his goal before anyone else. Together with his frequent partner Hans Kammerlander, Messner topped out on Makalu on September 26, bringing his total to 13. Less than three weeks later, the two of them reached the top of Lhotse on a day when most climbers were pinned down in their camps by high winds. That 14th 8000er was the jewel in the crown of Messner’s distinguished Himalayan career that began in 1970 on Nanga Parbat, which he climbed with his brother Günther. That first 8000-metre victory took a greater toll on Messner than all the others, for it was on Nanga Parbat that his brother died on the descent.

Messner, who never climbed with artificial oxygen, had shown an entire generation of climbers what was possible. Elizabeth thought he was a true inspiration for climbers to go beyond their normal scope of achievement. Others agreed with her. Erhard Loretan, who raced up and down Everest, said, “The reason we can now climb so quickly and easily is that Messner served as an example for us.” And Chris Bonington was quoted in a Time article as saying, “There is a wall called ‘impossible’ that the great mass of people in any field face. Then one person who’s got a kind of extra imaginative drive jumps that wall. That’s Reinhold Messner.” And how did Messner feel? “Now I am free!” he exclaimed, with joy and satisfaction. She pushed him: “Free to do what?” As it turned out, he had lots of plans: to climb other interesting peaks – at any altitude anywhere in the world – to make films, to search for the yeti.

Loretan’s lightning-fast Everest climb was similar in style and aesthetics to Messner’s “by fair means” philosophy. Together with his frequent climbing partner Jean Troillet and the equally impressive Pierre Béghin, they approached the North Face of Everest in the monsoon season. At 10:00 p.m. on August 29, 1986, the three left advance base camp, climbed through the night and stopped at 11:00 a.m. at 7800 metres. They rested in the warmth of daylight, starting off again at 9:00 p.m. that night. Béghin turned back at 8000 metres, but the other two continued until darkness made it impossible to continue past 8400 metres. At 4:00 a.m. they could see enough to continue and were on the summit at 1:00 p.m. They took advantage of the warmest part of the day, resting a bit before flying down the entire face in a five-hour glissade. The whole climb took them less than two days. Their style was unique: they climbed unroped; they climbed at night; they used no oxygen; they carried only a small amount of food and light sleeping bags; and above 7800 metres they carried no pack. Polish climber Voytek Kurtyka described it as “night nakedness.”

The following winter, in February 1987, Messner’s closest competitor, Jerzy Kukuczka, accomplished an ascent in a style that made the Pole happy and elicited admiration from Elizabeth. She observed that most mountaineers who came to the Himalaya did not choose the bitterly cold months of winter, but one Pole, Kukuczka, didn’t seem to mind it. Together with Artur Hajzer, he braved the cold and wind to climb Annapurna I, bringing his total to 13 and his winter ascents to four, all but one without oxygen. This was a record that no other climber had achieved – not even Messner – and Elizabeth grasped the significance of the extra effort, stamina and determination required to pull it off.

Unrest continued in Kathmandu during these years, and in June 1985 a terrorist bomb exploded at the royal palace. Elizabeth sped to the palace to find out what had happened. She discovered damage to two palace gates, as well as to a building that held the government newspaper offices and the Annapurna Hotel, a property owned by the royal family. She also learned from a trusted, highly placed source that a number of printed leaflets claiming responsibility for the bombing had been distributed. She returned to her office and reported what she had seen and learned. The royal family was outraged. It turned out that the palace press secretary hadn’t known about the leaflets, so the palace learned from the press something the secretary should have informed them of. But Elizabeth’s source was impeccable – the story was true. That’s not how the palace saw it, however. The press secretary was enraged and claimed Elizabeth was “spreading untruths and horrific gossip.” His professional humiliation demanded revenge.

Elizabeth’s bomb report would haunt her for years to come. Soon after, while on her annual trip to the United States, she heard from Jim Edwards of Tiger Tops that the palace was angry with her. She delayed her return from the United States to Nepal for “health reasons” and sent a telex to Reuters in New Delhi mentioning the “advisability of dodging shoot-the-messenger syndrome strongly afflicting Nepalese authorities following coverage of June bombings.” Later that year, when she applied for her press accreditation renewal, it was denied. The authorities even banned her from going to the ministry building to collect the news. This was a major problem and it appeared to be indefinite. They didn’t interfere with her seasonal mountaineering reports, but it was impossible to get her accreditation renewed, even though U.S. President Jimmy Carter and other influential people tried to change the authorities’ minds. This inadvertently made Elizabeth a local hero, especially with the working journalists in the valley, who protested strongly against this apparent muzzling of free speech.

Eventually, Reuters had to find a replacement for her. His name was Gopal Sharma. The all-important telex machine was still in Elizabeth’s office and her door was always open for Sharma – literally. She gave him a key to come and go as he pleased, and he did so, filing stories at will. He reciprocated by helping her evade criticism from the Ministry of Tourism, a not infrequent occurrence. Since she continued to interview expeditions as they came through Kathmandu for her seasonal mountaineering reports, she often learned newsworthy bits from her sources on a weekend. The ministry offices weren’t open on weekends, so they wouldn’t find out until the following Monday. Therefore, the information wouldn’t become “official” until Monday. She would share her news tidbits with Sharma while they were still newsworthy – on the weekend. To keep her from getting into trouble, Sharma would report it and take the criticism for reporting “unofficial” news himself. Her name never came up. He is sure she was targeted in part because she represented a threat, but also because of her sharp tongue. Sharma knew there were many who had felt the sting of Elizabeth’s words and had resented it. In fact, his colleagues at the Reuters bureau in Delhi had often asked him to intercede on their behalf. They didn’t want to call her for fear of the verbal abuse they might receive, so they would ask him to act as intermediary. “She heats up fast, but she cools down just as fast,” was Sharma’s observation.

But on the subject of mountaineering, Sharma can’t imagine the Ministry of Tourism getting along without her. “They use her as a reference,” he explained. “If you go to them for information about a climb, they will suggest that you go see Liz Hawley.” He worried about the situation in Nepal should she ever leave Kathmandu, since nobody else had the information or the knowledge that she had about mountaineering.

Personal tragedy struck the Hawley household when Elizabeth’s dog, Tigger II, passed away on the night of April 9. Though the cause of death was unknown, it was attributed to some kind of internal problem. Earlier in the week he had been vomiting and hemorrhaging and nothing the veterinarian did could save him. The apartment was suddenly quiet.

Some good news arrived soon after, for June Mulgrew had found her a new apso puppy, just three months old. Sir Edmund delivered the dog to her, letting it perch on his lap during the Royal Nepal Airlines flight. She remembered it with delight: “This great tall man with a little puppy in his lap!” She decided to call the puppy Mallory after the famous British mountaineer. She briefly considered calling him Hillary or Messner, but thought it might be embarrassing – or even confusing – for them if she were to call the dog in their presence. Mallory was the last dog she would own, and he was her favourite.

Meanwhile, in the United States, Elizabeth’s mother’s health was failing and it appeared she would no longer be able to live alone. Elizabeth was distressed by her mother’s loss of independence and frustrated by her inability to be there for her. Yet she also understood that there comes a time when independence is no longer practical and that such a time had arrived for her mother. For Elizabeth, it was a period of serious consideration for the future. Would she ever return to the United States? Would it be to care for her aging mother? How would she make a living there, and – more important – how could she ever adjust to life in America again? The prospect was not a happy one.

Elizabeth had developed a network of friends in Kathmandu, friends who represented a wide and varied slice of humanity, from the travel industry, to diplomats, to that crazy “family” of mountaineers she had adopted. She relished the climbing seasons, when climbers from around the world trooped in, one expedition after another, giving her a chance to visit, learn of their latest plans and catch up on mountaineering gossip. And there was often a change of government, a new cabinet or some political goings-on that kept her interested. She couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

In addition to Elizabeth’s numerous jobs, a new one popped up: screening prospective air hostesses for Royal Nepal Airlines. When Florelle heard about this latest line of work for her daughter, she was baffled. What kind of expertise did Elizabeth have in this field? Elizabeth admitted it was a little sketchy but explained that she was part of a panel interviewing candidates and weeding out the unsuitable ones. Pressed by her mother as to how one does that, Elizabeth explained that they were rated “on looks, self-possession, intelligent responses, fluency in English, and so on.” One can’t help imagining the scene: the critical, perfectionist, intelligent and impatient Elizabeth Hawley screening potential airline hostesses for looks and intelligence. It can’t have been an easy time for them.

Elizabeth’s importance as a journalist was made clear in the fall of 1987 when a Chinese CAAC flight landed in Kathmandu direct from Lhasa, Tibet. It was the first flight from Lhasa to anywhere outside China, and it offered her an unexpected opportunity when two passengers walked into her office carrying written reports and photos of the riots that had taken place in Lhasa two days before. She didn’t know the individuals who had sent them to her, but they knew her and they knew how to find her. She sent a telex to Reuters about the accounts of marching monks and fierce police, and that evening she sent the photos to the Reuters office in Delhi in a traveller’s hand luggage. They were among the first reports and photos to come out of Lhasa, and an appreciative Reuters distributed them far and wide. She had achieved another (unofficial) scoop. Because of her report, flights from Lhasa to Nepal abruptly ceased.

A truly momentous event occurred in the Hawley household in January 1988: Elizabeth purchased a computer. Day after day she went to the salesroom to observe demonstrations on three different word processors, trying to choose the best one for her. Then came the installation. An electronics man arrived first, then an electrician and finally a carpenter. After all this, there it was, standing majestically on her desk. The excruciating lessons followed – “God help me!” she exclaimed to her mother. “This week is the time I enter the computer age.” She would have many hours of work transferring all of her mountaineering data to the computer, but she was optimistic she would be able to figure it out. “God knows, it’s a thing of logic and detail, and I think I can handle those attributes.”

The transition to the computer age was a slow process, but it began to produce results. By January 23 she could word process and had grown particularly fond of the delete key. By the 30th she could create a right margin as straight as the left, and even the date at the top of the page was properly aligned. Another happy discovery was the spell-check feature: “I’ve learned how to call into play a wonderful invention, an ability the computer has to check misspellings, let you know if you’ve typed the same word twice in a row, or done something else you didn’t really want to do. Lovely!” She began to enjoy her new toy.

The winter mountaineering season wrapped up in February, and although she was still not accredited to report for Reuters, Elizabeth faithfully assembled the reports for her archives and assisted Mike Cheney with his mountaineering reports. Then, suddenly, Cheney died of a heart attack. Like her friend Boris the previous year, another Kathmandu regular was gone forever. And when Hillary returned from a work visit to the Solu Khumbu, he too was looking weak and unwell – not his cheerful self at all. He had done no trekking and seemed silent and withdrawn.

Everest in 1988 was a study in contrasts, as a huge 283-member expedition costing $7-million sent 14 climbers to the summit on two of the more common routes. At the same time, a team of four climbers who hardly knew each other put one climber on the top by a difficult new route on the gaping, gigantic East Face of the mountain. Elizabeth’s report summed it up beautifully: “The big party got the television coverage and a series of gala victory celebrations in three nations’ capitals, while the little group quietly went their separate ways home.”

But it was the little group that captured her attention. Four climbers from England, the United States and Canada formed a loose team with an ambitious objective: an unclimbed buttress they called the Neverest Buttress, leading up to the South Col on the East Face.

Briton Stephen Venables recalled having breakfast at their hotel on the morning before they were to head out for the climb, when Elizabeth Hawley showed up. To him, it felt as if the headmistress wanted to grill them, looking somewhat severe in her spectacles. The four climbers – Venables, Americans Ed Webster and Robert Anderson and Canadian Paul Teare – hardly knew each other, causing her to be skeptical about their chances of success, especially on such an ambitious objective. She told them the Chinese–Japanese–Nepalese Friendship Expedition and the Australian Bicentennial Everest expedition would both be on the mountain at the same time, exclaiming, “It’s going to be a zoo.”

The climbers scanned the Tibet Guesthouse dining room to make sure it was safe to bring out their six photos of the route to show her – they didn’t want their plans to leak out because they didn’t want to be “scooped.” They felt confident she was trustworthy, so Teare showed her their intended route. Elizabeth may have appeared disapproving, but in fact she was fascinated. What a welcome break from the big-expedition tradition she was used to and somewhat tired of: a big new route tackled by four climbers. Venables was sure she thought they wouldn’t make it back. In Snow in the Kingdom, Webster wrote, “Impressed either by our phenomenal daring or our obvious stupidity, Miss Hawley wished us sincere good luck.…”

Without oxygen and in deteriorating weather, the team became fractured on the mountain. One member turned back due to altitude sickness and two retreated in bad weather, but Venables plodded on, despite the knowledge that he had lost feeling in his toes. Venables made the summit, and eventually all four climbers managed to get down alive.

When Teare later came to Elizabeth’s office to tell her about the climb, Messner was there. Respectful of what they had accomplished, he praised them with “you have done a very brave thing,” and then added, “You are very lucky!” After getting all the details, Elizabeth mentioned she was going to an Australian expedition party and asked Messner and Teare if they’d like to accompany her. It turned out that Messner couldn’t go, but Teare could and he brought Venables with him. They later joked about how disappointed she must have been to end up with the two of them on her arm instead of Messner.

In contrast to her very real concerns about the four climbers getting lost on their route, Elizabeth thought it would be impossible for any of the 283-member team to get lost. “There were too many camps and climbers and walkie-talkie radios and oxygen bottles and support staff” for that to happen. There were three national governments (China, Japan and Nepal) involved with the expedition, with tri-national commanders in Beijing radioing instructions to the climbing leaders on the scene. Despite her admiration for the complex handling of logistics, she concluded: “It is a wonder that the whole enterprise did not collapse of its own weight.” But collapse it did not and they sent 14 climbers to the top. And what did her friend Hillary think of it? Not much. “It’s a massive undertaking and I personally think a singularly unattractive one,” he said.

Although this massive expedition was at the upper end of the spectrum in terms of cost, it was also becoming more expensive for smaller, less flamboyant teams to come to the Himalaya, and funding the expeditions was becoming a bigger part of the task. Peak permit costs were going up, so climbers sought sponsorship funding more often. As a result, climbing objectives tended to be on the really big peaks – mountains that were considered newsworthy – and toward what Elizabeth described as “stunts” – also newsworthy. In fact, she considered some of these escapades to be fundraising stunts more than mountaineering stunts.

It was in this category that she placed French climber Marc Batard’s next climb. His intention was to leave his base camp at 5350 metres, climb to the 8848-metre summit of Everest and return in less than 24 hours. To acclimatize, he first climbed Cho Oyu, then helicoptered into the Everest area. One week after summiting Cho Oyu, he was preparing his camp at the foot of Everest. He employed eight Nepali climbers to help break trail, but he eschewed the use of oxygen. He didn’t get to the summit on his first try. On his third attempt, he did it, although not in the time he had wanted. He reached the top in 22½ hours. The descent took him 8½ hours, and two hours after reaching base camp he left for Kathmandu and France. Still, he had achieved a speed record as well as another record in climbing four 8000-metre peaks in less than 10 months. Elizabeth acknowledged his strength, determination and abilities but questioned his motives. In general, she thought speed climbing was “gimmicky.”

Despite her opinion of this type of climbing, however, she still thought it was important to keep records – accurate records. It took seven years before Batard’s record was broken and even then she wasn’t sure it was truly beaten. Tyrolean climber Reinhard Patscheider climbed from advanced base camp on the north side of Everest to the summit in 21 hours. But, as Elizabeth pointed out, although his ascent was faster, he started a thousand metres higher than Batard, so it wasn’t really a record-breaker. The comparison was further complicated by the fact that advanced base camp on the north side was actually the bottom of the mountain. But she insisted that these records did matter and that the fine points needed to be acknowledged.

The question of motives was at the heart of a tragedy that took place on the Southwest Face of Everest when a small team of Czechoslovakia’s best climbers attempted the first alpine-style ascent of this face, first climbed in 1975 by the British team led by Chris Bonington. The Czechs did climb the face, but all four died on the descent. They had no fixed ropes, no oxygen and no Sherpa support. They had many difficulties on the route and became exhausted, yet they “succeeded” in getting to the top. Elizabeth challenged their claim of success. “Can a climb be described as successful if one man does reach the summit but all four die in the descent?” She wondered about the pressure they must have felt from their government and fellow Czech climbers, for there were high expectations that they would make a notable mountaineering achievement and thereby pave the way for more government approval for future climbs.

These four deaths, combined with three additional Czech deaths in the Himalaya in the same month, caused an uproar in Prague as messages went out to Czech climbers around the world instructing them to “stop immediately.” Perhaps more chilling than the political response to this tragedy, was the comment of a fellow Czech alpinist who wondered aloud who he would climb with in the future, as the country had lost so many of its best climbers.

Elizabeth was always careful to ask detailed and pointed questions of climbers when they returned to Kathmandu, and she was vigilant about recording and reporting the truth. But it wasn’t always easy and she didn’t always get it right. That may have been the case in the fall of 1988 when a climber came to report her ascent of Everest without oxygen. Lydia Bradey was a flamboyant young New Zealand climber who was climbing with a New Zealand team loosely associated with the tragic Czech group on the Southwest Face. She claimed to have reached the top illegally via the Southeast Ridge, by herself, without a watch to ascertain the time and with a frozen camera making it impossible to record the event.

As Elizabeth remembered the event, the Czechs had the permit for the Southwest Face but, to save money, they shared the permit with New Zealand team leader Rob Hall, Bradey and the other Kiwis. The Kiwis did not go onto the Southwest Face with the Czechs but over to the West Pillar, which was at the extreme edge of the Southwest Face. The Kiwis did not reach the summit, so they descended and returned to Kathmandu. All except Lydia. Just before they left base camp, they heard that Bradey had gone back up and reached the summit via the South Col. The problem was they didn’t have a permit for either the South Col or the West Pillar route. So when they returned to Kathmandu, they issued a statement saying she could not have climbed the peak, because they didn’t have a permit for that route. Rob Hall, the leader of her party, flatly dismissed her claim, stating, “It is simply not possible that she made the summit.”

Elizabeth saw that the Kiwis were upset and believed there were two reasons for it. The first had to do with an earlier climb in the Karakoram, where Lydia had also gone up a peak for which they had no permit. Part of their funding for the earlier climb was from the Hillary Foundation in New Zealand, so when they came back to Everest, having again secured backing from the Hillary Foundation, they swore she would behave herself. But she hadn’t. That was the first reason. The second reason, according to Elizabeth, was simple: she had reached the summit and they had not. Elizabeth was sure this was strictly macho sentiment on the part of Hall and Gary Ball. Their statement seemed a double blow, since they denied all responsibility for the climb and then said she didn’t do it anyway! But Hall may have had other motivations for making the announcement, because, as the leader of a team in which someone climbed on a route without permission, he could be banned for climbing in Nepal for up to 10 years, and he made his living as a guide in Nepal.

However, when Lydia returned to Kathmandu she pointed out that they also lacked a permit for the Southwest Pillar on which they had been climbing. They countered that it was part of the Southwest Face. Elizabeth clarified to them that the ministry considered the Southwest Pillar a separate route, so in fact they were also in the wrong.

Elizabeth remembered that it was very unpleasant for Lydia to get “slapped” by Hall and Ball, and though she believed Lydia had made the summit, there was simply no conclusive evidence at the time. Lydia subsequently gave a written statement to the Nepalese government expressing “confusion” about whether or not she reached the summit, which she may have done to lessen the expected punishment. But away from the mountain, she maintained her claim. In her seasonal mountaineering report, Elizabeth expressed both Ball’s opinion that the climb hadn’t happened and Lydia’s claim that it had.

As time passed, many in the mountaineering community came to believe Lydia’s claim and assumed that political and economic pressures had prevailed upon her to sign the statement about her “confusion.” Several years later Elizabeth received confirmation of Lydia’s ascent from a Spanish climber who said he had been on the same route on the same day. He hadn’t climbed with her, but he was at the South Col when she came back. They descended to Camp III and, as Lydia was a “great chatterbox,” she talked about the climb in detail. The Spanish climber told Elizabeth that Lydia’s description was detailed enough that he was convinced she had reached the summit.

Many wondered why Elizabeth didn’t disclaim the statements made by Hall and Ball. They wondered if Lydia’s personality struck Elizabeth as peculiar or unlikable, or whether perhaps Lydia had said something that made her skeptical. Lydia had a free-spirited, brash personality that might have been off-putting to Elizabeth. Lydia didn’t remember it that way at all, stating that she thought they got along just fine. Elizabeth remembered feeling sorry for her as she returned from an exhausting climb and tragedy on the mountain, only to be faced with rejection by her teammates. She came back from Everest and walked into a “guilty until proven innocent” situation, which Elizabeth placed firmly on the shoulders of Hall and Ball – but which others placed squarely on Elizabeth’s. If nothing else, the incident illustrated the weight of Elizabeth’s opinion in the climbing world at that time.

Writer and climber Greg Child later wondered whether Elizabeth comprehended the potential scale of the controversy. He doubted she did, because when he went to her years later for information on what had happened, she was as helpful as she could be, giving him signed statements from Hall and Ball stating that Lydia was a liar. They later denied the statements. Child was convinced that Elizabeth initially sided with Hall and Ball because of her past relationship with them, and that it took an enormous amount of fact-finding, and finally proof, to convince her otherwise. In the meantime, the damage was done to Lydia’s climbing career. In Child’s opinion, a large part of the damage was due to Elizabeth’s report, which cast some doubt on Lydia’s claim.

Lydia is ambivalent about Elizabeth now. From her pre-Everest meeting, she recalled liking Elizabeth’s character and “wicked” sense of humour. Elizabeth seemed “grounded and realistic,” so she was surprised at her attitude at the post-climb meeting, which seemed to Lydia like a bad dream. But maybe it was a bad dream. After all, Lydia was exhausted and devastated by what had happened to her Czech friends on Everest. Perhaps she wasn’t clear and firm with Elizabeth. She wasn’t upset that Elizabeth had doubts about her climb, but she felt it was a shame that Elizabeth seemed to have developed those doubts even before speaking with her. She credits that to Rob Hall’s singular focus and force of personality – “nobody, not even Elizabeth Hawley, could get in the way of Hall once he had an agenda,” claimed Lydia.

Talking about this incident 15 years later in her Kathmandu living room, Elizabeth’s disdain was not directed at Lydia, but at Hall and Ball, whom she proclaimed to be chauvinists: “They were nice people but they were men!”

Another dispute arose, although not immediately, with the dramatic solo climb of Jannu by the Slovenian Tomo Česen in the spring of 1989. The 29-year-old sports journalist from Kranj arrived at the 7710-metre Jannu with only a physician who doubled as a cameraman, and no Sherpa support. He acclimatized on a nearby mountain and then headed up alone on a new route on the North Face. Twenty-three hours later he was on the summit, and he immediately descended the Northeast Ridge in howling winds. Perhaps it was his manner that made him so believable. When Elizabeth asked him how he felt about this achievement, he answered, “I am satisfied.” Messner was more effusive. “He climbed the only safe line. It is a beautiful line. This was the best climb of the season.” Česen professed to like climbing solo because it was quicker and there were fewer problems. And so this was reported, recorded and accepted as a significant achievement by a new star in the Himalaya. Time would tell.

In contrast to Česen’s solo experience, a formidable Soviet assault was taking place on Kangchenjunga. Between April 9 and May 3, 27 Soviet climbers and one Nepali Sherpa made a total of 85 ascents of the four main summits of Kangchenjunga. Even more impressive were the simultaneous traverses by two parties in opposite directions over the long, exposed, summit ridges. This was the first-ever traverse of this mountain’s ridges, and a logistical tour de force. It was a remarkable display of talent by the climbers, one of whom was Anatoli Boukreev.

That autumn, one of the brightest Himalayan climbing stars – Jerzy Kukuczka, the quiet, determined electrician from Katowice, Poland – fell. He arrived with the intention of achieving the first ascent of the vast, unclimbed South Face of Lhotse, and in fine style: lightweight and fast. He and his team had to compromise on style almost from the beginning, when bad snow conditions forced them into siege tactics. After six weeks, he was poised only 170 vertical metres from the summit. The weather had improved and he was perfectly acclimatized. Even the wind had died down. But Kukuczka slipped and fell, and then his belay rope broke. He fell nearly 3000 metres down the face to his death.

Some speculated about the poor quality of the rope used by some Eastern European climbers. Others wondered what a successful ascent would have done for his reputation, for it would have secured him a record that even Messner didn’t have: climbing all 14 of the 8000-metre peaks by either a new route or in winter. But Elizabeth only commented that it was a great loss of an intelligent, soft-spoken, patient, modest and well-liked man. It had not been a good decade for the Poles, as many of the best climbers had perished on ambitious and difficult routes. As Kukuczka’s teammate noted after his death, “From the stock of best climbers, only a few are left in Poland.…”

Elizabeth had met Kukuczka many times, and he was always patient with her. She appreciated that. He was doing interesting things and had been close to overtaking Messner in that “horse race.” She also admired his patience on the mountain. On Manaslu he had waited for an entire month at the base of the mountain for the weather to clear and the avalanche danger to subside. Most expeditions complained about having bad weather for four days – they got trapped in a time-frame mindset that was rigid and unrealistic. They might have to go back to work, or they worried about their girlfriends or their families, or they just grew tired of waiting. In Elizabeth’s opinion, they lacked motivation. She thought Kukuczka was different than most peak baggers. He had a stick-to-it attitude that she liked, something her mother had attributed to Elizabeth. Messner was much more communicative about why he did what he did, and it was more difficult to understand Kukuczka because of the language barrier, but Elizabeth felt she understood him instinctively.

The year that brought this tragedy to the climbing community ended with a bizarre event that even Elizabeth couldn’t have predicted: a physical battle between two teams. It was probably inevitable, for the Nepalese authorities were granting more permits for the same mountain and even the same route. The incident happened on Cho Oyu, where Sherpas and members of a large South Korean team attacked members of a Belgian team with fists and sticks. The Koreans initially denied their part in the attack, but they admitted in the end that a Belgian did receive a head wound, that a rope was tied around his neck and that his arms were pinned behind his back. The Belgian team told Elizabeth that “mountain climbing should never turn into a battlefield.” Clearly, it had.

Elizabeth’s mother, Florelle, celebrated her 90th birthday in the spring of 1984. The time had come for Elizabeth to address the issue of where her mother would live out her last years. Florelle needed to leave her apartment in Palo Alto and was grasping for ideas on where to go. Elizabeth invited her to come to Kathmandu and stay with her, as it would be difficult for Elizabeth to return to the United States now and make a living. Florelle decided against this and instead moved back East to live next door to Elizabeth’s cousin, Lee Kneerim.

But within four years her mother became too frail to live alone. She needed too much attention now. Florelle’s choices were to either enter a nursing home or move in with Elizabeth. The prospect of this mentally alert and curious woman living in a nursing home was too unattractive for the family to contemplate, so Elizabeth’s nephew, Michael, and his wife, Meg, brought 94-year-old Florelle to Kathmandu in 1988. It was hard for her American relatives to say goodbye when she left for Kathmandu, because they all knew she wouldn’t return.

Florelle was carried up the stairs of Elizabeth’s apartment in a wheelchair, and within the first week she had a stroke. Her leg collapsed and she never walked again. She moved into the spare bedroom in Elizabeth’s apartment and had four women looking after her round the clock. One was a Tibetan nurse; the second was a young, strong Sherpa woman who could easily handle the 94-pound Florelle; the third was a Rai nurse and the fourth was a high-caste Chhetri woman. Their care for Florelle was loving and complete. For Elizabeth, this was a precious time when she and her mother could spend many hours together.

Florelle, still mentally sharp, would get up in the morning, eat breakfast with Elizabeth, then read the papers, magazines and books and take frequent naps during the day. She had brought her favourite books with her, some of which were murder mysteries. She left the flat only once, because she hated the terrifying trip up and down the steep stairs in a wheelchair. Since Florelle couldn’t get out and about, the world came to her. A hairdresser arrived on a regular basis, as did a doctor and dental hygienist. Elizabeth and Florelle ate dinner at 5:30 p.m. each evening, but before dinner they would sit and have a relaxing cocktail. Elizabeth usually had a beer or whisky, but Florelle was faithful to a particular combination: Canadian Club with unsweetened apple juice. She enjoyed that drink every night until three days before she died.

One morning in November of 1989, Elizabeth went into Florelle’s bedroom to say good morning. Florelle announced she wouldn’t be getting up for breakfast that morning and could someone please bring it to her in bed. She never got up again. Shortly before she died she pleaded, “Elizabeth, please let me go.” Two nights later she had a stroke in the middle of the night. She died at age 95.

For the first time in her life, Elizabeth didn’t know what to do. Ang Rita, who worked downstairs in the Himalayan Trust office, remembered the morning he came upstairs to learn that Florelle had died. He asked Elizabeth what she wanted to do about the cremation and, uncharacteristically, she didn’t have an answer. After two days she told him her mother had wanted to be cremated, so she asked if he would help her. Ang Rita and the other Himalayan Trust Sherpas were like brothers, helping her make the necessary arrangements for Florelle’s final, fiery end. Elizabeth arranged for the body to be kept in the American embassy’s freezer. It was then transferred into a simple wooden coffin and transported to the cremation ground in the Himalayan Trust’s small pickup truck, with Elizabeth at the wheel. They organized Buddhist lamas, prayer flags of five different colours, musicians and offerings for the gods. Ang Rita was one of many Sherpas who had benefited from Elizabeth’s care and attention through the Himalayan Trust, and he remembered her concerns for him when he first came to Kathmandu as a student. He was glad he could help her in this time of sorrow.

The cremation took place along the banks of the Bagmati River in the untouchables section. Traditionally, the eldest son would light the funeral pyre. But there was no eldest son; there was only Elizabeth. So when the time came, surrounded by her friends on a cold, wet day as the lamas chanted their traditional prayers, she stepped forward and lit the pyre on which her mother’s coffin was placed. It was the most difficult thing she had ever done.

Just days before she died, Florelle had written in a shaky hand a birthday greeting to her daughter: “Happy Birthday dear Elizabeth, I am so grateful for the good care and interesting life you provide for me.” Florelle had often told Elizabeth that it had been the right decision to come to Kathmandu, and Elizabeth agreed.

A month later Elizabeth carried her mother’s ashes back to the United States in a beautiful antique bronze urn about twelve inches high. Lee and Will picked her up at the airport, where they found her in a more emotional state than they had ever witnessed. They opened a bottle of Jack Daniels and settled in. Elizabeth talked and wept and talked some more – about how difficult life had been and how important a role model her mother had been. She expressed how important it had been for her, after all those years of separation, to be able to bring her mother to Nepal and care for her. She was honest about her regrets and the sorrows in her life. The loss of her mother, even though it was expected, was even more difficult for her than the premature death of her brother years before.

Almost the entire family assembled in Dorset, Vermont. They stayed in an inn next to the cemetery, which sloped steeply downward with a view of the mountains beyond. Florelle’s ashes were buried in the same plot as her husband and son John. Elizabeth’s cousin, Lee, sang Bach’s “Come Sweet Death,” others read or told stories about Florelle, and Elizabeth read from a letter she had written shortly after Florelle died, describing her mother’s last days. And so ended an important chapter in Elizabeth’s life.

In June of 1990 Elizabeth received an unusual offer from New Zealand. They wanted her to be their honorary consul in Nepal – honorary because she wasn’t a New Zealand citizen. The position intrigued her and it was clearly an honour. It also paid. She said yes. Her work fell into two categories: helping Nepalese citizens get to New Zealand for study or for pleasure, and helping New Zealand citizens do what they wanted to do in Nepal. This sometimes meant arranging permits or visas, but more often meant getting them out of whatever jam they’d gotten themselves into. Occasionally, it meant arranging for a body to be returned to New Zealand. Those were the jobs she dreaded.

The greatest volume of work came from Nepalis wanting to go to New Zealand. Elizabeth didn’t issue visas in her office, however, as they were handled in New Delhi. But that didn’t stop people from coming to see her or calling her in droves. Her Reuters replacement, Gopal Sharma, watched her in action many times when some unsuspecting person would wander into her office looking for information about a visa for New Zealand. If they were at all confused about what they wanted, she would pounce on them, demanding, “What exactly do you want?” “What is it that you need?” “What is it that you are here for?” When they finally collected themselves enough to tell her, she would calm down, walk them through the process and send them on their way. Despite her brusque manner, she was sympathetic. “There are hundreds of thousands of people who want to go to New Zealand to study, or to disappear into the woodwork,” she says. “So the New Zealand authorities watch carefully to ensure that each person has real intentions of coming back.”

She had three cases of New Zealanders dying. One was on the north side of Everest in Tibet. Fortunately for Elizabeth, her Kiwi friend and mountain guide Russell Brice was there. Although he was forced to dispose of the body on the mountain, he brought the deceased’s belongings back to Elizabeth – including his passport. It was these objects that Elizabeth forwarded to the New Zealand embassy in New Delhi, who located a relative in Australia to whom to send them.

In the second case, a Kiwi had fallen fell to his death while climbing a modest mountain roped together with his teammates, all of whom perished. Elizabeth arranged for his body and belongings to be returned to his grieving family.

The third death was a young woman, age 23, who had just qualified as a doctor and who had come to Nepal to do volunteer work at a hospital at Pokhara. When she finished her work stint, she went on a trek, but on the way back to Pokhara the bus stopped for a bathroom break and she suddenly collapsed. Her two friends commandeered a taxi to transport her to the Pokhara hospital and they did what they could to keep her alive on the way, but she was dead on arrival. Upon their return to Kathmandu, they contacted Elizabeth. With the help of an Austrian man who ran both a trekking agency and an undertaking company, she managed to wade through the multitude of international regulations and return the woman’s body to New Zealand.

Less gruesome, but more irritating, was the story of Kiwi Tony Paroli, who found himself in Nepal without a valid visa. Paroli’s problem was that his visa was six or seven months out of date, and when he went to the authorities to finally renew it, they said, “Certainly, but we will have to charge you double the fee.” He became angry and refused to pay, so they said, “Well then, come with us.” To his surprise, they took him to a jail cell, from which he promptly called Elizabeth. There was nothing she could do at that moment and, unluckily for him, it was late Friday afternoon of a three-day weekend, so nothing could be done until Tuesday. She went to see him on Saturday morning for a little chat – it was no mean trick getting through all that barbed wire to visit him, and she ripped her clothes in the process.

By the next week, Paroli was ready to pay. Of course, he didn’t have enough cash with him, but he did have an ATM card. The problem was that his maximum disbursement was only $250 a day – and he needed $8,000 for his expensive new visa, his unpaid hotel bill and travel costs out of Nepal! This was going to be a long, slow process. Elizabeth brought him to her office, where he phoned his father in New Zealand, asking for help. His father had some money, but not enough. He agreed to $6,000, and in due course Paroli went to Western Union to pick it up. After paying for his inflated visa, he was eventually released in Elizabeth’s custody. But the authorities made it clear he needed to leave the country, and it was now her job to get him on a plane. She booked a seat for him and delivered him directly to his hotel in Thamel, and he swore he would come to her place the next day. Much to her surprise, he did. What a relief when she finally delivered him to the airport and saw him through immigration and safely onto the plane – out of Nepal. Imagine her surprise when he called her up again a couple of years later. This time he was in Pokhara – without any visa at all!

Visas were not something to treat lightly in Nepal. Two young New Zealand women came to Nepal with legal visas, but when they needed to renew them, they entrusted them to their travel agent. They got the visas back, but, to their dismay, discovered the visa stickers, arranged for them by the travel agent, were counterfeit; the first time they presented them for inspection they were promptly slapped in jail. There were four jails in Kathmandu, and these women ended up in Dilli Bazaar jail – a truly dreadful place. Elizabeth visited them and brought them food, but their luck soared when their New Zealand member of parliament charged into Kathmandu. He met with the prime minister’s office, emphasized the women’s innocence and managed to free them in about three days.

Not all of Elizabeth’s consulate clients were innocents, however. One man travelling on a New Zealand passport on his way to Singapore was stopped at the airport when they found he was carrying six kilos of liquid hashish. He too ended up in the Dilli Bazaar jail. Elizabeth attended his court appearance, translated to her by Kumar, and wasn’t surprised when he was sentenced to two years in the central jail. At this point, the New Zealand government wanted his passport back, so Elizabeth, now familiar with the jail scene, went to retrieve it and discovered that the man had two passports. Officials in Wellington became curiouser and curiouser about these two passports and eventually sent them back with the news that they were both well-executed counterfeits. They implored her to “please stop that man!” Alas, he had just been released from jail. Elizabeth raced to the Interpol office in her Volkswagen Bug and explained the situation. They leapt into action and sped to the airport, where the man was caught just before boarding an international flight. The police slammed him back in jail. Elizabeth went to visit him and asked where he had obtained the passports. He explained he’d bought them in Singapore for $500 each. His routine was to take drugs out of Nepal and bring back cheap electronic goods. In fact, he was Polish. His real name was Krawetz Matlak. She was elated: he wasn’t from New Zealand after all! She called up the Polish authorities and said, “Here, take this man off my hands!”

So this was the life of an honorary consul? Elizabeth wondered if perhaps it was less complicated dealing with climbers.

CHAPTER 13

Many Claims, Many Ambitions

He wasn’t in his room more than 30 minutes when the phone rang; it was Elizabeth Hawley, congratulating him and setting up a meeting.

“A New Star Shines in the Himalayan Climbing World” was the title of Elizabeth’s spring report for 1990. The star was Tomo Česen, who came through on his promise to climb the route that many had been eyeing and trying – the South Face of Lhotse. Climbing alone, with no well-stocked camps and no bottled oxygen, Tomo Česen stunned the mountaineering world with a daring solo ascent of this formidable face.

Messner had taken a good look at the face and determined back in 1977 that, if it was possible, it would be a problem for the 21st century. He took another look in 1989 and was prepared to fix 5000 metres of rope to get up the route, convinced that three fixed camps would be required to climb it. And of course, the Polish legend Jerzy Kukuczka had died that same year, high on the impressive face. Neither Messner nor Kukuczka could have imagined the boldness of Česen’s climb, alone and in the amazing time of 45 hours and 20 minutes from bottom to top. In fact the entire expedition was a whirlwind. Česen was at his base camp for only 14 days, acclimatizing and watching the face to determine the best line of ascent to avoid rockfall and avalanches.

According to Česen’s report to Elizabeth, he headed up from base camp just after lunch on April 22 with a sleeping bag, extra gloves, a bivouac sack, some socks, goggles, 100 metres of 6 mm rope, eight rock pitons and ten ice screws, three kilograms of food and three Thermos bottles of liquid. He had two ice axes, crampons, a helmet, a headlamp, a walkie-talkie and a camera. Česen was meticulous in his report to Elizabeth: he told her exactly what time he started, where he climbed, when and where he stopped for his bivouacs, how many hours he slept, the weather and his strategy. He described in detail the difficult section of 50 to 70 metres of vertical rock covered in unconsolidated snow near the top and the long, exhausting summit ridge covered in deep snow. He explained how he had reached the summit at 2:20 p.m. in strong winds. By 7:00 a.m. the next day, he was back at the base of the mountain. He told Elizabeth that he felt good, although mentally exhausted, particularly from the descent. Physical exhaustion did not hit him until a day later. He concluded he was “satisfied with his achievement.”

In her usual style Elizabeth prodded for more details: What had he seen from the summit? What landmarks and terrain features could he describe? Was there any evidence of other climbing teams? His answers were convincing. She had been impressed with him when he told her of his solo ascent of Jannu by a new and difficult route, and that added to his credibility on Lhotse. It wasn’t just Elizabeth who was convinced.

Messner was stunned with the speed and the vision of this climb: “That he did it so fast above 8000 metres! I cannot imagine how fast he could climb.” Everyone agreed this was something truly futuristic. Later that autumn, a 20-member Soviet team climbed the South Face, taking weeks to surmount the route and using oxygen as well. They expressed wonder, and finally doubt, that Česen had done what he claimed.

Greg Child was in Kathmandu and remembered the Soviet team’s press conference and their skepticism about Česen’s climb. They were guarded in their statements. “If he did the route he claims,” they suggested, “he must be some kind of superman.” After the press conference, Child questioned Elizabeth about her interview with Česen and was surprised that she didn’t seem to have any detailed notes on the climb. He wasn’t sure if she understood the scale of the potential controversy. Had she simply written down what Česen told her rather than subjecting him to her usual interrogation? When she heard about Child’s surprise much later, she too was surprised, because her Česen file was complete with photos, statements, descriptions and notes. Either she hadn’t understood what Child wanted, or she wasn’t willing to show it to him, or one of them remembered it wrongly.

After Česen returned home, inconsistencies began to appear in his story. When asked by the French magazine Vertical for a summit photo, he produced one. Some time later it became known that it was not his own but that of fellow Slovenian Viktor Grošelj (who was not amused). One thing led to another, and Elizabeth, along with most in the mountaineering community, including Messner, finally came to believe that Tomo Česen did not climb the South Face of Lhotse.

In retrospect, Elizabeth doubted that Česen was “confused” about his claim. He had been explicit. He had told her he was just a few metres below the summit and that it would not have been safe for him to stand on the summit because of the wind and lack of space. He thought he could “touch” it by raising his arm to its full length, thereby confirming his summit claim. She recalled the interview: “I believed him. He’d been to Jannu and he came into my office and told me about the climb metre by metre. He came prepared. I remember that he had very detailed, minute descriptions of where he had gone, including a diagram. I asked how it compared with Jannu and he said, ‘Well it’s not technically as difficult, but it’s much bigger and much wider and you feel very, very small.’ And then he blew it. I’m sorry not to believe him, but now I don’t.”

And then people started doubting Česen’s solo ascent of Jannu. “It’s a pity,” she said, speculating that perhaps he came to believe in his stories himself. After Lhotse, she never saw him again.

Elizabeth received considerable criticism for her reporting of Česen’s successes on Jannu and Lhotse because she didn’t catch the errors. Some said that with her reputation for detail and scrutiny on the 8000-metre peaks, she should have picked up on the fabrications. They felt she was the first line of defence for the truth – and she had been too easily breached. Others were more generous, pointing out that virtually every mountain magazine editor in the world believed Česen, too, at least until he began making obvious mistakes.

Other Slovenian climbers were having a better time of it. Marija and Andrej Štremfelj became the first married couple to summit Everest together. Marija remembered the rigour of their post-expedition interview; in addition to all of the normal questions about camps, times and distances, Elizabeth asked what clothes they wore on summit day and who was first – Andrej or herself. Marija thought the obsession with seemingly meaningless details was strange, but it made sense when Elizabeth explained her reasons. There were actually two couples on the mountain that day, each trying to be the first to the summit. The other couple, an American woman and her Russian husband, was close behind, so Elizabeth had to determine exactly who was first. She was cross-referencing the times and details told her by the Štremfeljs against those reported by other climbers. Marija had been completely unaware of the tight time frame.

Elizabeth knew Andrej well and was genuinely happy for them. Over the years, they had often talked about expeditions, his and others’ too. She liked Andrej and trusted his honesty and motivations. In her opinion, he demonstrated a true mountaineering spirit, as opposed to the 8000-metre wrangling she saw so often. She told Andrej he would probably be surprised at the number of well-known climbers who said they’d reached summits she was sure they had not. He remembered talking with her about the Tomo Česen debacle and why she initially believed Česen had summited the South Face of Lhotse. She said Česen had described some oxygen bottles where she was sure they had been left by an American team. It was a detail that helped cinch the story for her.

Because Andrej was so often in Nepal, he was also the recipient of Elizabeth’s massive repository of information – something he used to good advantage. She was a valuable resource for many Slovenian climbers, assisting them in finding inexpensive accommodation in Kathmandu and helping them with logistics and permits. She recognized their needs and did what she could to help them. But he also sensed there was a lot she didn’t share: stories about politics, the royal family and individual climbers. He was curious, but didn’t ask.

The fall of 1990 was a big season, with 78 expeditions and 553 foreign climbers in the Himalayan peaks. With a 30 per cent increase of climbers from the previous year, Elizabeth was busy running back and forth between her house and the climbers’ hotels. But despite the numbers, not much new was happening. As she put it, “Pioneering new routes or exploring seldom-attempted peaks was apparently not of paramount interest to the majority.” Many of the expeditions were on Everest, where 31 people summited in a four-day period of beautiful weather.

The Nepalese Ministry of Tourism, regulators of mountaineering in Nepal, began to receive negative feedback about the number of permits they were granting for a single season, particularly on Everest and other “commercial” peaks. Foreign climbers – and Elizabeth – warned the authorities about the dangers and conflicts, not to mention the environmental pollution, of such crowding. They replied that they had several reasons to continue in this way: more revenue for the government, more revenue for the private sector (guides, trekking companies, porters, suppliers) and more opportunity for alpinists to climb their chosen peaks. For the most part, things worked smoothly, but there were incidents. A Spaniard on Dhaulagiri scoffed at the Swiss who “sold” their route to other expeditions. And at times, teams that were fixing routes resented later teams ascending their ropes.

Some teams arrived with meagre supplies, apparently assuming that better-supplied expeditions would be there for them if needed. Well-stocked teams found themselves functioning as restaurants and supply depots. This didn’t make them happy, but what really rankled was how the less-equipped climbers boasted of how they were freeloading and getting up the mountain “alpine style,” and yet were utilizing other teams’ fixed ropes, tents and food.

Amazing stories filtered back to Elizabeth: Russian climbers were helping themselves to other people’s food and tents; an ailing, ill-equipped French climber asked a British climber to supply him with oxygen, a stretcher and manpower to carry him down through the icefall; and so on. An Italian visitor to Everest base camp described it as a fairground and said it was difficult to move among the tents.

At the end of the season, a ministry official admitted there had been some problems and perhaps they should limit the number of permits. But Elizabeth doubted his superiors would see things in the same light, despite the warnings.

As commercial and guided climbing increased in frequency, Elizabeth maintained an open mind, though she was not terribly interested in these new climbing objectives. She clearly delineated the two: “All guided climbs are commercial climbs, but not all commercial climbs are guided.” With some commercial climbs, she explained, the organizers’ responsibility was to get the team to base camp or advance camp and provide them with everything to that point, and then leave them on their own to climb the mountain. In contrast, a guide’s responsibility was to take the client to the top of the mountain – and back down. She pointed out that guided expeditions tend to have “frightfully inexperienced” climbers, whereas climbers on non-guided commercial expeditions might have more experience, although not necessarily at high altitude: “They tend to hire the commercial organizer because they don’t have time. They don’t know how to get permits or organize expeditions. They only know how to climb.”

She was convinced that even though guided expeditions insisted on a minimum level of client experience, there was a lot of conning going on in that regard and the results could be disastrous. She had met many climbers on guided expeditions who made their decision to climb in Nepal based on what exotic vacation they should take in any particular year: “I’ll go on a Mediterranean cruise or an East African safari or climb a Himalayan peak.” And yet Elizabeth’s impatience was not so much with the commercial climbing industry as it was with the experts and professional climbers who looked down on commercial expeditions as getting in the way and cluttering up the mountains. She objected to this condescension, adding “Well, they don’t own the mountain, do they?”

The Nepalese government took advantage of this growing commercial phenomenon by steadily increasing peak fees. Authorities said the increases were for environmental conservation, but Elizabeth wasn’t convinced. Their professed strategy was to reduce the number of climbers on Everest and other popular 8000-metre peaks and spread them around to the lesser peaks, where the fees were lower. She didn’t buy this argument either. The increases were substantial and shocking to climbers who had been coming to Nepal for years. In one year, Dhaulagiri 1 leapt from a $2,000 fee to $8,000, plus $800 for each additional member over a total of nine. When Italian climber Sergio Martini returned from his attempt on Kangchenjunga and went to the ministry to obtain the same permit for the following year, he learned that it would cost him four times as much.

Elizabeth doubted the government’s strategy would actually reduce the number of expeditions. Instead, she thought it would change the nature and makeup of the expeditions from small self-financed teams to large commercial expeditions organized by adventure-travel agencies and mountaineering clubs. Yet to Elizabeth’s way of thinking, the smaller teams that tended to try difficult and unclimbed routes – routes that weren’t interesting to commercial operators – were essential for the ongoing development of Himalayan climbing. Some climbers told her they were changing their objectives to peaks in Pakistan, where the fees were lower. Others admitted they would climb without official permission, a practice she disapproved of.

That August, Elizabeth went to Lhasa, but it wasn’t the city itself that impressed her. Her flight skirted the edge of Everest and she vividly remembered her first view of the East Face: she almost fell out of her seat. She had always thought that the Southwest Face was big and that the North Face was big, but this face was huge! The immense whiteness of the snow-covered face overwhelmed her. Although she enjoyed exploring Lhasa, that experience was completely overshadowed by her first glimpse of the East Face of Everest. Despite her obvious glee at seeing this spectacular mountain face up close, the mystery remained as to why Elizabeth had never gone to Everest base camp herself. She had many chances to go and it would have been logical for her to be curious about this place so familiar to her through her work. She insisted her heavy workload had never provided her the time. And so she never went.

Stephen Venables was back in Kathmandu, this time for a new route on the 6369-metre Kusum Kanguru, a stunning peak near Everest. He and Elizabeth ran into each other through their mutual friend Lisa Choegyal. Venables described the new, quite difficult route they had just done, and apparently she responded by referring to it as just a “trekking peak,” asking whether he’d done any real climbing lately. Venables was stunned. He had thought she had a good understanding of what constituted a “real climb,” but her comment changed his opinion.

Elizabeth remembered it differently and was dismayed that he felt insulted, reluctantly admitting she wasn’t known for her diplomatic skills. She explained that she didn’t interview him because Kusum Kanguru really is a trekking peak, a designation created by the Ministry of Tourism for climbing peaks of lower elevation. She knew there were difficult routes on some of the trekking peaks, but for her it was impossible to keep track of them all. The Nepal Mountaineering Association gives out a multitude of permits for trekking peaks, many of which are not used because the costs are so low. For Elizabeth the volume was too much, so she had no way of knowing what routes were being done on those peaks. Looking back, she suspected she was probably brusque with Venables because she was busy.

Though he was disappointed by her lack of interest in his climb, Venables still valued Elizabeth as a chronicler, at least as far as what she actually chronicled. As an author himself, he had often contacted her for information and was always impressed at the care she took with details. He thought she was a valuable resource for climbing writers like himself, as well as the mainstream media, because it would be all too easy for the media to get misinformation and never know the difference. With Elizabeth, they were sure to get the facts.

But was she missing something by reporting on commercial climbs and overlooking an important new climb on the lower peaks? There was an emerging group of top climbers who were more interested in challenging routes – not the height of the peak.

Some climbers who sought credit for their hard new routes complained publicly about her lack of appreciation. But American climber Dave Hahn didn’t have much patience for those who whined about Elizabeth not being sufficiently interested in their hard, esoteric and dangerous climbs: “They’re going to have to get used to climbing their climbs for their own reasons – they are probably never going to get the kind of acclaim from the public that they feel they deserve.” But some of these climbers weren’t simply interested in public acclaim. They wanted their peers – other climbers – to know about their climbs, and they said it was Elizabeth’s job to keep them informed. Some climbers thought that a lot of important activity was going unrecorded and that this smacked of elitism.

In 1991 Elizabeth had the opportunity to be reacquainted with American climber Richard Salisbury. She had met him in 1984 when he was part of an Everest climb sponsored by the Nepal police. It began as an effort to remove garbage from the mountain but ended up a confusing mess of invalid permits and an illegal attempt on the summit, where two Nepalese lost their lives. This time, Salisbury was back in Nepal with a permit for Annapurna IV. His team didn’t get very high on the mountain, because it was a snowy spring, but it wasn’t their climbing that interested Elizabeth. Before heading to Annapurna IV, Salisbury sat down with her for the requisite interview. She brought out all the information she had on previous expeditions to Annapurna IV; to her surprise, Salisbury pulled out a spreadsheet with similar information. He had taken everything he knew about previous expeditions – times, camps and elevations – and plotted them on a spreadsheet so as to better plan the food supplies and general logistics of the trip. She was fascinated. She had accumulated copious notes on every Nepalese peak being climbed and was interested in creating a database of the information. Salisbury, who was a computer analyst specializing in databases back at the University of Michigan, her old alma mater, offered to help.

At the time, a Nepali graduate student was helping her with the project, so she declined Salisbury’s offer. But later, when the student left Nepal to study in the United States, she contacted Salisbury again to see if he was still interested. He was. In fact, Salisbury was the perfect choice. He knew about climbing and he knew how to program a database. He had both the skills and a passion for organizing information about climbing.

Salisbury hired a Nepali woman to go to Elizabeth’s house each morning to do data entry. For the next 11 years, she entered all of Elizabeth’s files into the program Salisbury had designed. Twice a year Elizabeth sent Salisbury updates; he would then go through the reports carefully, checking the facts against other sources. Once all the disputes were resolved, they synchronized their databases, working on the same project from two different continents. He worked with her for 13 years building the database. He recalled their working relationship as: “She didn’t terrorize me – she got impatient with me sometimes, but I just let it roll off. I knew it wasn’t personal.”

A statistic that Elizabeth entered into the database with sadness was the death of Wanda Rutkiewicz on Kangchenjunga in 1992. There weren’t that many women who impressed Elizabeth, but Rutkiewicz was one of them. The Polish woman was the world’s leading female Himalayan climber and Kangchenjunga was to be her ninth 8000-metre peak. Elizabeth described her as a skilful, although slow, climber. Rutkiewicz had conceived an exceptionally ambitious plan to bag all 14 of the 8000-metre peaks by the end of 1992, which meant six in one year, although she had since reconsidered and thought it might take until the following spring to finish the job.

She was last seen by the Mexican climber Carlos Carsolio at about 8250 metres in a snow hole where she was spending the night before heading up to the summit. According to Carlos, she had been climbing even more slowly than usual. Carlos went to the summit and was descending when he met her in her snow hole. He told Elizabeth it was a well-protected spot, but he still urged her to go down. Wanda told him she was cold because her old down suit wasn’t warm enough anymore. She was pitifully short of equipment: no sleeping bag, stove, fuel or food. She had only a bivouac sac that she had wrapped around herself to keep warm. “She seemed tired,” Carlos told Elizabeth.

And yet she was determined to continue up. “I think she felt this was her last chance to climb Kangchenjunga,” he said. He told Wanda he would go down to Camp IV for the night, then descend to Camp II and wait for her there, as there was no food or fuel at Camp IV. Their conversation lasted not more than 10 minutes.

Carlos descended and never saw her again. “It was difficult for us to leave the mountain,” Carlos told Elizabeth, “but I’m sure that she cannot have survived, because of the bad weather and because she was extremely tired and without drink.” He continued, “It is a sad loss for all of us and for the mountaineering world … she was a safe climber but she was extremely slow.” She had confided to Carlos that she had to finish all the 8000ers quickly before she became even slower.

Elizabeth wondered if this was a case of ambition outstripping physical abilities. She remembered Wanda as a charming, complicated woman, and “tense … wound up like a mechanical doll … she had determination. She just kept plugging away at these mountains until she could plug away no longer.”

Another tragedy played itself out in the fall of 1992 when the two French climbers Pierre Béghin and Jean-Christophe Lafaille attempted the South Face of Annapurna I. Lafaille remembered meeting Elizabeth when they arrived. As it was his first time to the Himalaya, he was the junior team member. “It’s my first trip in Himalaya, my first expedition. I discover the magic Nepal, I don’t speak English, and I’m the young boy with my boss Pierre.” His impression of Elizabeth was that she was very serious and “not so much friendly.”

The two were attempting an alpine-style ascent of the great South Face by a new line. With Béghin’s Himalayan experience and Lafaille’s technical skills, they were a strong team. They had made good progress over difficult terrain to an elevation of 7400 metres; then the weather deteriorated and they had to descend. During a rappel, Béghin fell to his death. Lafaille was left alone on that terrible face and had a multi-day epic getting down in the storm. He broke his arm in the process and his exhaustion was extreme. As Lafaille described it, “I was completely tired, broken physically and psychologically.”

When Elizabeth interviewed him upon his return to Kathmandu, Lafaille described Béghin as “the best Himalayan climber from France.” He described their partnership as a “good cocktail of his experience and my technique.” Béghin had remained true to his ideals of small teams on difficult routes, writing about it in the 1992 American Alpine Journal: “A simple rope team for days and days without logistical support striving with incertitude towards a summit, a goal with real meaning. What is the purpose of setting out with ten or fifteen climbers on that kind of objective while uncoiling kilometres of fixed rope? Today, when our technology lets us explore space, the conquest of the great walls of our planet is interesting only if done ‘by fair means’.…” – the phrase Messner had brought to Himalayan climbing.

But there were successes, too. Described by Chris Bonington as “one of the most beautiful and difficult peaks in the Himalaya,” Menlungtse was a prize to be plucked, and two Slovenian climbers did just that in the fall of 1992. A British team had climbed a lower summit of the peak in 1988, and an American team with John Roskelley, Greg Child and Jim Wickwire tried hard on the East Ridge in 1990, but neither team considered attempting the route taken by the Slovenians: the Southeast Face, which led directly to the main summit. Marko Prezelj and Andrej Štremfelj combined their experience, confidence and speed to reach the top on October 23 via a dangerous and difficult face in pure alpine style, spending just over 53 hours on the face. Elizabeth was pleased: a beautiful mountain, an ambitious route and a skilful team.

A tragic story unfolded in the spring of 1993 when Nepalese climber Pasang Lhamu Sherpa and her husband, the director of the Thamserku trekking agency, assembled a team to get her to the top of Everest before any Nepali women from the joint Indo-Nepali expedition, on the mountain at the same time, summited. Before Pasang left Kathmandu, she issued a statement saying that, no matter what, she was going to climb the mountain on behalf of Nepali women. The most cynical of her detractors said she had too much encouragement from her husband, who saw profit to be made by making her famous as the first Nepali woman on the summit. It was well known that she was not an experienced climber and that she was also quite slow.

An Indian team spread a rumour that they were going to attempt the summit on an absurdly early date in late April. Pasang took the bait. She had to be on top first. New Zealander Rob Hall, who was leading another party, spoke to Elizabeth about Pasang’s summit party, describing them as completely on their own, way ahead of everyone else, without proper communications equipment and with no support climbers to help them out in case of trouble – all in the name of a record. Other foreign climbers at base camp reported that Pasang’s husband ordered her “in good Asian, husband-to-wife fashion” to go up. She was in tears, but, being an obedient wife, she did it.

Rumours flew down to Kathmandu that she took her oxygen via a long hose from a bottle carried by another climber. She was apparently moving extremely slowly as she went to the summit and had to be dragged down to the South Summit on the descent. She and another Sherpa, Sonam Tshering, had to spend the night in an unplanned bivouac while three stronger climbers went down to the South Col. It was the last time Pasang and Sonam were seen alive. Elizabeth unforgivingly categorized it as “involuntary manslaughter.”

Pasang became a national hero overnight. Newspapers that hadn’t paid any serious attention to mountaineering accomplishments since Tenzing Norgay in 1953 gave Pasang ample press. According to one news report, “Pasang has carved an enviable niche in the history of mountaineering where she will stay till eternity, commanding the adoration of all those who love dignity, courage and bravery.” The prime minister hosted a great celebration, and several Sherpas were ordered to go back up the mountain, hack her body out of the ice and bring it back down, a practice completely contrary to the Sherpa tradition of leaving bodies on the mountain. Pasang’s body was taken with great fanfare and procession to the stadium and put on display, where it lay in state for a day. Hundreds of people lined up to see her prior to her cremation. The prime minister and the king both sent condolences to her family. A street was named after her and a mountaineering institute was established in her name. Postage stamps with her picture were issued and the government provided $10,000 for the education of her children. In a final show of respect, the king bestowed the Star of Nepal on her. Ten years later, Elizabeth explodes, “The exploitation was absolutely repulsive!”

By the mid-1990s, French climber Jean-Christophe Lafaille had completely succumbed to the magic of Nepal. He met Elizabeth in 1993 when he climbed Cho Oyu, in 1994 on his way to Shishapangma, and again on the tragic Annapurna expedition. He was well aware of her persistence in getting an interview, and he laughed that many climbers worried about getting their telephone call from her while they were in the bathroom. “Many times when you arrive after a long flight or a long expedition, you dream to wash yourself in a good bath and many times when you are in that bath, the phone rings!”

He recalled an amusing incident with Elizabeth that demonstrated the depth of her sleuthing abilities. Lafaille was doing a solo climb on a new route on the North Face of Shishapangma in 1994. He remained in base camp a long time because of bad weather. As a result, he ended up ascending the mountain on a French permit and descending on a British one. It would have been difficult for anyone to track his movements because of this convoluted combination of permits, trekking agencies and nationalities. He finally returned to Kathmandu during a national holiday. His trekking agency was closed for the day and as far as he knew, nobody knew he was back in town. But he wasn’t in his room more than 30 minutes when the phone rang; it was Elizabeth Hawley, congratulating him and setting up a meeting.

Another climber who impressed Elizabeth was the British woman Alison Hargreaves. In 1995 she had the ambition to climb the three highest mountains in one year: Everest in the spring, K2 in the summer and Kangchenjunga in the fall. She was tackling Everest from the north side, in Tibet, and wanted to climb as a self-contained unit of one. Her publicist in England was touting it as a solo climb, but Hargreaves and Elizabeth agreed that it was not solo, only self-contained. As Elizabeth observed, “How could she [climb it solo] when there were 182 other climbers … on the same route?” Elizabeth checked with other teams on the mountain to be sure Hargreaves’ claims were true, and the cross-checking revealed that “self-contained she claimed and self-contained she was.” She was so self-contained that she wouldn’t even enter anyone’s tent to have a cup of tea with them – or drink their tea at all. She carried her own loads, put up her own tent and took it down, cooked for herself and climbed the mountain by herself. She didn’t even use other people’s ropes.

A claim Hargreaves did not make was that of being the first woman to climb Everest without oxygen, and here Elizabeth’s reporting contradicted what she’d said earlier about New Zealander Lydia Bradey. At the time of Bradey’s climb, Elizabeth expressed some doubt about her claim to have summited; since Bradey had climbed without oxygen, hers would have been an important record. But now Elizabeth seemed convinced: instead of crediting Hargreaves with the first oxygen-free ascent, she said, “That distinction belongs to a New Zealander, Miss Lydia Bradey.”

Hargreaves succeeded – at least on Everest. She died a few months later on K2 when she was blown off the mountain by a horrific storm after reaching the summit. Italian climber Marco Bianchi described her as “a star of the Himalaya and a remarkable climber.” But Elizabeth added, “Unfortunately the star of the Himalaya shone a very short time.” She saw Alison as an ambitious, talented climber whose aspirations more or less matched her abilities and who climbed to support her children. She liked and admired her and was genuinely saddened by her death on K2.

The 8000-metre-peak bagging continued, and one climber whose face was becoming familiar was the friendly, efficient and talented American Ed Viesturs. Viesturs, together with New Zealander Rob Hall and Finn Veikka Gustafsson, achieved the fastest ascent to date on Makalu in the spring of 1995. They accomplished it without oxygen or Sherpa support. They could do it because of their high degree of acclimatization, having helicoptered over from the Everest region, where they had been high on Everest and Lhotse. Viesturs was clearly headed for all 14 of the 8000-metre peaks, which he completed in the spring of 2005.

Elizabeth knew him well enough to keep him honest about his claims. He remembered being chastised for not having gone to the top of Shishapangma: “You know, Ed, if you want to do all fourteen, you have to go back to Shishapangma.” So he did. He was always honest with her about his summits, but was convinced she would have known even if he hadn’t been. He described her as a kind of taskmaster – but a caring one. In her parting comments to Ed before each expedition, she always urged him to “be as careful as you’ve always been, I want to see you come back.”

And the soft-spoken Mexican climber Carlos Carsolio was back with two more 8000-metre summits to add to his list: Annapurna I, followed swiftly by Dhaulagiri I. His superb acclimatization achieved on Annapurna allowed him to climb Dhaulagiri during the night, alone, and to reach the summit at 10:00 a.m. on May 15. She interviewed him in Kathmandu and heard the seemingly easygoing Carsolio say, “I am not in a hurry … but I would like to climb them all.”

Elizabeth had little patience with climbers who she thought made false claims. If she sensed exaggeration, she was like a bloodhound on a fresh trail, hunting down the truth. One of these cases was the French climber Benoît Chamoux, who died on Kangchenjunga in the fall of 1995. She had met him many times in Kathmandu, as he was the leader of a professional team of climbers called l’Esprit d’équipe, fully sponsored by the French computer company Bull. Chamoux’s publicists claimed Kangchenjunga would be his 14th 8000-metre peak. Before he headed off, Elizabeth interviewed him and challenged his claim, since he had previously told her he had not reached the highest of the summits on Shishapangma, another 8000-metre peak. He agreed his earlier statement was correct, but that he had gone to a summit of Shishapangma that was over 8000 metres. Elizabeth’s response offered no compromise: “That’s fine, but it’s a summit, not the summit. People who reach the South Summit of Everest don’t claim that they reached the top of Everest, even though the South Summit is well over 8000 metres too.” Chamoux conceded that perhaps he would have to go back to Shishapangma sometime and climb the summit.

But it wasn’t just Shishapangma that bothered Elizabeth about Chamoux. His claims on Dhaulagiri were also in question, according to her. Normally, proof of a summit climb was a description or, better yet, photographs of the flags, prayer flags and katas that are the normal summit decorations on Himalayan peaks. But Dhaulagiri was a trick summit and she had caught a number of false claimants due to her knowledge of the peak. She explained that on Dhaulagiri there are flagpoles, prayer flags and katas – but not at the highest point. To get to the highest point from these flags, one must go down a bit and then traverse. She was impressed with the integrity of the Basque climber Juanito Oiarzabal when he learned he hadn’t gone to the true summit. He went back later in the same season and climbed it again, this time going the entire distance.

In fact, Elizabeth thought Chamoux was a man of multiple false claims. Although she didn’t challenge him at the time, she later disbelieved his claim of Cho Oyu because several years later someone from his team told her that Chamoux and British climber Alan Hinkes didn’t go to the summit; they’d stopped on the summit plateau because of deteriorating weather. She mentioned the discrepancy to Hinkes and he denied it: “I thought we did, although we couldn’t see very well, but I’m sure we got it.” Many people stop at the lower summit, she said – some claim it as the summit and others do not. Elizabeth did not consider the summit plateau to be the summit of Cho Oyu, as it was not the highest point.

She posed detailed questions to those who supposedly reached their summits in bad visibility. She would ask for details of the terrain and whether there were any particular landmarks, and then wait to see if they volunteered those details. If possible, she would check with other expeditions on the mountain.

In the end, Elizabeth credited Benoît Chamoux with only 10 of his 13 claims. False claims included Shishapangma, Cho Oyu and Makalu. In her archival mountaineering database, she adjusted her notes to say claims were unsubstantiated if she wasn’t sure. In Chamoux’s case, she thought she understood the problem. He was under pressure from Bull, the computer company, to succeed. To keep the sponsorship, he needed to succeed and succeed and succeed again. She thought the pressure to produce results was too much for him and so he lied.

She was convinced Chamoux’s death on Kangchenjunga was linked to the 8000-metre race. On the mountain at the same time were the Swiss Erhard Loretan, who was going for his 14th 8000-metre peak, and Sergio Martini, an Italian who was going for his 11th. Loretan climbed Kangchenjunga, efficiently as always, with his frequent climbing partner Jean Troillet. Elizabeth pressed Loretan for details of the climb and tried to learn more about the Chamoux situation. He replied that when he and Troillet reached the bottom of the West Ridge at 4:00 p.m. on their descent, they encountered Chamoux and his partner Bernard Royer moving up. About 30 minutes later, Royer radioed that he was abandoning his summit bid because of fatigue. About an hour after that, at 5:30 p.m., Chamoux also radioed that he was too tired to continue and that he was unable to find his way down the ridge. He stayed that night a few metres above the col and got back on the radio at 8:10 a.m. on October 6. He was seen reaching the col, but then went out of sight on the north side of the mountain. Neither Chamoux nor Royer was seen again. As a footnote, their Sherpas did not try to mount a rescue or even search for the French climbers, because earlier in the expedition the two had done nothing to help one of them when he fell. A few days later, Sergio Martini summited, making it 11 8000ers for him.

There was much discussion in the mountaineering press about the presence of three world-class mountaineers – all racing for the 8000-metre prize – climbing on Kangchenjunga at the same time. Did they create a dangerously competitive situation on the mountain? An American climber put it bluntly: “It was a fatal challenge for Chamoux. The Swiss were much faster. Loretan is the best.… The French were not well acclimatized. They tried to keep up with the Swiss and they killed themselves.” From her observations, Elizabeth was inclined to agree.

When Loretan returned to Kathmandu, she asked him how he felt about the accomplishment. He said only, “It is something done.” He told her the 8000-metre goal had not been a burden to him, and therefore, having achieved it, he didn’t feel any great sense of relief. She pressed him more on his dreams for the future, wondering if he would continue to climb in the Himalaya. He responded with other mountaineering projects: ambitious steep climbs, such as the unclimbed West Face of Makalu. She was certain she would see more of Erhard Loretan.

Although she wasn’t fond of the 8000-metre obsession in general, Elizabeth hesitated to lump all of the aspirants into the same pot. Messner had been the first, and for that reason she thought he stood alone. For him it was an idea – an original idea – and she was convinced he did it for the fulfillment of that idea, not for the glory. She felt Kukuczka took it to another level by doing so many of the climbs in winter. He was a true mountaineer. Loretan she saw as an incredibly talented and efficient climber and a real mountaineer as well. Krzysztof Wielicki was a serious climber and not afraid of winter. But on the topic of Alan Hinkes, she became critical. She was convinced that he was opportunistic, that he timed his climbs so that the other teams on the mountain had already set up the fixed ropes. He would then show up with one Sherpa and off he would go. And Chamoux – she saw him as a tragic figure.

Elizabeth had a welcome respite from all the peak bagging when she was invited to Tokyo by the first woman to climb Everest, Junko Tabei. It was the 20th anniversary of Tabei’s ascent and she had invited 10 of the 26 living women Everest summiteers to Tokyo for an international symposium and a celebratory climb of Mount Fuji. Among the 10 invitees was the Chinese climber who summited just 11 days after Tabei’s historic climb. Elizabeth declined the Fuji climb, but she joined them in a nearby mountain hut. She was initially confused about why she was invited, and speculated she had been “tacked on as an observer.” In fact, she was invited because of her knowledge of the history of women climbers in Nepal, and so was asked to give a speech after the Everest summiteers had been honoured.

In her speech, Elizabeth was typically blunt, expressing a certain amount of disappointment. With few exceptions, she felt that women were following in footsteps that had been made by men before them. She pointed out that 31 years had elapsed between the time that the first men came to climb in the Nepalese Himalaya and time that the first woman, Hettie Dyhrenfurth, came and climbed on Kangchenjunga in 1930. Women tended to use standard routes in standard seasons. Not many had been leaders and not many had done all-women expeditions. “They just haven’t progressed a whole lot in terms of coming to the forefront of mountaineering in Nepal,” she said.

Using example after example, she pointed out that women were not opening new routes or advancing the standards set by men. “Women have yet to prove their ability to lead the way in change and innovation.”

She wondered if it was because female alpinists were a smaller group from which to draw. She was sure it was not a physical disadvantage, because, as she pointed out, some of the best Himalayan climbers were very small men. Finally, she challenged them to attempt some of the last big Himalayan prizes, such as the Horseshoe Traverse. “Are there women who can find the financing, calculate the logistics and enlist the highly talented climbers needed to accomplish such a feat?” Her standards were high for men – and for women.

CHAPTER 14

Living Archive

I’ve got to go back – Elizabeth says I didn’t really climb it.

— Anatoli Boukreev

Having observed the mountaineering scene in Nepal for almost 40 years, Elizabeth was beginning to see developments that disturbed her. First was the increasing number of sloppy (and sometimes incorrect) reports coming out of Nepal regarding expedition successes, failures and, most seriously, fatal accidents. Much of the misinformation emanated from the Internet. One report indicated that five Kazakhs died in a storm when they were actually three Russians. Another report suggested that seven New Zealanders died – yet there weren’t seven New Zealanders among all the climbers on the mountain at the time, and none of them had been involved in an accident. She thought this “instant kind of reporting” was unreliable and sometimes irresponsible. It wasn’t subjected to the rigorous cross-checking for accuracy that she practised. There were apologies and retractions about the errors, but she knew the families of these climbers must have been distressed, and for no reason other than sloppiness.

She also wondered what kind of impact satellite phones and other forms of instant communication would have on an expedition’s ability to focus. She cautioned a Polish team attempting a difficult winter ascent of Makalu to consider leaving their phones behind. She believed they needed to concentrate on the task at hand, not their families, their kids’ school problems and so on. But ever the journalist, she added, “But don’t forget to call me when you get back to Kathmandu.”

She saw another disturbing trend with commercial expeditions. As this business became more profitable, it was inevitable that some questionable players would enter the arena. In 1996 the peak fees alone earned the Nepalese government around $1.8-million. Elizabeth was painfully aware of guiding inconsistencies because she heard the stories first-hand. Some commercial guiding companies were highly reputable, providing excellent services, experienced guides, plenty of oxygen and other important equipment. Others did not. Some were outright illegal. One German company accepted payments from 30 to 40 clients for expeditions to Everest, Cho Oyu and Shishapangma, but failed to forward any of that money to Kathmandu agents for their transport to base camp, or to Kathmandu staff to prepare the food and arrange logistics. When the unsuspecting clients arrived in Kathmandu, they were shocked to learn that the agent wouldn’t do anything for them unless they paid him directly – and immediately. The German company was already so indebted to him that he refused to grant any more credit to the company’s clients. Some went home disappointed, while others stayed and paid – a second time.

But Elizabeth’s most fundamental disappointment was with the climbers themselves. She categorized them as three major types: pioneers who attempted unclimbed mountains or routes, peak baggers who attempted as many 8000-metre peaks as possible, and fee-paying clients and their guides.

One of the few climbers she placed in her “preferred” category – the pioneers – was the Slovenian Tomaž Humar. In the fall of 1997 Humar had made a brief appearance in Nepal with climbing partner Janez Jeglič to climb an impressive direct line up the previously unattempted West Face of 7855-metre Nuptse. The two completed the route, but only Humar survived the climb. They required three bivouacs on their ascent and climbed with no fixed lines and no fixed camps. Humar reported that the face was wracked with avalanches and falling séracs. Although they climbed together during the ascent, they became separated and summited separately, Jeglič about 15 minutes before Humar. When Humar arrived on the summit, all he saw were his partner’s footprints in the snow leading toward the south side of the mountain. He surmised that Jeglič had gone beyond the summit by mistake and been blown down the South Face by the strong gusting winds. Humar then had the long, complex and dangerous descent to do alone. He explained to Elizabeth: “If you are pushed and you want to survive, everything is possible.” She queried his ambitions to climb such dangerous routes and he explained that steep Himalayan faces roused his mountaineering passion – he couldn’t explain why. As they looked at photographs of other unclimbed faces in the Himalaya, he referred to Nuptse’s West Face as “gorgeous” and talked at length about his dreams of other faces. This was the kind of conversation that Elizabeth loved – reminding her of the old days discussing new routes with Messner and other Himalayan pioneers.

In the second category – the peak baggers – Elizabeth’s interest was primarily statistical. There were certainly a lot of them to keep track of in 1997. Basque climber Juanito Oiarzabal knocked off his 12th 8000er with Manaslu, and South Korean Park Young-Seok claimed an unprecedented five 8000-metre summits in six months. Two Spanish brothers, Jesús and José Antonio Martinez, set themselves the ambitious goal of climbing all the 8000ers within a year of their first success, all without oxygen or Sherpa support. They were now up to three. Elizabeth grilled them about their plan, asking whether they ever tired from such an ambitious schedule. Antonio replied, “Three days’ stay here in Kathmandu … is enough to recover from a climb.” She asked if they ate anything special to help them succeed. “Aspirin,” he said.

Italians Sergio Martini and Fausto De Stefani made it to 12 successful 8000-metre summits, if you counted a confusing account of their ascent of Lhotse. At first they told Elizabeth they had summited, but when pressed for details, they clarified they had been so near the top they felt they could rightly claim it, though they weren’t sure just how close they had been because they couldn’t see a thing. Then Young-Seok, who summited three days later, followed the Italians’ crusted footsteps in the snow and said they ended at least 150 vertical metres below the summit.

When Martini summited Everest in 1999, he called it his 14th. But that included his “almost” summit of Lhotse, which Elizabeth didn’t count. However, he did tell her that he might return and climb Lhotse again.

Martini allegedly refused to talk to Elizabeth for two years because of her report on Lhotse, but she insisted she used their words in the report, verbatim:

“We think that we did.”

“How high did you get?”

“We think that we got very, very close.”

“How close?”

“Maybe 50 metres.”

So she reported what he had said, rather than stating they had definitely reached the summit. They were unhappy about that, but Martini subsequently went back to Lhotse and summited it, making sure to get pictures. He eventually spoke to her again.

Also in 1999, Oiarzabal summited Annapurna as his 14th. When Oiarzabal told Elizabeth that he would probably return and do some of the 8000ers again she wryly observed, “It seems to be extremely difficult for climbers to stop climbing.”

Another 8000-metre man, Alan Hinkes, had a plan of adding a few more 8000ers to his list in short succession, but his strategy was thwarted by a bizarre mishap. While at base camp for Nanga Parbat in 1998, he inhaled the flour coating on the chapati he was eating, causing a violent sneezing fit that injured his back so badly that he was unable to move because of the pain. He was rescued by helicopter and was eventually hospitalized in Britain. Elizabeth found this amusing, as did Hinkes, since he told the story in all of his lectures, to the delight of his audiences.

And in the third category, the guided clients were just too numerous to talk about, in Elizabeth’s opinion. But one season, guided climbs in particular dominated Elizabeth’s journalistic reports: 1996 and the much-written-about Everest disaster that killed a total of 11 people. She interviewed many of the climbers and came to her own conclusions of what happened and why. She was convinced that the real fault for the disaster lay with the rivalry between the leaders of two commercial expeditions – Rob Hall, a New Zealand guide and owner of Adventure Consultants, and American Scott Fischer, head of Mountain Madness. Fischer was just getting into the business and, in her opinion, was “elbowing his way in.” On the other hand, Hall was a well-established Everest guide who had succeeded in getting his clients to the summit every year except the previous year. He had firm rules for himself and his clients about turning back if they hadn’t reached the South Summit by 1:30 p.m. He had followed his own rules in 1995, and as a result nobody reached the summit but everybody returned home alive. That was not the case in 1996, when four of his team, including Hall, and five more from other expeditions perished on their descent in a terrible storm.

Elizabeth believed the tension on the mountain was created by two very different styles of leader, each with a huge amount at stake. They were on a collision course, with both teams scheduled to summit on the same day. She described Anatoli Boukreev, Fischer’s talented Russian guide, as being sadly miscast as a guide. In his book The Climb, Boukreev explains that he didn’t see himself as a hand-holding kind of guide but rather as a route-fixer who would go ahead and prepare the way for the clients to follow. Elizabeth thought this strategy might have worked, except that Fischer was sick that summit day and not in a position to do the hand-holding that clearly needed to be done to get all the clients down safely.

She thought that both Fischer and Hall also likely felt pressure to succeed from organizers of other, less-expensive commercial guide companies, who charged clients around $20,000 rather than their pricier $60,000 fee. Although the cheaper expeditions provided fewer Sherpa helpers, less bottled oxygen and virtually no professional guides, there were occasional success stories and this could have been perceived as a threat.

Elizabeth knew them both well and she wondered about the adage that familiarity breeds contempt, or at least that familiarity can foster a more blasé attitude about danger. Experienced climbers who later found their bodies on the mountain were surprised that both Hall and Fischer were clad in relatively lightweight clothing. She wondered if their strong track records had led them to be overly confident in their abilities at high altitude.

Two weeks later another tragedy occurred, with a team from South Africa that claimed Nelson Mandela as its patron. The expedition had been plagued with internal distress from the start. Led by expatriate Briton Ian Woodall, it initially included black South African climber Ed February, who resigned from the team along with two others. Woodall refused to comment when Elizabeth questioned him about the incident. Back home in South Africa, the press went wild and built a story around Woodall’s authoritarian leadership style. The three remaining high-altitude climbers – Woodall, Cathy O’Dowd and Bruce Herrod – made it to the summit on May 25. But this is where the real trouble began, because Herrod was slower than the others, perhaps due to his role as a professional photographer. He radioed from the top at 5:00 p.m. but failed to make contact at the scheduled 6:00 p.m. call. His teammates below him in Camp IV did not mount a search for him that night or the next morning. O’Dowd and three Sherpas continued descending, and Woodall waited till mid-afternoon, at which time his bottled oxygen ran out and he too descended. Woodall speculated that Herrod must have fallen somewhere above the South Summit.

In the wake of all the Everest activity that season, Elizabeth was sickened by the numbers: 11 deaths out of 87 summiteers. She tried to determine the major causes. Certainly high altitude and unpredictable storms were factors. But she wondered about the number of people on the mountain. In the past, the Nepalese authorities had controlled the number of permits on the Nepalese side, but this season, due to pressure from Nepalese citizens earning a living from expeditions, they opened it up: there were no limits. There was congestion at the Hillary Step as a result and delays were a serious problem. This reduced the time available to descend before the weather turned.

Elizabeth, like many others, also doubted the skills and strength of many of the climbers on the mountain. American guide Ed Viesturs said there were probably quite a few climbers who shouldn’t have been there. As he put it, “They’re competent mountaineers, but Everest is another ball game.”

Her comprehensive reports on the Everest disasters elicited conflicting responses. Some said that by reporting excessively on the expeditions that drew the most public attention, especially disasters involving guided clients, she was distorting history. By reporting on these large-scale disasters that had no serious place in the history of mountaineering, was she missing more important climbs being done at the same time? Some felt that by focusing on these commercial disasters, she stooped to the level of journalistic sensationalism and fed public misconception about the majority of climbing exploits in the Nepal Himalaya.

Despite the great attention given to Everest, Elizabeth did report on other important mountaineering achievements that season. On Manaslu, the Mexican climber Carlos Carsolio became the fourth person to climb all 14 of the 8000-metre peaks. His summit day was May 12 and probably would have drawn much more attention had it not been overshadowed by the tragedies on Everest. At age 33, Carlos was the youngest to climb all 14 and the first to reach the top of four 8000ers in one year: Annapurna I, Dhaulagiri I and Gasherbrums I and II, all in 1995.

Another climber on the trail of the 8000ers was also on Manaslu. French climber Chantal Mauduit, having summited Pumori and Lhotse on April 28 and May 10, helicoptered to the foot of Manaslu with one Sherpa, Ang Tshering. There was already some doubt about her claim earlier that year to have summited Lhotse. Climbers on the mountain saw her disappear from sight while climbing slowly in the couloir just below the summit and later told Elizabeth that she reemerged from it on her descent rather quickly. They doubted that she could have reached the summit in such a short time. On Manaslu, however, she reported seeing prayer flags on the summit, so Elizabeth did not question her claim. But could Mauduit have obtained this information from other climbers? Was Elizabeth too ready to accept “facts” from climbers?

Mauduit had climbed six 8000-metre peaks by the time she died in the spring of 1998 on Dhaulagiri. When she was climbing up to what would be her fatal camp, other teams were coming down because of deteriorating conditions. But Mauduit stayed on. She had a flamboyance about her – in the colourful things she wore and in the naming of each of her expeditions after a flower. Her Dhaulagiri expedition was called “Sunflower,” with sunflowers painted all over her tent, the same tent in which she and Sherpa Ang Tshering were eventually found. After an initial assumption that they had both been asphyxiated or suffocated, the post-mortem revealed that Mauduit’s neck was broken. As there had been a lot of avalanche debris piled on one side of the tent, it was unclear whether her neck was broken before or after death. Elizabeth thought that Mauduit may have been overly ambitious for her skills and remembered reports from others that she was a slow climber. But Elizabeth had enjoyed her company, appreciated her charm and genuinely admired her combination of ambition and determination. She was saddened it had to end so tragically.

In the fall of 1996, Dutch climber Bart Vos claimed to have reached the summit of Dhaulagiri I by the seldom climbed East Face, a route taken in 1982 by a strong team who then turned back because of extremely dangerous snow on the summit pyramid. Elizabeth doubted Vos; he had lost credibility in 1984 when he made a false claim on Everest. He produced a Dhaulagiri summit photograph, but Elizabeth laughed – it was a night shot with him standing in the snow. It could easily have been taken in the Alps or lower on the mountain; it didn’t prove anything about being on the summit of Dhaulagiri, she scoffed. In fact, in her opinion, it didn’t even look like a summit shot, just a snow shot. Along with Elizabeth, Dutch reporter Milja de Zwart did some investigative interviewing of other teams on the mountain. De Zwart wrote a disparaging article about Vos’s claim and was subsequently sued for libel. Vos lost the case. Elizabeth described him as “a complicated man, as so many climbers are, and I have the feeling that he really believes his claims. I really think he is a Walter Mitty type. He lives in a world of fantasy and he believes he was successful.”

In Vos’s case, as with other doubtful claims, Elizabeth cross-checked with other expeditions who were on the mountain at the same time. As the inconsistencies grew, she dug deeper. Following the court ruling in favour of Zwart’s article, Vos had three months to appeal the decision against him. He did not. In Elizabeth’s seasonal mountaineering report and statistics, she revised her findings on Vos to state that the claim was almost surely not true. From a mountaineering “interest” point of view, she realized that Vos’s claims were not that important, but from the perspective of accuracy, they were. Elizabeth wanted her records to be accurate.

That summer brought a welcome respite from climbing via an invitation from the governor general of New Zealand. July 20 was Hillary’s 80th birthday and Elizabeth was invited to the party. The festivities included a gala black-tie dinner in his honour. During the flight to Wellington with the Hillarys, each and every passenger who saw Sir Edmund stopped to say happy birthday. After several of these congratulations, he muttered to Elizabeth, “This is getting embarrassing.” She was struck once again by his modesty: “What world-famous person would be embarrassed by this?!”

That evening they donned their tuxedos and ball gowns and proceeded to the banquet hall of the governor general’s residence, where elegantly decorated tables awaited them. Elizabeth wore a deep red gown of exquisite Thai silk, with golden slippers and a matching gold purse. She met a fascinating mélange of New Zealanders: opera singers, sports heroes, business tycoons, politicians, a chief justice of the Supreme Court, and a Maori queen. Among the many greetings and congratulatory messages from around the world was a formal birthday greeting from the Queen of England. And then it was time to cut the cake. Much to Hillary’s delight, the icing read, “We knocked the bastard off.” It was a magnificent evening, in Elizabeth’s opinion.

Back in Nepal, high-performance athletes brought some ambitious schemes to the Himalaya in 1997, but perhaps they were a little too ambitious. Britain’s Alan Hinkes planned to add three more 8000ers to his list this season alone: Lhotse, Makalu and Kangchenjunga. Bringing publicity material that described him as “the most successful high-altitude mountaineer in Britain,” he planned to break a one-year record by climbing six of the giants. After the first three, he planned to go on to Nanga Parbat, Dhaulagiri and Annapurna I in the fall. But bad weather so greatly delayed his ascent of the first one that he was unable to reach the top of the second and he never attempted the third.

A complex plan hatched by Anatoli Boukreev also fell apart. He summited Everest while leading an Indonesian expedition and subsequently summited Lhotse, but his goal to traverse from the top of Lhotse over to Everest and then descend Everest’s northern side was not achieved.

His complicated plan required three permits: a British team’s Nepalese permit for the south side of Everest, a Kazakh permit for the north side of Everest and a Russian permit for Lhotse. Everything was in place, but Boukreev made the fatal error of coming back to Kathmandu after Everest with the Indonesians. A week later he returned to the mountains and climbed Lhotse, but he had picked up a lung infection in Kathmandu and was unable to continue his traverse. It was a bitter disappointment.

A happier occasion in the spring of 1997 was the ascent of Everest by Tashi Tenzing, grandson of Tenzing Norgay. A devout Buddhist, he carried a 15-centimetre bronze statue of Buddha to the summit as a message of peace and compassion to the world. With boyish enthusiasm, he told Elizabeth what he saw from the top: “Two great orange balloons in the sky – the setting full moon and the rising sun.”

Elizabeth queried him about his reasons for climbing Everest and he explained that it wasn’t the same reason as many of his fellow Sherpas – to make a living. He was paying his respects to his grandfather. She approved of his response, since she was a fervent admirer of Tenzing Norgay, who she thought was one of the greatest Sherpas in the history of climbing. She concluded that Tashi was climbing for the right reason: for passion. Even though Elizabeth claimed to have “never been passionate about a single thing,” she recognized it in others and she approved.

On Christmas Day 1997, Anatoli Boukreev was killed by an avalanche. He and the Italian Simone Moro had come to climb the South Face of Annapurna I. When they arrived, the snow conditions were too dangerous for the face, so they opted for an alternative ridge route. Moro was in the lead when a cornice fell off, broke into pieces and created a large ice and snow avalanche. He saw it just before Boukreev did and shouted a warning, but neither Boukreev nor their cameraman, Dmitri Sobolev, was seen again. In his subsequent interviews with Elizabeth, Moro said of Boukreev, “I never saw another person with such instinct for mountains.… His death is a big loss for the mountaineering world.”

American Conrad Anker remembered a more amusing connection between the Russian überclimber and Elizabeth. Boukreev, like Ed Viesturs and Erhard Loretan, had climbed the secondary summit of Shishapangma and had been “bullied” by Elizabeth into going back and getting the real summit. Boukreev had confided to Anker, “I’ve got to go back – Miss Hawley says I didn’t really climb it.”

Frustration and disappointment permeated Elizabeth’s 1998 spring climbing report. Some of the best climbers had died in the mountains, and others, she felt, had exaggerated their achievements. She described the season as one “marred by false claims of success, a pile-up of frustrated would-be Everest climbers at its South Summit, and several deaths on Everest and Cho Oyu due to ambitions beyond the strengths of unsupported and mostly insufficiently skilled climbers.”

That same year, two Everest hopefuls, the Russian Sergei Arsentiev and his American wife, Francys, were part of a 22-member expedition, of which many were Russians. By the time the Arsentievs went to the summit without oxygen on May 22, all of their teammates had already descended to lower camps. They summited at around 6:00 p.m. and then bivouacked. They survived the night, and the next day they were met by an Uzbekistani team on their way to the top. Francys was seen at the First Step at about 8600 metres, standing motionless and not speaking. They gave her some oxygen and sat her down in a comfortable position. Having received no response from her, they continued on to the summit. They explained to Elizabeth that they had met her husband just 100 metres below, and he seemed to be okay, so they assumed he was going for help for his wife. Because the Arsentievs had no radios, they couldn’t call for help, which would have been readily available if they’d only had the means to ask.

Elizabeth learned that Arsentiev reached camp and turned around to start back up with oxygen, medicine, food and drink for his wife. He was not seen again, but his wife remained where she was. On the following day, a South African party came upon her early in the morning, moaning and spasming and saying over and over again, “Don’t leave me alone … why are you doing this to me … I am an American.” They, too, spent some time with her, making her more comfortable and giving her something to drink, but concluded that nothing could be done to save her. Cathy O’Dowd and Ian Woodall turned around and descended with one Sherpa while two other Sherpas continued to the summit. By the time the two Sherpas descended, Francys had died. Despite the bizarre nature of this tragedy, Elizabeth refused to be judgmental in her official report – or in private – for she admitted she didn’t know what it was like up there: “That’s a judgment that only a person who was there can make.”

In the fall of 1998, Sherpa Kaji claimed a controversial speed ascent of Everest, saying he had raced from base camp on the Nepalese side to the top of the world in 20 hours and 24 minutes, cutting two hours and five minutes from French climber Marc Batard’s record. But Elizabeth thought Kaji’s methods weren’t as sporting as Batard’s. Kaji had five teammates with him to break trail on parts of the ascent, and they all used oxygen (he on the descent). Japanese climber Norichika Matsumoto flatly discounted the account and explained why to Elizabeth. He had caught Kaji lying in a number of instances, and when he asked for photographic proof, he pointed out that Kaji’s photo looked suspiciously like one taken of him on the summit in 1993. Kaji denied it, saying he always wore the same suit, belt and cap. “More wrangling over silly records,” was Elizabeth’s comment.

In addition to being sucked into the vortex of these climbing controversies, Elizabeth continued to berate and cajole the climbers she knew well to be their very best. American Himalayan guide Dave Hahn remembers a post-climb interview after guiding a trip on the North Ridge of Everest in 1998. She asked him at what altitude they had turned on their oxygen. Hahn replied that his client had been ill for most of the trip, and since the summit was going to be a long shot for him, they had turned on the oxygen at around 7300 metres. Her response to Hahn was blunt: “Huh, bringing the mountain down to your size, I see.…” Initially irritated, he asked her if she had ever hiked or skied or climbed herself. She answered, “No, I wouldn’t think of it.”

On another occasion, Hahn led a women’s expedition on Everest and Elizabeth disputed the claim that it was a women’s expedition at all, pointing out that Hahn was clearly a man. He recalled that she was particularly hard on a number of the women on the trip because there had been so much media hype about it being a women’s expedition. Elizabeth wasn’t having any of it.

Sitting in on that interview was a young woman from Washington State, Heather Macdonald. Heather was a climber and had just returned from what she suspected would be her last attempt to climb Everest. She had met Elizabeth before and had observed how overworked she was. She appreciated her humour and wit and liked her immediately. She jokingly suggested that Elizabeth needed an assistant – why not her? Much to her surprise, Elizabeth accepted the offer.

At their first work meeting, Elizabeth sat Heather down next to her big oak desk and, with little preliminary small talk, began to explain her system of interviewing Himalayan expeditions and climbers. She outlined Heather’s role in collecting data and providing the information to Elizabeth for the narrative reports to be sent as news to the wire services. Heather agreed to work for two seasons.

The pace was frantic. She was up at 5:00 a.m. writing reports, making phone calls and running around to hotels to conduct climbing interviews during the day. As a climber who had previously been interviewed by Elizabeth, Heather found it strange to be on the other side of the fence. Now she was on the side of history, of facts being recorded, of stories getting told. But there was a difference between Elizabeth and Heather: Heather had been there – she had breathed the thin, lifeless air, twisted the reluctant ice screws and seen the sunrises and the curvature of Earth from airy bivouacs. Elizabeth hadn’t.

The learning curve was steep, but Heather had a good teacher. She watched Elizabeth’s direct approach to acquiring information, witnessed questioning so relentless that even the strongest climbers would collapse with their head in their hands, pleading, “I don’t know! I can’t remember! Your questions are too hard!” And if Elizabeth suspected that someone was lying about reaching the summit, Heather watched the equivalent of a “70-year-old firing squad with pink lipstick, glasses on the end of her nose and clutching a clipboard.”

Sometimes they did the interviews together, but as Heather became more confident, she collected the data alone. Heather sometimes became distracted in ways that Elizabeth never could. For example, when she met with the Bulgarian Annapurna team, she interviewed them and then ended up spending the rest of the day drinking vodka and exchanging war stories about everything from frozen pee bottles to the age-old question, “How high have you had sex?”

When collecting information, Heather tried to place the climbs and climbers within the larger Himalayan mountaineering perspective.

Together with Elizabeth, she also collected overlapping reports from the disparate teams, carefully interviewing each team and cross-referencing their findings. This was the only way to learn conclusively what had happened, something that was particularly important in the case of fatalities. Grieving families often turned to Elizabeth to learn the truth. Heather and Elizabeth unearthed difficult information from time to time and had to handle it delicately.

When they weren’t interviewing climbers or writing reports, they attended parties together. At one formal reception, Heather arrived a little “fuzzy” from a strong painkiller she had taken, embarrassing Elizabeth. When Heather met U.S. ambassador Ralph Frank that evening, she proceeded to call him Ralph when she was unable to remember his last name. Elizabeth pulled her aside and said, “What the hell is wrong with you? That is Mr. Frank to you, young lady.” Elizabeth introduced her to an endless procession of “diplomats, ambassadors, big-name kingpin climbers.” Elizabeth was in her element, surrounded by climbers and commanding their attention. “She could hold court,” Heather concluded.

Elizabeth shared her opinions freely with Heather. “She loves Reinhold Messner,” Heather said. And “she’s also fond of Tomaž Humar.” But there were others she decidedly did not like, and these she sent Heather to interview. British climber Alan Hinkes was one of them. As Heather explained, “There is only a certain amount of arrogance any one person can tolerate, because she’s seen it all.… When climbers try and tell her how great they are, she knows what greatness is in a climber!”

They had some amusing experiences as well, such as an interview they did together in the Hotel Gaurishankar with a man who had just survived an “epic” on Everest. He wanted Heather to videotape the interview but was somewhat of a wreck: his glasses were duct-taped together, his fingers were frostbitten and his brain seemed addled by his high-altitude experience. He sat next to Elizabeth on the couch while Heather dutifully recorded the event on camera. Suddenly, she noticed his fly was open. What’s more, he wasn’t wearing any underwear. What to do? She decided to keep mum and continue – he could do the necessary edit when he returned home – rather than ask him to adjust his clothing then and there. She told Elizabeth about it later and remembered her response: “She was in stitches!”

CHAPTER 15

Chronicler or Historian?

Organizing the media on this one will be like organizing a goat rodeo.

— Elizabeth Hawley

The biggest news to come out of Nepal in years was the discovery of George Mallory’s body high on the slopes of Everest in 1999. It captured the world’s news media like no other story since the 1996 disaster on Everest. The drama and mystery of the disappearance of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine in June 1924 had lived on in people’s imaginations because it was not known whether they had reached the summit. If they did, they would have been the first by more than two decades before Hillary and Norgay. They were last seen by their teammate Noel Odell on June 8, 1924, “going strong for the top” high on the North Ridge.

Numerous expeditions had set out to find the men’s remains over the years, to no avail. But in 1999 a predominantly American team led by Eric Simonson arrived well prepared for their mission to find the bodies and perhaps Mallory’s camera. It was thought that the camera could determine once and for all whether they had reached the summit. The searchers faced a lot of skepticism regarding their quest to find “a needle in a haystack,” but they had the help of historian Jochen Hemmleb, who had studied the fateful climb extensively and thought he knew where the search should be concentrated. He was right. They were successful on the first day, when Conrad Anker came upon Mallory’s body at 8230 metres on a 30-degree slope not far above the site of Mallory’s Camp VI.

Expedition leader Simonson was a good friend of Heather Macdonald, who was still working as Elizabeth’s assistant. After the discovery, but before the news had been released, Heather received a note from him: “Heather, I am sending this barrel with Schelleen to give to you. Guard it with your life. Very important. Eric.” The precious barrel contained old letters by Mallory and his wife, his boot, clothes, goggles, altimeter and pocketknife and some rope, but no camera.

Of course, Heather had to tell Elizabeth and Elizabeth did not believe it. She needed proof. But once she saw it, Heather laughingly recalled, “I thought she would need rescue breathing, she was so excited.” Elizabeth remembered the day too: “Of course I got excited – I’m an historian, damn it!”

But “historian” is not the title Elizabeth typically applied to herself. She preferred “chronicler” rather than historian because, she said, her lack of experience in the mountains precluded having a true historian’s perspective.

So which was it? Chronicler or historian? Was it really a lack of mountaineering experience that held her back from the larger role of mountaineering historian? Or was it the responsibility such a role would demand?

The media frenzy in Kathmandu following the discovery of the body was incredible. Elizabeth had the inside track, as she was one of the few people qualified to comment on the find. When she regained her composure from the initial excitement, she pronounced, “Organizing the media on this one will be like organizing a goat rodeo.” She interviewed Simonson and other members of the team, including Conrad Anker.

Dave Hahn, also on the expedition, remembered that when Elizabeth finished the formal interview regarding the expedition, she asked Hahn and Simonson to remain a bit longer. With the others gone, she lost all semblance of formality and wanted to know every detail of the discovery. Hahn was captivated by her obviously genuine fascination with high, cold places and the people who made history there.

Also very interested in the discovery of Mallory’s body was British mountaineering historian, author and Everest expert Audrey Salkeld. Many at the heart of the mountaineering community compared Elizabeth and Salkeld, with some suggesting that Audrey was far more learned about mountaineering, particularly Everest. She’d been into the mountains and had often explored the nuances and motivations of climbing – with fellow climbers. Others maintained that Elizabeth didn’t examine the fine details of climbing the way Salkeld did, which they thought precluded Elizabeth from understanding the motivations behind the climb rather than just the facts. They believed her job of delivering “one-liners” for Reuters more or less predetermined that the content would be somewhat superficial, regardless of the real depth of her interest. But comparing the two women may have been unfair, because their jobs were very different. As a reporter, Elizabeth had to produce stories and information on a regular basis for a wide variety of publications under tight time frames, while Audrey focused on larger writing projects that allowed her much more time for research into the nuances of climbing.

According to British filmmaker Leo Dickinson, both Elizabeth and Salkeld were acknowledged authorities on Everest, so he thought it was odd that the two women didn’t know each other well or have some kind of a relationship based on their mutual interest. He felt that Salkeld’s personality lacked the hard journalistic shell that Elizabeth had developed, suggesting that Salkeld’s lighter touch produced better stories. But on the other hand, Salkeld wasn’t a journalist. Dickinson recognized that Elizabeth’s authority evolved naturally as she acquired her knowledge base over time: “I doubt that she set out to be queen of Everest at the beginning.”

Salkeld herself felt somewhat wary of Elizabeth. She had met her socially a number of times in Kathmandu when she was there in connection with projects such as the IMAX Everest film. She had found Elizabeth guarded and suspected Elizabeth was trying to catch her making mistakes. But Salkeld conceded that many referred to her as Elizabeth’s “British counterpart,” and that this comparison probably irritated Elizabeth. Salkeld acknowledged Elizabeth’s vast network of climbing friends and doubted there was a person alive who knew more climbers than Elizabeth did. However, she believed that doors opened more easily for Elizabeth because of her connection with Hillary.

Despite the discussions and disagreement about her role, one Kathmandu institution did view Elizabeth as the ultimate historical authority on their particular tradition. The popular Rum Doodle bar and restaurant had large plywood boards on which successful Everest climbers could sign their names, entitling them to free meals from that time onward. But before the restaurant allowed the climber to sign up, they would call Elizabeth for verification. One May evening she received a call from Rum Doodle asking her to verify the names of three Poles who had been to the summit not long before. She agreed on Pawlowski and Maselko, but the third name was Kudelski. She was horrified! Kudelski had summited but died during the descent. Someone had decided to impersonate him and enjoy free meals at Rum Doodle for the rest of his life.

The Sherpa climbers were a group that Elizabeth kept a particularly close eye on. In 1999 a new record was created by Babu Tshering, also known as Ang Babu, when he spent 21 hours and 15 minutes on the summit of Everest cozied up in a small tent with a mattress, sleeping bag and walkie-talkie. Prior to this stunt, in 1995 he became the first person to do two round-trips from the base to the top within a time span of 10 days. Then, in the spring of 2000, he broke another record by going from base camp to the summit in 16 hours and 56 minutes. She spoke with him back in Kathmandu and learned that his goal had been to climb it faster, but bad weather and tough trail-breaking conditions had slowed him down. She asked him about his future goals, but he was coy, evading her (usually successful) prodding. This brought his Everest ascent record to 10.

Another well-known climbing Sherpa was Sungdare Sherpa, who was the first Sherpa to climb Everest five times and who later became an alcoholic. Elizabeth was pragmatic about this situation: “It’s cold up in Khumbu where they grow up and they have lots of nice warm parties where they drink rakshi. The way the Sherpas drink is that you never finish the glass before it’s filled up again.” She explained that when Sungdare succumbed to alcohol, people didn’t want to climb with him anymore. He spent all of his money on booze and finally committed suicide because he could not support both his family and his drinking. Climber Ang Rita was also dependent on alcohol. An exception to this pattern was Apa Sherpa, who by spring 2004 had been up Everest 14 times. Apa’s motivation appeared to be less for fame or records than “to add to the family wealth.” He also said he hoped his children would find careers in fields other than mountaineering, because of the huge risks. When Elizabeth asked him when he was going to retire, he said not until he turned 55. In her estimation, “He’s no boozer. He’s a clever fellow.”

Elizabeth knew the climbing Sherpas well and felt that some foreign climbers treated them badly. She was certain the Sherpas resented the fact that foreigners got all the publicity overseas. They were well aware that their names appeared at the bottom of climbing reports, if at all. When Elizabeth interviewed some expeditions, she would be told the names of the summit climbers, and then would have to ask, “What about Sherpas?”

“Oh, yes, there were two Sherpas there.”

“Who were they?”

“Oh, I don’t know … one was Mingma, one was Dawa.”

“What were their second names? Most Sherpas have two names.”

“I don’t know. We just called him Mingma.”

Frustrated, she found that only a few climbers were concerned about these details; most just didn’t care about the Sherpas.

And on the mountains, conflicts again arose between the commercial expeditions and individual climbers. Russell Brice, an experienced New Zealand commercial expedition leader, was increasingly frustrated by the time, expertise and supplies he was expending each year to rescue people who weren’t part of his teams but who were on the mountain at the same time. As he saw it, climbers were coming in with enough energy and expertise to do their climbs successfully – as long as everything went well and the weather cooperated. But they weren’t strong enough to deal with the unknown, and as a result Brice was frequently asked to assist.

At the same time, Elizabeth was watching the career of Slovenian climber Tomaž Humar with keen interest, and in the fall of 1999 he succeeded on the South Face of Dhaulagiri. In Elizabeth’s estimation, it was a remarkable achievement for several reasons: even though he hadn’t reached the summit, he had climbed a route that was terribly steep and dangerous and he had done it entirely solo. Reinhold Messner was said to have taken a look at the face in the 1970s and turned around without making an attempt. Humar went straight up the middle, reaching 7900 metres before he veered off to the ridge. As he told Elizabeth, “I knew if I went higher, I would die.” All of this was observed through long lenses by his non-climbing support team, so there would be no confusion or doubt about his success, as had been the case with his countryman Tomo Česen. No fixed camps, no bottled oxygen, no partner – Elizabeth was impressed.

But at least one respected climber, fellow Slovenian Andrej Štremfelj, had some words of caution about Humar’s achievement. He pointed out that Humar was claiming his route as the first ascent of the face, but in fact the first ascent had been made almost 18 years earlier, in 1981, by Humar’s own Himalayan mentor, Stane Belak-Šrauf. He added that both routes ended at the same spot, which is where both climbers decided to descend, relinquishing the summit in exchange for their lives. In addition, Štremfelj wondered aloud about the possibility that Humar had chosen this dangerous route because it had “sensational” value and therefore would add to his reputation, his career and his sponsorships. Elizabeth thought this was a little unfair, because she felt that Štremfelj himself participated in highly dangerous and “sensational” climbs.

As to the similarity of Humar’s and Belak-Šrauf’s routes, she hauled out the two files filled with supporting documentation, detailed descriptions and photos. The 1981 file contained a photo with both the intended route and the actual route carefully drawn. Humar’s file also had a photo with the intended line and the actual line. She pointed out that the 1981 actual line was substantially to the right of Humar’s line. She described Humar’s climb as the “middle” of the South Face, while she categorized the 1981 climb as the “right side” of the South Face. It was a matter of interpretation, but she was adamant that the routes were different. She added that part of the value of a “landmark” climb was the influence it had on the next generation of climbers: “Surely, Humar’s climb did that.”

As the century drew to a close and Elizabeth entered her 76th year, she was at the height of her reporting career. American climber Carlos Buhler remembered watching her take notes from a Russian expedition attempting the North Face of Jannu. It was a small, dank room, not clean by Western standards, and there she was, looking prim and proper, chasing down the news in her methodical way. She tried to clarify points that were difficult to understand and to put them into a formula that others could not only understand but would be able to use in the future.

Buhler watched with admiration as she probed for all the information, getting the dates, the altitudes and the reasons for this and that just right. He had the impression that she wasn’t doing it for her own use or enjoyment, but for others to use. All they had to do was ask. He could imagine a climber from Spain or the United States showing up at her house sometime in the future, asking for information. She would offer up some facts, a photograph and some specific tidbits of information about why the Russians used a camp at this altitude and why it gave them problems. Or perhaps she would suggest it would be better to try a little lower or a different spot. “I think she wanted to truthfully further the sport,” he concluded.

Many climbers agreed she was at the top of her game. She had a tremendous grasp of Himalayan climbing that few other individuals could muster, because she’d talked with literally hundreds of climbers coming through town. She’d seen all the character types: the amazing athletes, the wizened old guys, the young hotshots. She’d spoken with them when they were fresh and fired up going off to their climbs, and again when they were exhausted and either triumphant or defeated on their way out.

She’d interviewed people about style and controversies and issues concerning Himalayan climbing at a level that would leave most people, and even some climbers, reeling from the complexity. But her long career in Nepal and strict focus on Himalayan climbs worked against her, according to some. She hadn’t lived outside Nepal in such a long time that some thought she failed to grasp where climbing was at in the global context; she only understood it from the perspective of the climbers who came to Nepal. These critics were sure she could not perceive what rock climbing in Yosemite was all about, or how Alaskan climbers transferred their knowledge to the big walls in the Himalaya. Elizabeth agreed. Not only did she admit to making no attempt to educate herself about climbing in other parts of the world, she added that she had no interest in doing so.

The most persistent criticism was that she would never possess a comprehensive understanding of climbing because she hadn’t done it. She didn’t know what it felt like to go outside in frozen boots to chop ice to make water. Every bit of information she had was second-hand. Elizabeth’s critics insisted that first-hand experience was essential for a true, deep understanding of climbing. Even though she had access to all of the climbers, it was in an urban setting. People were different when they were showered and dressed and in Kathmandu, even after a long trip. When they sat down with the official chronicler of Himalayan climbing, they were on their best behaviour. There was a lot at stake in those moments of the interview, and it would be hard for her to understand all the nuances of truths and untruths, since the climbers’ egos were so much on the line. Some believed she needed to see the climbers in their element – the mountain – to reach a true understanding of what they were saying and why they said it.

But most within the mountaineering community agreed that she was a powerful individual. The facts and statistics she gathered might be of little importance to most people in the world, but they were important to mountaineers. Some climbers worried that her word was considered gospel; they thought it was dangerous to put so much power in one person’s hands and they were wary of accepting her opinions as blanket truths. They were equally wary of saying these things in public. Why? Because they loved her, they respected her and they were afraid of her. “She is making a mosaic of all the climbs,” Messner says. He believed Elizabeth’s power lay precisely in her ability to synthesize so many facts. Though she made the odd mistake, she was only human, he said. When she made a mistake, she would correct it. “She’s a first-class journalist!”

She was also a tough journalist. American filmmaker Michael Brown recalled an interview she did with Jim Nowak, climbing leader of the 1998 Pumori expedition, where she appeared to be passing judgment. Nowak was making some observations about the receding ice, the changing climate and the fact that the route, as well as climbing in the Himalaya in general, was getting harder. Elizabeth responded that perhaps it was the standard of climbing that was getting lower. “I’ll never forget the stunned look on his face,” Michael said.

Austrian climber Kurt Diemberger was more magnanimous in his praise. He had been coming to the Himalaya for decades and had a long-standing friendship with Elizabeth. His image was of a woman who was at the very epicentre of some of the most exciting climbing – and discussions about climbing – on the planet. He called her simply “the living archive.”

CHAPTER 16

Changing Objectives

Then the inconceivable happened.

As an increasing number of commercial expeditions came to climb peaks that had “commercial” interest, Elizabeth spent more and more time reporting and recording Everest climbs, many of which held little interest for her due to the repetitive nature of the routes, the use of oxygen at low altitudes and the general sameness of it all. But there were still a few climbers coming to the Himalaya to do things that interested her.

The Frenchman Jean-Christophe Lafaille was one of these who, in the spring of 2000, soloed a direct line up the Northeast Face of Manaslu, summiting on May 5. Another was the talented and persistent Russian Valeri Babanov, who established a new line on the 6783-metre Kangtega, a peak southeast of Everest.

But on Everest the crowds were huge and climbers sometimes got on each other’s nerves. One such incident occurred between an American Discovery Channel correspondent, Finn-Olaf Jones, and Briton Henry Todd. Jones was filing Internet reports from base camp that so irritated Todd that he threatened to kill Jones. Elizabeth heard several versions of the goings-on; one was that Todd beat Jones up. Todd denied he even touched Jones, claiming he only shook his fist at him. Whatever the truth, Jones fled, and in doing so, he fell and injured himself on a boulder. Threats of legal action flew back and forth and Jones was finally whisked away by helicopter. Elizabeth was disgusted.

The death of Babu Chhiri at the end of April 2001 stunned the climbing world and all of Nepal. Elizabeth heard he had left Camp II to take some photos, and when he had not returned five hours later, his brother Dawa went out to search for him. At midnight they found footsteps in the snow that ended at a crevasse, in which they found his body. A media frenzy ensued with reports around the world. His body was brought to Kathmandu and displayed at the Sherpa Center, where it was covered with flowers and ceremonial scarves. Many dignitaries, including the prime minister, came to pay their respects. Tributes poured in – even King Birendra sent a condolence message to his family: “Babu’s demise has caused irreparable loss to the nation and to the mountaineering fraternity.”

Elizabeth was saddened by the death of this charming man. He had wanted to build a school for the children of his home village, Taksindu, which was still without a school. And he had finally told her that his next great project was going to be a traverse of Everest from the northern slopes to the top, down the southern side to base camp, and then an immediate reversal from south to north – an itinerary that Elizabeth described as “a plan that only Babu Chhiri could even contemplate.”

Elizabeth had seen many climbers die over the years. Most often she was not emotionally involved with their lives, but every now and then she grieved, such as when German climber Robert Rackl died in October 2003 while leading an expedition on Ama Dablam. He had gone ahead of the rest of his team to inspect some old fixed ropes and must have lost his balance and reached for a rope that either came out or was rotten. He fell the entire distance of the route and was found dead at the bottom of the mountain. She remembered him as a man full of energy, someone who was patient and kind. A year later she could not speak about him without her voice breaking.

Another death that distressed her was of the French snowboarder Marco Siffredi. She first met him in 2001 when he climbed and snowboarded Everest. In 2002 he returned to attempt a snowboard descent of the much more direct Hornbein and Japanese couloirs on the North Face. She chatted with him at his hotel before he went and recalled that he was “very nice, interesting and so very, very young – twenty-three years old. He was doing remarkable things and he was excited about his opportunities – his life was in front of him. He just disappeared!” His parents came to Nepal a few months later and explained that they had had two sons; one died in a climbing accident in the Alps and the second in Nepal. “That one really did sadden me,” she said. “He was so full of life and had tremendous enthusiasm. It was a wonderful world for him and it just went up in smoke!”

On the subject of climbers with disabilities, Elizabeth was impatient at best, seeing them as stunt climbers. Her reaction to the blind American climber Erik Weihenmayer’s plans to climb Everest after his Ama Dablam attempt in 2000 was classic: “I hope for his sake that he doesn’t come back.” Despite her comment, he did come back, in the spring of 2001, and succeeded in his quest. He told her he had spent two and a half months from his arrival at base camp, had worked incredibly hard along with a devoted team and had taken it day by day. He explained to her that one of the biggest challenges was negotiating the complex ladder system in the Khumbu Icefall. Jumping crevasses was difficult because he couldn’t see how far to jump. She asked him why he would want to go to Everest when he couldn’t even see the view. Erik responded that he experienced great pleasure from the wind and sun on his face and the feeling of rock and snow under his feet. An enormous amount of vicious cynicism and black humour had accompanied Erik up the mountain, with one climber commenting that he hoped to “get the first picture of the dead blind guy.” But it didn’t faze Erik. Guided by a bell on his teammate’s rucksack and his own determination, he stood on the summit on May 25. Although she may have been cynical initially, Elizabeth was professional with Weihenmayer. American filmmaker Michael Brown, who created an award-winning film about the climb, remembered her interview with Weihenmayer as respectful: “She didn’t pass judgment – she was classy.”

Another event that many considered a stunt – a ski descent of Everest – captured Elizabeth’s imagination and admiration. Slovenian skier Davo Karničar made what she considered to be the first honest-to-goodness, top-to-bottom ski descent of the mountain. He used oxygen for his climb but not on the descent. As Elizabeth observed, “What for? He was going too fast.” For the steepest sections of the descent, he sidestepped with his skis down the slopes. When she inquired about his method of avoiding avalanches, he replied, “I go very fast.” At less than five hours, his descent was actually faster than he expected. Elizabeth thought this was “quite an accomplishment.”

Elizabeth seemed hard to pigeonhole. She didn’t consider the ski descent to be a stunt, yet a blind climber’s Everest attempt or a speed climber was. Who created these rules of engagement on the mountain? Did she come to these conclusions individually, based on her like or dislike of someone’s personality? Did she have some kind of guideline for what she considered admirable? Who influenced her opinions?

Sometimes her opinions were influenced by reports she heard from the climbers she trusted, including the Italian Simone Moro. Such was the case on Lhotse in 2001. Nineteen-year-old British climber Thomas Moores was on a U.S.-led commercial expedition and fell at about 8300 metres. Moro was in his tent at 7950 metres at the time, preparing for his summit bid the next day. As soon as he heard shouts about the fall, he left his tent to try to rescue Moores. He was the only one who did. Everyone else at the same camp apparently refused to help. Elizabeth was sure it was because they didn’t want to jeopardize their chances of reaching the summit the next day. Moro found Moores at 7:00 p.m., picked him up and carried him to his tent, where he gave him water and administered first aid. Moro arranged for some Sherpas to carry him down the next day and then realized he was too tired to try for his own summit bid. Other climbers on the mountain said Moores was inadequately prepared with backup support, and when things went badly it meant that another team (in this case, another individual) had to cover for him.

She heard of more antics on the French Annapurna I expedition commemorating the original 1950 climb, on which Lionel Terray had played an important role. Nicolas Terray, son of the famous climber, was the leader of the 2001 climb. The team, which included Christophe Profit, didn’t get far on the mountain. Profit came back earlier than the rest of the team and contacted Elizabeth because he wanted to talk. He told her he was upset because when the leader decided to retreat, he (Profit) asked to continue, believing he had found a safe alternative. He wanted to try it alone with two Sherpas. They made a stab at it and Profit actually got quite high, but one of the Sherpas was worried about frostbite and had to descend. Profit was sure it was worth another try, but when he got down to base camp the decision had been made to abandon the mountain. The expedition was declared over. Profit was forbidden to stay back and try again. He was infuriated and wanted Elizabeth to know.

When Elizabeth met the leader, Nicolas Terray, a few days later, she asked him why he hadn’t allowed Profit to stay on longer to try to finish the route. Startled by her question, Terray was irritated and abrupt with her. About two weeks later she received a fax from him: “I think you are not allowed to judge it. It’s not your problem even if you think it … I have been a little bit disappointed by your attitude.” She wrote and rewrote her response letter, communicating in what she considered to be her most diplomatic style: “I don’t know about my being allowed to judge that decision, but you must be aware that I try to learn and understand as much as possible about any climb and the reasons for putting an end to them before a summit has been reached. Furthermore, I also understood that in the case of your expedition the decision to stop was not unanimous, and I wanted to learn your point of view.… Please accept my apology if my questioning was too sharp.”

But despite her attempts to understand the nuances of the members of this particular expedition, she sometimes questioned the motivations of climbers and their obsessions with peaks, routes and records. She tried to put it into a bigger context: just how important were these climbs?

In the larger arena of Nepal the political situation was beginning to affect climbers and trekkers, and Elizabeth heard more frightening stories all the time. In the fall of 2000, six young Spanish students intent on climbing Manaslu were camped at a village named Seti when about 200 terrorists, later identified as Maoists, surrounded them. They were forced to give up every rupee they had. The Maoists injured one of the porters and confined the climbers to their tents all night. After this incident, the climbers flew by helicopter to Kathmandu to flee the area, as well as to get more money from home to continue the expedition. They expected the Nepalese government to cover the cost of the helicopter, but the government said no. To add insult to injury, they returned to the area, having been promised police protection, but found none.

Another team approaching Shringi Himal, a 7187-metre mountain northeast of Manaslu and not far south of the Tibetan border, was turned back by a group of Buddhist monks who said they could not continue up the Shringi River because the gods living on Shringi’s west side would bring violence to them if they did. Despite considerable discussion, the monks wouldn’t back down, so the team changed their objective and went to a different side of the mountain, one the monks didn’t object to. After some time and effort, they abandoned their climb only to find that local villagers had stolen about $5,000 worth of belongings from their advance base camp.

Along with the rise in crime, Elizabeth continued to be concerned about the growing number of permits issued for expeditions. Especially in the spring season, when the weather was supposedly a bit more favourable, the numbers kept increasing. According to her, the Nepalese authorities briefly tried to limit the number of permits, but they received resistance from trekking agents and Sherpas who made their living from expeditions. Ama Dablam was a typical example. As Elizabeth explained, it was a beautiful mountain and not difficult, so everyone wanted to climb it. As a result, there were often too many expeditions on the peak at the same time, causing long waits on certain parts of the ridge. There was also overcrowding at the camps; people were sometimes forced to skip camps and go up the mountain too quickly, which caused physiological problems and accidents.

There were a lot of complaints to the ministry from teams returning from the mountain, but “it goes in one ear and right out the other,” Elizabeth said. Foreign exchange was a highly prized commodity in Nepal, and mountaineering was an important foreign exchange earner.

Then the inconceivable happened. At 4:00 in the morning on June 2, 2001, Elizabeth received a telephone call from Lady Hillary in Auckland asking her if it was true that the royal family had been massacred. New Zealand reporters had called Sir Edmund for comments. Elizabeth immediately called the Reuters correspondent in Kathmandu, who confirmed the news. An army source had informed him just hours before.

On the evening of June 1, at the regular royal family dinner gathering at the palace, Crown Prince Dipendra took up his personal weaponry and proceeded to slaughter his parents, two siblings, two aunts, two uncles, a cousin and finally himself. The house of Shah was finished. In one fell swoop, a dynasty that had ruled Nepal for 10 generations was almost entirely wiped out.

Pandemonium broke out as news of the massacre spread like wildfire throughout Kathmandu and the world. Meanwhile, what remained of the royal family was in a state of shock and upheaval. The problem was that the crown prince, successor to the throne, did not die immediately of his self-inflicted wounds. Would tradition require them to crown a known murderer? In the end, they did just that, and an unconscious Dipendra was declared king, while the former king’s brother, Gyanendra, was appointed regent until the new King Dipendra could carry out his duties. Dipendra died two days later and Gyanendra became king. The people of Nepal had had three kings in four days.

In those four days, no explanation for the massacre was forthcoming from the palace. Like the rest of Kathmandu, Elizabeth wondered why they didn’t immediately issue a statement to stop the rampant speculation and fear-mongering that swept the city. But when she realized what they had faced with the delayed death of Dipendra, she understood their hesitation. In the meantime, massive conspiracy theories floated about: the Maoists, Gyanendra or the queen mother was behind it. Elizabeth was convinced that the official version – that it had been Dipendra – was the truth.

As the story emerged, it became known that the prince had developed a serious drug and alcohol dependency and was angry with his family because they had used every argument they could muster, including talk of revoking his right of succession, if he persisted in marrying the woman he had chosen. This unstable man had also accumulated an arsenal of weapons that included an M16 assault rifle capable of firing up to a thousand rounds a minute, a 9 mm submachine gun with 900-rounds-per-minute capacity, a single-barrel shotgun and a 9 mm pistol. The public was shocked to learn that the palace had allowed such a situation to develop: an unstable prince with unlimited access to drugs, booze and weapons and a seemingly unresolvable conflict with his family over the woman he loved. Escaping the slaughter was Queen Mother Ratna, the woman chosen by Crown Prince Mahendra against his father’s wishes 50 years earlier. She had been in another part of the palace when the bullets flew.

There was considerable instability in Nepal following the massacre, some of which was caused by the palace’s delay in telling the truth. Political leaders hoping to gain some headway fuelled the conspiracy theories, as did the Maoists, who hoped to further their own cause. In Kathmandu a curfew was imposed from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. Outside Elizabeth’s door, demonstrators taunted and threw stones at police, burned tires and effigies in the road and demanded an investigation. The funeral procession carrying the bodies to the royal cremation site at Aryaghat was lined with demonstrators shouting, throwing stones and condemning Birendra’s murder. These demonstrations confirmed the affection the population had for Birendra and the queen. Elizabeth found this confusing, because just 10 years earlier huge crowds had protested against the royal couple, calling the king a thief and the queen a whore.

Once again, the citizens of Kathmandu were witness to a royal cremation at Pashupatinath Aryaghat, the site reserved for royals. Only this time it wasn’t just the king. It was the king, queen, princesses and princes, all aflame at once. Nepalis who gathered on the far side of the Bagmati River watched a complete dynasty go up in smoke.

On June 4, 53-year-old King Gyanendra was crowned, for the second time in his life. In 1950, Gyanendra, then four, had been crowned after King Tribhuvan fled Nepal for India and left him behind. The last of the Rana prime ministers had crowned the child, but there was no international recognition of this boy king. Now crowned king of Nepal for the second time, Gyanendra named his wife, Komal, queen. She had been seriously injured in the bloodbath, with a bullet missing her heart by millimetres. The citizens of Kathmandu were exhausted. In one week they had witnessed ten funerals.

By autumn the numbers of climbers coming to Nepal had diminished drastically. Elizabeth attributed this to several factors: the massacre, fear of terrorism in Nepal, fear of aviation safety following the September 11 tragedy in the United States, and downturns in the economies of Western Europe, North America and Japan. In Nepal the Maoists and the security forces had agreed on a ceasefire, but the Maoists broke it in November and a number of villages across the country – even in a remote part of the Kathmandu valley – experienced violence. The death toll continued to rise. The king declared a state of emergency, allowing the Royal Nepal Army to be unleashed on the Maoists. Two platoons of soldiers were flown by helicopter to Namche Bazaar, and the army was active around the country trying to flush out the Maoist fighters. Elizabeth acknowledged that it was no longer safe to travel about the country.

But the climbers who were still in the country needed to travel through the valleys to get to their peaks, and Elizabeth heard many frightening stories about Maoist attacks. In some cases, it was impossible to determine whether the bandits were Maoists or just Nepalis posing as rebels, but climbing teams were regularly stopped by armed men demanding money and cameras. Near the village of Tashigaon on the way to Makalu, a six-member Spanish team led by Edurne Pasaban encountered a group of men and boys armed with rifles, pistols and grenades. The team was relieved of about 5,000 rupees and several cameras. A Swiss team in the same area was stopped by Nepalis carrying rifles but not wearing Maoist uniforms, who demanded 10,000 rupees and one camera. In the Solukhumbu district, two days of incidents at Lukla Airport damaged the control tower, and a bank was robbed. The number of trekkers dropped, business was down and Elizabeth’s Tiger Tops earnings suffered as a result.

Elizabeth had frequent reminders from her nephew, Michael, that she could, at any time, return to the United States and live with him and his family. In light of the deteriorating situation in Nepal, she appreciated the offer, but she declined. She tried to assuage his fears by telling him that Kathmandu itself had a noticeable presence of security forces: armed soldiers and police were on patrol and manning checkpoints. She added the reassuring news that “only a few small bombs” had caused damage and they were not in central areas. She felt secure going out in her Volkswagen Beetle with her driver, and she stayed home at night.

The climb that captured Elizabeth’s attention in the spring of 2002 was by Jean-Christophe Lafaille and the equally talented Basque climber Alberto Iñurrategi. They succeeded in a traverse of Annapurna I’s long summit ridge, starting from Glacier Dome in the east and crossing to Roc Noir and Annapurna’s three summits – each more than 8000 metres – and then back again. They did it with no bottled oxygen or Sherpa support. They spent five exhausting days at high altitude, negotiating avalanche-prone slopes, technical climbing, steep rock, cold bivouacs and the ever-debilitating thin air.

Lafaille met with Elizabeth after this expedition and noticed that she was careful to preserve all the most important pieces of information for historical purposes and for future climbers. She diligently probed for information on camps, oxygen, fixed ropes, distances and times. They pored over photographs and agonized over the details. Lafaille, knowing the significance of this climb within the context of the history of Himalayan climbing, was happy to accommodate her. He wanted the story to be correct. They talked at length about changes in the style of climbing in the Himalaya and about the style Lafaille and Iñurrategi had employed.

She also saved him a lot of money by mediating in some bureaucratic wrangling. The Nepalese authorities wanted the expedition to pay multiple fees because of the number of subpeaks on the summit ridge, but she talked them out of it and the fee was limited to one summit. He believed they became friends through this post-climb meeting, though he admitted, “She stayed ‘Miss Hawley’ for me and not ‘Elizabeth.’ ”

Another climber undeterred by the turmoil in Nepal was the Russian Valeri Babanov, who was making a solo attempt on a pillar on the South Face of Nuptse. He would have to climb about 2500 metres, much of it highly technical, with huge snow mushrooms to overcome at the top. He reached 6300 metres four weeks after his arrival, but then ran out of fixed rope, time and energy. He told her he hoped to return the following year to finish it. The famous South Tyrolean climber Hans Kammerlander, who had climbed seven 8000-metre peaks with Messner, was on a route nearby and told Elizabeth that he too wanted to return, perhaps to combine forces with Babanov. But Babanov wasn’t interested. Although Babanov’s climb was an impressive effort, Elizabeth pointed out that it wasn’t alpine-style climbing, which was generally defined as climbing a route in a single continuous push without external help, without pre-placed fixed rope, camps or caches of supplies and without reconnoitering the route.

In her seasonal mountaineering report, Elizabeth didn’t express an opinion on either climb, simply stating the facts. She refrained from evaluating which climb was more important, because she didn’t think it was her place to do so. She continued to call herself a mountaineering chronicler, not an historian, explaining the difference as: “A historian is someone who goes beyond the facts and looks at the context, and then comments on that context.” She stuck with the formula that worked for her, and kept to the facts in her interviews, believing they spoke volumes. She thought the reader should decide which climbs had greater significance.

Not everyone agreed. Christian Beckwith, former editor of the American Alpine Journal, reflected that as he tried to move the AAJ from a journal of record to a journal of significance, he found Elizabeth moving in the opposite direction: “She has chosen to be a record keeper of record rather than significance.” In his view, her reports were written for a wide audience and although she interviewed Babanov, she reported on Kammerlander because of his star power. Elizabeth defended herself, stating that her reports for fall 2002, spring 2003 and fall 2003 recorded Babanov’s climbs as well as Kammerlander’s. It was on the third attempt that Babanov and Vladimir Suviga had succeeded. Her report on their climb comprised a comparatively extensive eight paragraphs, providing detailed commentary on the difficult and technical climb as described to her by Babanov. Comments from other climbers were included: according to Tomaž Humar, for example, “The future of climbing belongs to the new Russian teams around Valeri Babanov.” But she pointed out that admiration for Babanov was not universal. At least one unnamed American climber remarked disparagingly that Babanov used bolts on his climb. Elizabeth didn’t comment either way.

But journalists continued to find fault. British journalist Lindsay Griffin corroborated Beckwith’s opinion that Babanov’s climb on Nuptse was the most significant climb of the season, and Elizabeth’s report didn’t acknowledge this. He added that there had been other occasions where she missed important climbs because they were overshadowed by ascents on a bigger peak or by a better-known person. Others agreed that there were many fine climbs in the Himalaya during her tenure that did not register on her radar. They argued that she focused too much on well-known routes, well-known peaks and well-known people.

Robin Houston disagreed, maintaining that Elizabeth had always been fair and objective in her reporting, not aggrandizing famous climbers more than unknown climbers, not focusing on an expedition just because of the height of the mountain, and not stooping to the level of gossip. Elizabeth was completely unaware that such discussions and evaluations of her work were taking place.

CHAPTER 17

Queen of Everest

Let’s face it – Liz is an icon!

— John Roskelley

In 2003 Elizabeth’s attention was focused on Everest. In fact, the entire world was captivated by the 50th anniversary of the first ascent of the peak – and Kathmandu was the centre of that attention. It wasn’t just climbing magazines that focused on the story: mainstream magazines published lengthy pieces and numerous books were written. The Nepalese government and other organizations sponsored a series of events in Kathmandu that kept Elizabeth busy. All the important Everest climbers were in town: Hillary, Messner, Junko Tabei, Apa Sherpa and a few other notables were driven around the streets of Kathmandu in horse-drawn carriages. They were received by King Gyanendra and Crown Prince Paras. In a grand gesture, the king conferred honorary Nepalese citizenship on Hillary in recognition of his historic climb, as well as his work in the ensuing decades bettering the lives of people living in the Everest regions by building schools and hospitals and restoring monasteries.

For Elizabeth the timing of this big celebration couldn’t have been worse. It was May 29; expeditions were pouring back from the mountains and she had a mountaineering report to write. Yet the Hillarys were staying downstairs and there were innumerable events to attend. For each 24-hour period, she felt she had at least 20 hours of work to do. Frankly, the whole thing made her grumpy.

It started badly for the Hillarys, too. Just prior to the celebrations in Kathmandu, Hillary had been in Delhi, where it was frightfully hot. The Indian government had staged a number of elaborate events, including the inauguration of Sir Edmund Hillary Marg and Tenzing Norgay Marg, two streets near the New Zealand embassy. With temperatures of 42°C, the heat left Hillary completely exhausted and he had still not fully recovered when he arrived in Kathmandu for the celebrations. To Elizabeth’s alarm, when he and Lady Hillary came off the plane, Sir Edmund was in a wheelchair! The press was there in full force, but he looked terrible, so Elizabeth whisked the Hillarys away to her house and put him immediately to bed. Lady Hillary laughingly recalled that neither Elizabeth nor Hillary lasted much longer than two or three hours at a time at any of the events that week. “They’re quite united in that,” she said, “they get tired.” And when that happens, “She gets testy.”

Another important climber at the 2003 celebrations was, of course, Messner. Elizabeth marvelled at the change from when she first met him in 1972. “He looked like a country bumpkin.… Now he speaks fluent English, his style of dress is the latest, his hair is the latest, he lives in a small castle, he is a member of Parliament, and when he came to Kathmandu for the Everest celebrations, he was given absolutely VIP treatment.”

One of the more memorable Everest events was a cultural performance presented by the Himalayan Trust Sherpas. The defining moment was the presentation of a bottle of Chivas Regal, bottled in May 1953. The Duke of Argyll and chairman of Chivas Regal, dressed in a kilt and playing bagpipes, marched up the aisle to deliver the bottle. Elizabeth enthused: “A Scotsman marching in a kilt – there’s something about his leg action, his knee action that’s just frightfully impressive!” Along with the bottle, he brought some rather large cheques from Chivas Regal for the Himalayan Trust. Later that evening, the Hillarys and Elizabeth admired the cheques and just managed to resist opening the Chivas.

On the highest mountain itself, climbers crowded in with 35 teams on the Nepal side and 34 on the Tibet side. All but two expeditions were climbing standard routes via the South Col from Nepal and the North Col from Tibet. One of the two was an attempt to climb a totally new route on the East Face in Tibet. Briton Ian Woodall and his South African wife, Cathy O’Dowd, both previous Everest summiteers, were turned back from their preferred route, so they went on to tackle the difficult, unclimbed East Ridge. They were turned back from this as well, but Elizabeth lauded their attempts to try something new while the majority crowded the standard routes.

And crowds there were. At base camp on the Nepal side, a sizeable village of tents sprang up, housing 441 climbers plus their base camp staff and Sherpas, as well as climbers for Lhotse and Nuptse, totalling at least 600 people. There were satellite communications tents, cafés, a medical clinic, a massage parlour and tee shirt shops. Including the trekkers in the area, Elizabeth estimated the population probably equalled or exceeded that of the area’s largest village, Namche Bazaar, at 850. Messner paid a visit to base camp and reported back to Elizabeth that he was horrified at what he saw. Expedition leaders told her that they felt the skill level of guided climbers was lower that year than ever.

The hullabaloo and crowding elicited strong statements from some of the veterans as they reminisced about the good old days. Hillary and Messner both voiced emphatic views that the numbers of permits for Everest should be restricted for reasons of safety and pollution. Others thought climbers should be required to have summited at least one 8000-metre peak to qualify for an Everest permit. Elizabeth listened to these opinions, but was struck by something she read in Time magazine, written by a man she had originally urged not to return to Everest – the blind American climber, Erik Weihenmayer. He wrote: “Many climbers argue that Everest is no longer an epochal achievement and that the conga lines of climbers waiting for a shot at the summit are degrading a once pristine environment … the door to Everest’s slopes has been blown wide open, and some critics speak of the death of great adventures … but Everest’s history is the modern world’s history, with all its challenges and abuses – and the unparalleled opportunities for human endeavor … We cannot step back and close the mountain, for retreat would annihilate the modern age’s greatest gift to humanity: the freedom of an individual to choose his own path.” Elizabeth admitted he had a point.

Two of those choosing their own paths were young Sherpa climbers Pemba Dorje and Lhakpa Gelu, who were challenging the speed record for an Everest ascent from the Nepal side set by deceased Sherpa Babu Chhiri in 2000 when he climbed it in 16 hours and 56 minutes. Pemba Dorje claimed an ascent of 12 hours and 45 minutes, and then Lhakpa Gelu topped that with 10 hours and 56 minutes. But all was not well in Sherpa land. Pemba charged Lhakpa with lying. Lhakpa countered with supporting documents from the government liaison officer posted at base camp. Their dispute would continue the following year.

John Roskelley returned to the mountains, this time with his 20-old son, Jess. Elizabeth knew and respected Roskelley from previous expeditions, but that didn’t blunt her sharp response to his current objective: Everest by the South Col with oxygen. She wanted to know what they were doing that was different. Jess explained that he was trying to be the youngest American to climb Everest. She responded, “So what? Are you going to do a new route without oxygen?” John didn’t take it personally, but his son was taken aback. Roskelley explained to Jess, “Nothing impresses her. She interviews the greatest climbers in the world and they don’t tell her what they intend to do, they just do it.” In fact, when Jess returned, having climbed it, she did show a somewhat more appreciative attitude regarding his achievement and they got along just fine.

Roskelley wondered whether Elizabeth had become jaded by working with some of “greatest climbers in the world.” He knew she had a strong interest in them, but added, “They’re human beings, and highly focused human beings at that – some could say egotistical.” He suspected that part of her cynicism came from personal disappointments with some of the prominent personalities and emphasized, “Anybody who has done what she has done for years, dealing with prima donnas and putting them in their place, deserves respect.” He maintained that Elizabeth knew “10 times more about climbing than all these other climbers.” His final analysis was, “Let’s face it – Liz is an icon!”

Although Elizabeth’s compound remained an oasis of calm, Nepal seethed with unrest. In March 2003 a serious incident took place at Beni Bazaar, a town of 5,000 situated astride the main trail to the Annapurna trekking area. Thousands of Maoists descended from the hills to launch a sudden attack on the army post, the district police post, the jail and the bank. Mortars and other weapons filled the night. Many of those fighting on the Maoist side were adolescents who had been kidnapped and forced into battle. The casualties were in the hundreds.

As the political situation in Nepal continued its downward slide, the threat of external forces intensified. Nepal became vulnerable to influences from China, India, the United States and others. The Chinese, for the time being, remained silent, but the Americans did not. A statement from the U.S. government urged action: “The palace and the parties must unify – urgently – under an all-party government as the first step to restoring democracy and presenting a unified front against the terrorist insurgents.”

There was an enormous amount of distrust and paranoia within the country. According to Nepali Times editor Kunda Dixit in his April 2 editorial, “The Maoists, the parties and the palace are each suspicious of the other two ganging up.” He observed that while the king was off hugging babies in the districts, the political parties were marching on the palace. A new low was reached in May when Prime Minister Thapa resigned after just 11 months in office. It was generally thought that the king had asked him to resign because of his inability to advance the peace talks between the Maoist leaders and other party leaders.

Street protests increased and injuries were commonplace. Party leaders were arrested and the Maoists continued to wreak havoc in the districts. The king appointed Sher Bahadur Deuba to succeed Thapa and charged him with the same task he had given Thapa: get the party leaders and Maoists talking seriously about peace. Public morale dropped still further in response to this news, as the king had dismissed Deuba from the same job just two years earlier due to “incompetence in not being able to conduct the general elections on the stipulated date.”

The Maoist insurrection increased its intensity, not just against the security forces but also against civilians. They kidnapped children, extorted officials and trekkers, blocked roads, destroyed property, beat and maimed farmers who didn’t cooperate, forcibly recruited men, women and children into their militia, and used weapons, land mines and bombs to maim and kill. Local citizens’ resistance groups formed in some villages, but members were at risk of violent retaliation. “Disappearances” increased sharply. Nepal was once again on the international radar screen as groups like Amnesty International and the United Nations expressed concern. Aid agencies from around the world pulled out of rural regions because of inadequate security for their staffs. The World Bank stopped releasing funds to complete the construction of a highway.

Elizabeth, though she wasn’t directly affected by the instability, couldn’t avoid it completely. Demonstrators marched in the street outside her door. She read fresh horror stories in the two local newspapers each morning. She heard disturbing reports from Himalayan Trust staff and others in the remote districts. But still she stayed in Kathmandu.

CHAPTER 18

It’s Nepal

She is like the last of the Mohicans; after the last has gone home she is still out there on her own.

There is only one Miss Hawley. But with a personality as complex as hers, she inspired many different impressions and conflicting opinions, mostly from men. They respected her, feared her, cared about her, criticized her and vied for her attention. In conversation, Elizabeth would occasionally reveal intimate details and private opinions, often in stark contrast to the opinions of others. But what was she holding back? There were so many inconsistencies. For example, many people called attention to her modesty, yet there was a note of pride as she talked about famous friends and pointed out the many awards and medals decorating her home.

The first of those awards came in 1990 as a special citation from Reuters. To make the presentation, Reuters brought in a couple of regional executives who became increasingly flustered as she kept interrupting their speech with corrections. In her undiplomatic style – hilarious to those who know her well – she hollered out dates, places and people that they had incorrect. The correspondents limped through the ordeal somehow and she took home a brass plate for her efforts.

In 1994 the American Alpine Club honoured Elizabeth with their prestigious Literary Award. She was modest about this one, saying it was likely Ad Carter’s doing. Carter was the long-time editor of the American Alpine Journal, a close friend of Elizabeth and recipient of her seasonal mountaineering reports for many years. The two friends were similar in their attention to detail. If he was responsible for her award, it was a case of one meticulous record-keeper honouring another.

On April 8, 1998, she received a letter from the Swiss-based King Albert I Memorial Foundation offering her a medal for “outstanding services to the mountaineering world.” The letter went on to list a few previous recipients: Lord Hunt of Britain, Brad Washburn and Dr. Charles Houston of the United States, Wanda Rutkiewicz of Poland and Erhard Loretan of Switzerland. “I am deeply honoured and frankly astonished.…” she began in her acceptance letter, which ended with “I accept this distinction with great pleasure, however undeserved it may be.” And so she went to Switzerland to bring back a sizeable chunk of gold. While sightseeing in the Alps, she was surprised that her mountain perspective had changed. The Alps were “gorgeous, but they sure looked small.”

The summer of 2003 brought yet another award, this one from Nepal itself. The first Sagarmatha National Award from the Ministry of Tourism was given to her for her contribution and efforts in promoting Nepal’s mountains and adventure tourism to the world for 43 years. In her acceptance speech, she spoke less of her own work than her dreams for the future of climbing in Nepal, particularly for the Sherpas.

In 2004 Elizabeth was presented with the Honorary Queen’s Service Medal for Public Services in recognition of her years of work with the Himalayan Trust and as honorary consul for New Zealand. The ceremony took place in the elegant Dynasty Room in the Yak and Yeti Hotel in Kathmandu. The room was filled with finely laid tables, a seating area for guests and a small stage for the actual medal ceremony. She was surrounded by her closest friends.

Caroline McDonald, the New Zealand ambassador to Nepal, thanked Elizabeth, saying, “The help Miss Hawley has extended to New Zealanders in difficulty in Nepal, often under tragic and difficult circumstances … is greatly appreciated.” Several of the guests spoke about Elizabeth’s positive impact on their lives as a mentor or a colleague. Kathmandu editor Kunda Dixit explained how she had been an important influence in his career as a journalist, and for all journalists in Nepal – Elizabeth had given him valuable experience filling in on her Reuters beat when she was away. But it was the words of Sir Edmund Hillary that meant the most to her that day: “Elizabeth Hawley is a most remarkable person and a woman of great courage and determination … I know of no person who is more highly respected in the diplomatic or public community in Nepal and I can think of no one who more highly deserves consideration for a New Zealand Royal Honour.”

Elizabeth was thrilled. Her diplomatic skills being more finely honed than when the hapless Reuters staff presented their award 14 years earlier, she accepted with grace. She regaled those in the room with a few stories – some of sad or frustrating experiences, but also some that made for happy memories. In the end, she looked around the room and thanked her friends who had helped her “every step of the way” – a woman of pride, and modesty.

Even as Elizabeth was being recognized for her many contributions in Nepal, her greatest reputation was still in the mountaineering world. As she reflected on the many great, and not so great, climbs she had been privy to over the previous 40 years, a few stood out as having “raised the bar.” To her mind, the outstanding Everest events were: Mallory in 1922 and 1924, Hillary and Tenzing in 1953, the Americans in 1963, Messner and Habeler without oxygen in 1978, Bonington and the Southwest Face in 1975, Messner solo in 1980, the Kangshung Face in 1983, the first woman’s ascent in 1975 and the first winter ascent in 1980. She suggested that another bar would be raised when the East Ridge was finally climbed. But it wasn’t just Everest climbs that impressed her; she also cited Tomaž Humar in the far west of Nepal on Bobaye and again on Dhaulagiri, and she singled out the first ascent of the West Face of Nuptse: “Babanov has done some pretty good stuff.”

The Sherpas’ climbing goals were a source of frustration for her. In her speech at the Sagarmatha Award ceremony, she had encouraged them to go for lower peaks and unclimbed routes because that’s where she saw the future of climbing in Nepal. But she was doubtful it would happen, since most Sherpas were not that technically skilled and would not go on a high mountain without fixed ropes: “They are perfectly willing to fix the ropes but they don’t want to be on a mountain where there is no escape route.” She pointed out that foreign climbers on technical routes didn’t take Sherpas, as a rule, citing Babanov as an example. She thought there were only one or two Sherpas who were highly skilled, although many were very fast. For most of them, it was a job.

Even among foreign climbers, the lesser-known peaks were rarely attempted and this also concerned her. For the most part, these climbers went for Ama Dablam, Everest and Cho Oyu: Ama Dablam because it is visible from the valley; Cho Oyu because it is the easiest of the 8000ers and climbers could therefore tag an 8000er; and Everest because they want to be a hero. She found these predictable objectives discouraging.

As to future great projects in the Nepal Himalaya, Elizabeth was reluctant to engage in this discussion at first, but eventually she grew animated as she imagined the possibilities. The great event, in her opinion, would be the Horseshoe Traverse – up Nuptse, across Lhotse and then up Everest. She explained there were two critical issues: technical proficiency and high altitude. She thought the elegant way to do it was not the way the Soviets climbed Kangchenjunga, with pre-placed high camps, but with one continuous push. Who can do it? Who are the great ridge climbers? She thought Boukreev probably could have done it; he was good at high altitude, strong as an ox and fast. In his younger years, Messner probably could have done it. She settled on Jean-Christophe Lafaille and Alberto Iñurrategi as possibilities; maybe they could do it together. Being able to function without oxygen for extended periods would be important, since the Horseshoe Traverse would take days to complete. She enjoyed imagining these great projects paired with great climbers.

She thought the East Ridge of Everest was another big objective. A Japanese team attempted the route and found it to be a long, difficult, dangerous ridge. An Indian woman, Santosh Yadav, also attempted it, as did Cathy O’Dowd’s team. Other good projects, in Elizabeth’s opinion, although far less difficult technically, would be the traverse of the whole ridge of Annapurna and a grand traverse of Kangchenjunga – without the use of support camps.

Concerning face climbs of the future, she felt the enormous East Face of Everest surely contained some challenging – perhaps actually unclimbable – lines. There was still the top part of the middle of the South Face of Dhaulagiri – the part that Humar didn’t do – as well as the North Face of Makalu. Some very good climbers had taken a look at it and a few were inching toward it, but it was still there for the taking. And there were many wonderful routes on the smaller peaks. As for the strongest face climbers, she named Humar and Babanov.

Reflecting on her own life and career, Elizabeth seemed unable to identify any particular moments or periods that stood out. “I’ve never been passionate about a single thing!” she exclaimed. She didn’t think she had a “golden age”; it was all golden to her. At least there were interesting moments throughout. Of course, there were dull periods too, but she thought her patience had paid off. Even though she had to report endless ascents of Ama Dablam, occasionally someone appeared on the scene with something special.

Pushed a little, she finally relented and picked out a few high points: the two years of solo travel were memorable because she could go where and when she wanted, she met interesting people along the way and she saw places she wanted to see. Her studies in modern European history were good preparation for these travels, and her natural curiosity ensured many interesting adventures. She’d also been intrigued by the politics of the time: Israel was just being created, there were U.S. Marines on the beaches of Beirut and mobs had just torn apart Faisal and his prime minister in Baghdad. She also fondly recalled favourite verandas she encountered on her way: Isak Dinesen’s veranda outside of Nairobi; the St. George Hotel veranda in Beirut, where gossip and intrigue exchanged hands each day before lunch; and the veranda in Khartoum where she had enjoyed languid conversation and whisky with Mamoun El Amin.

Asked again whether there had been any one thing in her life experience thus far that really excited her, she snorted, “Nothing!” But then she admitted she has been interested in climbing statistics and the comparative analysis of success rates among nationalities, seasons, ages, sexes and Sherpa vs. non-Sherpa support, as well as the average death rate per season. She and Richard Salisbury worked together to amalgamate all of her files, notes and letters into one massive database that contains the details of more than 7,000 expeditions, 55,600 climber biographies, and extensive analysis of trends. Published as a CD in October 2004 by the American Alpine Club as The Himalayan Database: The Expedition Archives of Elizabeth Hawley, her life’s work is now a lasting legacy.

At age 80, Elizabeth didn’t foresee any changes in her situation, as long as her health held out. Although she had handed over some of the Himalayan Trust work to Ang Rita, she continued to oversee it. And the mountaineering reporting still dominated her time. The most pressing problem for the future was that she hadn’t groomed anyone to replace her.

Eventually, her collection of files and books on mountaineering will go to the American Alpine Club; their future value is hard to fathom. They’ll be used by climbers researching new routes and writers researching mountaineering books. She pointed out that the files contain a wealth of stories. For the present, people have been mostly interested in her lists and statistics contained in the database, but she maintained that the real value was in the files.

Messner worried about the future of her work because he didn’t see anyone stepping in to help her. He could see she was aging and wouldn’t be able to continue indefinitely. It was already taking her longer to do things and she was more forgetful. But she wanted to continue. Sometimes she wished there were eight days in the week, just to get all the work done.

There were some who speculated that self-reporting via the Internet would replace her work, and Elizabeth herself doubted there would be a need for someone like her in the future. But she knew that self-reporting was not the same thing as the diligent fact-finding she had practised. British journalist Lindsay Griffin agreed that self-reporting wouldn’t provide a complete overview.

Elizabeth sounded a little sad as she projected the future of the chronicling of Himalayan climbing, sorry to see the passing of objective journalism and the approach of the end of her career.

She had had discussions with magazine editors about a succession plan, but it had proven elusive so far. The person who succeeds her ideally needs to have a good knowledge of the history of climbing in Nepal, have access to the Ministry of Tourism, know the dozens of trekking agents, be familiar with the city of Kathmandu, speak English, and, most important, be able to obtain a work visa for Nepal. She pointed out that mountaineering reporting was not enough to be granted a visa; some other valid work in Nepal would also be necessary. There was probably no one person who could replace her. It would take a team. Some who knew her worried she might have a case of “founder’s syndrome” and might be reluctant to trust someone else to take over her life’s work. Under someone else’s guidance, the work would almost certainly not be done the way she did it. In a letter to Christian Beckwith, she confirmed, “I certainly want to do whatever I can to make it possible for someone to succeed me.” But she knew it would not be an easy problem to solve. She had evolved into her position over almost five decades, whereas her replacement would have to be proficient in the job immediately.

Despite her acknowledgement of the importance of her mountaineering work and the almost impossible task of replacing her, Elizabeth was modest about her contribution to the climbing community, saying, “I’ve been on the fringe and they let me in from time to time.” Her main contribution, she thought, was some “good, accurate records.” Apart from a few exceptions, she seemed ambivalent about being considered a “friend” of climbers and didn’t see herself as a friend of the climbing community. In fact, she didn’t believe there was a climbing community. She saw such great diversity in climbers’ backgrounds, motivations and skills that they didn’t form a cohesive group in her mind. Her consistently high standards forced her to ask, “Who is included in the group? Is it the dilettantes? The peak baggers? The explorers?” She challenged anyone to lump Sandy Hill Pittman and Anatoli Boukreev into the same community.

But others think there is a climbing community, and they see Elizabeth at its centre – at least in Kathmandu. David Breashears concluded that Kathmandu without Elizabeth Hawley just wouldn’t be the same. He remembered how it changed when Boris died, and when Jimmy Roberts was no longer there, pointing out that Elizabeth had endured through it all: “The Ministry of Tourism changed, the pilots came and went, the trekking agencies changed from one to 150, but the one consistent force that never wavered was Liz.” She was like the last of the Mohicans; after the last had gone home she was still out there on her own.

Though she may distance herself from climbing friends, they speak warmly of her. Breashears maintained that Elizabeth was one of those people for whom it was worth being tolerant of their eccentricities: “We are tolerant because we really love her, and we love her because she never gave up on us in a way – she carried the flag and there’s something about the gravity that she created for the climbing community. She gave the disparate groups – the Czechs, the Japanese, the Poles, the Bulgarians – a dialogue.”

He explained that climbers have a unique kind of camaraderie and they travel in the same circle. Over time, Elizabeth became part of that circle; it was her extended family, passing through Kathmandu. She saw them come and go, and a great many of them died. What was it like for her to watch the planes take off for Lukla, wondering whether the climbers on board would return? Perhaps the detachment she maintained was part of her emotional survival strategy. It may have helped to distance herself from people whose life expectancy was always in question.

Climbers expressed their affection for her in different ways. Bill Crouse bought an electric heater for her car so that she’d be warm when she drove around Kathmandu. He said he did it because he wanted to take care of her. Breashears thought a lot of people would love to have helped take care of her, but her brusque manner discouraged it. Carlos Buhler ruminated, “The great beauty of surviving all these years is getting back to see your friends – and I would count her as one of my friends.” But it was always on Elizabeth’s terms. He has never been to her house, never had dinner with her, never gone to a monastery with her. His only interaction with her was over climbing, and he regrets that.

Tomaž Humar fairly exploded with affection for her: “She’s the one for me … she is the most important person, maybe even more than Hillary … she knows everything about anyone in the mountains.” In his rapid-fire, non-native English, he expounded: “She has rich stories … she has the opportunity to meet the most remarkable people in the history of alpinism … I think nobody on the planet has the same chance like she has.” If Tomaž had a chance at another life, he said, he would want to spend it as she has – to be present with all the mountaineering legends. “She is like a Nepal ritual for me – one cup of tea is enough for my soul.”

Humar showed his regard by getting in touch with Elizabeth shortly after he experienced a crippling accident at home in Slovenia, where he fell off his floor joists into a trench, breaking several bones and crushing his heel. From his hospital bed, he arranged for a friend to call her on her birthday, November 9, to wish her a happy day and let her know about his accident. This act of kindness touched Elizabeth, although she downplayed it in her typical fashion: “Now of course this is charming for me, but why he bothers I just don’t understand.… Maybe he runs out of people to talk to, so he calls up Kathmandu. Nice guy, I like him!”

Despite her obvious independent streak, many people wondered about her life alone in Nepal. Was she lonely, or simply alone? Was she strong, or vulnerable? Frances Klatzel once asked her why she chose to stay in Kathmandu. Elizabeth replied that it was because she learned something every day. It was the answer of a true journalist. Frances thought she was someone who was content and happy with her own company. Elizabeth agreed, insisting she enjoyed her own company immensely and was certainly never lonely. But a good friend, Mal Clarbrough, remembered stopping by her apartment one Christmas to find her quietly weeping at the dining room table, alone. It broke his heart to see her that way.

British author Ed Douglas saw Elizabeth as a sad personality – someone quite alone in the world. He remembered a visit when she answered the door demanding, “What do you want? Everybody wants something from me.” When he told her he had just come by for a visit, she seemed surprised and delighted to share a cup of tea with him. He believed she safeguarded her privacy in a hard shell – a protective covering for something vulnerable inside.

Mary Lowe, wife of Everester George Lowe, didn’t regard Elizabeth as lonely, but rather as a “lone” person. She thought that many people probably thought of her as a romantic personality, someone living a romantic life in a romantic place filled with romantic people. Mary didn’t think Elizabeth would actually count many of these romantic personalities as her friends. In fact, even though she had known Elizabeth for 20 years and regarded her as a friend, Mary remained guarded: “How she regards us is a different matter. She receives us with warmth, if it is convenient to her. Otherwise, we have to wait.” Messner emphatically counts her as a friend and as a friend of his family, saying, “She is a really good woman.”

Many people considered Elizabeth Hawley to be their friend, yet she didn’t reciprocate, stating categorically that, apart from two or three climbers with whom she is close, the rest were acquaintances. Could this be true? Could all those people be mistaken? Breashears, Humar, Buhler and Lowe: was it just wishful thinking on their parts? Was Mary Lowe correct in thinking that any kind of relationship must be on Elizabeth’s terms? Or was Ed Douglas’s speculation closer to the truth – that by opening up to friendship she might expose a soft underbelly?

Heather Macdonald felt reasonably close to Elizabeth when they worked together, but she admitted there was a wall she could not penetrate. However, as Heather grew closer to her, working together day in and day out, she stopped seeing Elizabeth as a “famous Himalayan reporter” and began to relate to her as a friend, someone who could be complimented on her earrings or who would commiserate over computer frustrations: “Her computer would drive her nuts!” Heather thought Elizabeth was selective about who she let in, and she was also convinced that her heart had been broken at some point, perhaps by Jimmy Roberts or Edmund Hillary, and that she subsequently “closed down emotionally.”

Elizabeth admitted she did have strong feelings for Hillary: “Ed is one of my oldest friends and I am one of his greatest admirers. I guess it’s mutual!” But she took care to provide historical context, noting that they had worked together since the mid-1960s, dispensing funds for hospitals, bridges, schools and so on for the people of the Solukhumbu. They had been through a lot together: “Good times, such as the recent 50th anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Everest celebrations … and tragic times, such as when I flew by helicopter to tell him that his wife and daughter had been killed in a plane crash. Sir Edmund Hillary is the finest person I ever met.”

He was effusive about her, too: “I think Liz is a special person … always exceptional. We relied on her. She is a remarkable woman. I have a great respect for Liz and I’m very fond of her.”

Yes, but what of the famous rumoured affair? Elizabeth laughed at the question: “I’m sorry to disabuse anybody – and I’m telling the truth – but we didn’t.” She knew the rumour had been out there for years and thought it stemmed from the fact that Hillary had often been a guest in her apartment and her companion at so many parties. But she insisted: “Believe me, we didn’t.” After his first wife was killed, Elizabeth admitted, there was a brief period when she speculated about what his next move would be. Nonetheless, she confessed, “I’m not the marrying type and I couldn’t have fulfilled the role of diplomat’s wife as beautifully as June has.”

As Elizabeth looked back at her alleged – and real – love life, the only men she would admit to having considered settling down with were Micky Weatherall and Mamoun El Amin. The rest of the rumours – Jimmy Roberts, Eric Shipton, General Mrigendra, Andrzej Zawada, Don Whillans – “It’s a resounding no! There’s nobody else except the ones that I confessed to.” But who can tell? With Elizabeth Hawley there is always more to the story.

With 30-some years of educating herself and apprenticing as a world traveller and curious observer, Elizabeth had prepared herself well for the adventure that awaited her in Nepal. When she flew into Nepal for the presentation of the nation’s first constitution and its first election, she was purposeful about it. She wasn’t going there just to take a look, but to experience an important moment in world history. What she saw was something special; she saw that she could create a life for herself in Nepal that would be unique. She could avoid a life of sameness and obscurity in New York. In fact, she became someone special and important – and needed.

During more than 40 years in Kathmandu, Elizabeth created that unique life. Beginning with her interest in politics, she evolved into a major player in a new kind of travel industry. Her insatiable curiosity brought her into the world of mountaineering, where she became an expert. And through her highly placed contacts and hard work, she greatly influenced the work of the Himalayan Trust. By leaving New York, she became part of a circle that included royalty, prime ministers and explorers. She learned about, and became an important personality in, a global mountaineering community, despite her reluctance to acknowledge its existence. In Nepal she could afford a life of comfort, with a personal staff to attend to all her basic needs. She could entertain lavishly. As Heather Macdonald said, “I couldn’t even dream her life.” All of this took courage; she went to a place in the world at a time when it wasn’t easy for a single woman to make her way. She went with no steady job and no contacts. Like many of the mountaineers she admires, she was a pioneer.

Elizabeth plans to stay in Kathmandu. There are people there who care for her. The next generation is there to support her. There is respect and reverence for the elderly in Nepal and Elizabeth is now one of those people.

She won’t leave Nepal, because she has a purpose there; she has work to do and she’s making a difference. This is what keeps her alive. Her nephew suggests there are many ways of evaluating a life – some people make money and some people make a difference. Elizabeth has made a difference. He added, “I would put her on my list of heroes, and it’s a very short list.”

Always pragmatic, Elizabeth conceded she would leave if the Maoist regime became too difficult or in the extreme event of the city being destroyed by a natural catastrophe, but she added, “What would I do? As long as my health lets me stay on, I want to stay. I want to live independently. I am useless in someone else’s house. I can’t cook. I suppose I could set the table and I do know how to make drinks. I’d just be in the way.” Then, looking at me with dark, steady eyes, she stated, “The jobs I do couldn’t be done anywhere else – it’s Nepal.”

And in that statement I suddenly understood the depth of her love for her adopted country and for the life’s work she has created – and for which she will always be remembered.

EPILOGUE

It was on a sultry July day in 2010 that Elizabeth Hawley was found in her Kathmandu home, lying on the floor and in great pain. Although amnesia erased the fall from her memory, it appeared she had slipped, fracturing her right hip. An ambulance whisked her to the CIWEC clinic, where her hip was successfully repaired. For two weeks she remained at the clinic while the medical personnel monitored her closely.

At the age of 86 Elizabeth had just experienced the first serious injury of her life. The woman who had routinely worked 12-hour days for the past 50 years appeared to have been struck down. Emails sped around the world among her friends and relatives: Elizabeth has fallen. Elizabeth is seriously ill. Elizabeth will not work again.

One year later, Richard Salisbury, her co-author of the Himalayan Database, sent out a message that she was returning to work on her mountaineering records but was confined to her home. Instead of her normal practice of visiting expeditions at their hotels, some expedition leaders were now coming to see her, while others were interviewed over the phone or by her helpers.

A couple of months later Elizabeth was able to meet expeditions in Dilli Bazaar. And with the help of a special cane to move around, she was about to resume hotel visits, as long as there weren’t too many steps. She admitted that steps were an effort, but added, “My orthopaedic surgeon says I’m tough. I say I’m just doing my job. Basically my health is fine.” Salisbury closed his email with the comment, “It appears that her recovery is progressing remarkably well.” And so it was. As she celebrated her 88th birthday in November of 2011, the indomitable Miss Hawley was back at it, although at a slower pace.

During the months that passed between her accident and her return to work, many in the mountaineering community continued the debate that had begun years earlier, about the value of her work, the importance of a succession plan and the future of mountaineering record-keeping.

Eberhard Jurgalski, founder and author of www.8000ers.com, a website devoted to recording a vast amount of information on the high mountains of Asia, including mountaineering activity, was seriously concerned about the future of her work. “For so many years Miss Hawley has been collecting and sorting all the facts about attempts and ascents on mountains in Nepal and on its borders! I know many mountaineers admire her for all this passionate work.” He worried that the same accuracy would be lost in the years to come if a qualified and devoted replacement could not be found for Elizabeth. “Let’s hope that the life’s work of this great woman will be continued in the future in her spirit,” he urged.

But others were not so generous. Some in the climbing community did not see a need to find a successor for Elizabeth and in fact didn’t see value in her work at all. Although no one wanted to be quoted, some found serious gaps in her record-keeping. In particular, they felt that her refusal to record ascents made without permission from the Government of Nepal was an indefensible stance, from the standpoint of both journalist and historian. They felt she was out of touch with the entire concept of alpine-style climbing in the Himalaya when she insisted that adventure climbers fill out the same forms as someone doing a commercial or guided climb of Ama Dablam. Describing camps, predetermined bivouac sites, planned descent routes, even planned ascent routes, held little value for a climber heading off on a true adventure climb. All of these details were unknown at the outset, and Elizabeth seemed unable to grasp this aspect of climbing. Some climbers felt she was still too focused on the giants, Everest in particular. “I don’t think she will be replaced,” was a common comment.

Yet, when asked about alpine-style climbing and the future of the sport, Elizabeth’s attitude revealed something different. “There are climbers of 6000ers and 7000ers who are doing interesting things, despite the fact that they don’t get all the publicity that they would receive from climbing Kangchenjunga, Everest or K2,” she said. “Those who go to these ‘lesser mountains’ have to be prepared to attempt something for the love of it, and perhaps for the respect of their fellow mountaineers rather than for the world, and definitely not to attract rich sponsorship.” She rattled off the climbers who she felt were advancing the standards of Himalayan climbing, those worth watching: Denis Urubko from Kazakhstan, the American David Gottlieb, Nick Bullock from the UK and Swiss mountaineer Üeli Steck. But of the really impressive climbing achievements of her career, she cited just a few, with the first traverse of Annapurna I’s summit ridge by Jean-Christophe Lafaille and Alberto Iñurrategi in the spring of 2002 as the very best.

Reinhold Messner weighed in with his opinion about the value of her work and the future without her: “Elizabeth Hawley is unique. I don’t think anyone else could succeed her.” But he had more to say about climbing in Nepal. “Time is changing. Climbing is becoming a sport: indoor climbing, skyrunning, ski racing on 8000 m and more. Let it happen – without Liz and me!”

A group of Americans, including Richard Salisbury, Ray Huey and Everest pioneer Tom Hornbein, took a more practical approach as they began brainstorming about how Elizabeth’s workload could be lightened and how she could begin mentoring a replacement. They understood the problems of obtaining a work visa, the incredible commitment of time and the unlikelihood that a replacement could “hit the ground running.” Elizabeth had grown into her job over five decades, accumulating knowledge and experience and an impressive network of influential and helpful contacts. An equally qualified replacement was unlikely.

Elizabeth outlined the job requirements of her ideal successor: has permission to live in Nepal, either by being a citizen or a foreigner who has additional work that entitles them to an annual visa and provides an adequate income to meet living expenses; has an excellent command of oral and written English; knows something about climbing or is really interested in learning about it quickly; has a means of transportation and a telephone; and is a self-starter and self-reliant. Quite a comprehensive package!

The concerned Americans felt that changes in technology might ease the transition for the continuation of Elizabeth’s work. Some information could be gathered electronically rather than through the personal meetings Elizabeth insisted on doing. Perhaps only the unusual or groundbreaking climbs would require the in-depth interviews that Elizabeth routinely conducted. But Elizabeth insisted that face-to-face meetings were important. “I believe it is essential for us to meet someone from an expedition when they come back from their climbs. Body language is important, and if we think that something they tell us is odd or just plain wrong, we can follow up with further questions immediately and check with other teams returning from the same mountain at the same time.” Back to the drawing board for the Americans.

While the historians reviewed the options and possibilities, Elizabeth reminisced about her recent years in Kathmandu. In 2008 she retired from her post as part-time correspondent for Reuters News Agency, for which she had reported since 1962. Their need for mountaineering news dispatches was no longer there. Then, in 2010, she retired after serving for 20 years as New Zealand’s first honorary consul in Nepal.

And of course there were the deaths, the ongoing list of climbers she had known who had died in the mountains they loved. She had reported on all of them, some who were strangers and others who had been her friends: Jean-Christophe Lafaille on Makalu in 2006; Tomaž Humar on Langtang Lirung in 2009; Erhard Loretan in the Alps in 2011; and of course her dear friend Sir Edmund Hillary in January of 2008.

The last time she left Nepal was for Sir Edmund’s funeral in New Zealand. As she described it, “His 88-year-old body had worn out and his heart stopped.” The details of his state funeral in Auckland remain clear to Elizabeth, from the dignitaries, diplomats and foreign notables to the three servicemen who were enlisted to carry his many awards on cushions into the church. She described the servicemen posted at each corner of his casket, their guns reversed and heads bowed, standing motionless for 20 minutes at a time before being relieved by another. Flags flew at half-mast throughout the country for New Zealand’s “living icon,” a term Hillary had hated. A cartoon in an Auckland daily paper showed the gates to heaven shut with a sign reading “Closed for Bereavement.” The public filed past his coffin at the rate of 475 people an hour, throughout the entire night. All of New Zealand seemed to come to a halt the morning of his funeral. After the service, crowds lined the streets in the drizzle as his cortege proceeded to the crematorium. Most of his ashes were scattered in Auckland’s harbour, but a small portion was taken to Kathmandu to be carried to Khumbu’s cultural heart, the Buddhist monastery at Thyangboche, by its rinpoche, or abbot.

Elizabeth had worked with Hillary since 1965, even before his Himalayan Trust was founded, and she was with him at the signing of the Trust’s first agreement with the Nepalese government in 1972. She filled in for him at the Trust when he was away from Kathmandu, and of course since his death. His impact on her life was huge. “He lived by his very high ethical standards,” she recalled. “He did an immense amount of good for other people and he greatly enjoyed doing it. He loved a good laugh, enjoyed his Scotch and ginger ale and was by no means an aloof person.” In summary, she added, “Hillary was the finest man I ever knew.”

Despite the many personal losses over the years, and the restrictions to her movement, Elizabeth remains committed to her work, although she is beginning to accept that it may be done a little differently in the future. She has guarded and protected her working style fiercely in her years at the helm, and that style has been part of the Hawley mystique. Her strong personality defines her work, but as she ages and the sharp edges of her character soften somewhat, her tolerance for change grows. Of all the many jobs she has done in Nepal, she insists that she is still doing the two she has enjoyed the most: chronicling expeditions in the Nepalese Himalaya and working for Sir Edmund Hillary’s Himalayan Trust. But she has some concerns. “Without Sir Ed, the Himalayan Trust is changing,” she explains. It is currently run by a board of four members, who have just written its first constitution and are demanding more written reports about the trust’s work in Nepal and generally making it more organized and formal. “But I’m still there, seeing where the money goes,” she said.

If there is one thing that the indomitable Elizabeth Hawley is firm about, it’s that Nepal is her home. She has made a life there and she plans to die there. “This has been my home since September 1960, and I am out of touch with the constant changes that have occurred in the U.S., despite the fact that I read the International Herald Tribune daily. I would not feel at home anywhere else,” she explained. “Besides,” she says, with a twinkle in her eye, “I don’t know how to cook.”

ELIZABETH’S FIRST VEHICLE: A WOODEN THREE-WHEELER.

COURTESY OF THE MICHAEL AND MEG LEONARD COLLECTION

YOUNG ELIZABETH ON THE FAMILY’S VERMONT PROPERTY.

COURTESY OF THE MICHAEL AND MEG LEONARD COLLECTION

ELIZABETH AND HER FRIEND BARBARA ON THE STEPS OF “THE MOST EXPENSIVE HOTEL IN NICE,” THE NEGRESCO, ON A PHOTO POSTCARD ELIZABETH SENT HOME OCTOBER 25, 1950.

COURTESY OF THE MICHAEL AND MEG LEONARD COLLECTION

ELIZABETH ENJOYING A DRINK AND THE SCENERY AT THE BRITISH EMBASSY BUNGALOW, KAKANI, DECEMBER 1975.

COURTESY OF THE MICHAEL AND MEG LEONARD COLLECTION

ELIZABETH ON A TRIP INTO RURAL NEPAL IN 1964 WITH KING MAHENDRA.

COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

PORTRAIT OF ELIZABETH AS A YOUNG WOMAN.

COURTESY OF THE MICHAEL AND MEG LEONARD COLLECTION

ELIZABETH CHATTING, AFTER A PARADE, WITH LT. GEN. SURENDRA BAHADUR SHAHA, CHIEF-OF-STAFF OF THE ROYAL NEPAL ARMY. KATHMANDU, OCTOBER 24, 1963.

COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

ELIZABETH WITH UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT BHOLA RANA AND POLISH CLIMBER ANDRZEJ ZAWADA.

COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

ELIZABETH’S FIRST CAR, PARKED IN FRONT OF HER KATHMANDU APARTMENT.

COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

ELIZABETH WITH SIR EDMUND HILLARY AND INGER LISSANEVITCH (BORIS’S WIFE) AT PHAPHLU HOSPITAL, JANUARY 1976.

COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

ELIZABETH GREETING U.S. FIRST LADY HILLARY CLINTON AT A U.S. EMBASSY RECEPTION ON MARCH 31, 1995.

COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

ELIZABETH WITH HER PARENTS IN 1974.

COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

COLONEL JIMMY ROBERTS, ELIZABETH, AND AL READ OF MOUNTAIN TRAVEL ON NEW YEAR’S EVE IN 1978.

COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

ELIZABETH INTERVIEWING A CLIMBER WITH FROSTBITTEN TOES.

COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

ELIZABETH WITH CHRIS BONINGTON.

COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

IN KATHMANDU, ELIZABETH INTERVIEWS PAUL TEARE AND STEPHEN VENABLES BEFORE THEIR DEPARTURE FOR EVEREST’S KANGSHUNG (EAST) FACE, IN 1988.

COURTESY OF ED WEBSTER

ELIZABETH WITH AMERICAN FILMMAKER DAVID BREASHEARS AND BRITISH HISTORIAN AUDREY SALKELD IN 1996.

PHOTO BY LISA CHOEGYAL

ELIZABETH, AUGUST 1994.

PHOTO BY GOPAL CHITRAKAR, COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

ELIZABETH LIGHTING THE PYRE AT HER MOTHER’S CREMATION IN 1998.

COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

ELIZABETH MEETING ROYALTY.

COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

ELIZABETH WITH ITALIAN MOUNTAINEER REINHOLD MESSNER IN KATHMANDU IN 2004.

PHOTO BY LISA CHOEGYAL

ELIZABETH WITH RUSSIAN CLIMBERS VALERI BABANOV AND YURI KOCHELENKO IN AUTUMN 2003, AFTER THEIR SUCCESSFUL ASCENT OF NUPTSE.

COURTESY OF THE ELIZABETH HAWLEY COLLECTION

AMERICAN CLIMBER ED VIESTURS TALKING WITH ELIZABETH IN 2004.

PHOTO BY JIMMY CHIN

SLOVENIAN ALPINIST TOMAŽ HUMAR GIVING ELIZABETH FLOWERS IN 2004.

COURTESY OF THE TOMAŽ HUMAR COLLECTION

ELIZABETH’S KITCHEN.

PHOTO BY BERNADETTE MCDONALD

ELIZABETH’S OFFICE.

PHOTO BY BERNADETTE MCDONALD

DOOR TO ELIZABETH’S APARTMENT, INCLUDING THE SIGN IDENTIFYING HER AS THE NEW ZEALAND CONSUL.

PHOTO BY BERNADETTE MCDONALD

ELIZABETH’S FAMOUS BLUE 1963 VW BEETLE.

PHOTO BY BERNADETTE MCDONALD

ELIZABETH MEETING WITH ITALIAN CLIMBER SIMONE MORO.

PHOTO BY ALLISON OTTO

ELIZABETH INTERVIEWING IRANIAN CLIMBER PARVANEH KAZEMI.

PHOTO BY ALLISON OTTO

ELIZABETH HAWLEY IN 2012.

PHOTO BY ALLISON OTTO

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Periodicals and Newspapers

Alpin nr. 9

American Alpine Journal, 1970, 1992

Bangkok World, August 17, 1970

Daily Telegraph, London North Edition, November 16, 1972

Gripped, Summer 2004

Kuala Lumpur Straits Times, August 25, 1970

Nepali Times, April 12, 2003

New York Times, October 6, 1979

Outside Online, December 23, 2003

Peninsula Times Tribune, August 3, 1983

Rock & Ice, November/December 1994

——, September 2004

San Jose Mercury News, August 19, 1973

The Sunday Times, May 28, 1972

Time, October 27, 1986

General

Band, George. Everest: 50 Years on Top of the World. London: HarperCollins, 2003.

Bernstein, Jeremy. The Wildest Dreams of Kew: A Profile of Nepal. New Delhi: Book Faith India, 1998.

Bista, Dor Bahadur. Fatalism and Development: Nepal’s Struggle for Modernization. Calcutta: Orient Longman, 2001.

Bonington, Chris. Everest the Hard Way. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1976.

——. The Everest Years: A Climber’s Life. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986.

Boukreev, Anatoli, and G. Weston DeWalt. The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997.

Curran, Jim. High Achiever: The Life and Climbs of Chris Bonington. London: Constable & Co., 1999.

Diemberger, Kurt. Spirits of the Air. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991.

Douglas, Ed. Chomolungma Sings the Blues. London: Constable & Co., 1997.

Douglas, Ed, and David Rose. Regions of the Heart: The Triumph and Tragedy of Alison Hargreaves. London: Penguin, 1999.

Fanshawe, Andy, and Stephen Venables. Himalaya Alpine-Style. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995.

Gregson, Jonathan. Blood Against the Snows: The Tragic Story of Nepal’s Royal Dynasty. London: Fourth Estate, 2002.

Hawley, Elizabeth, and Richard Salisbury. The Himalayan Database: The Expedition Archives of Elizabeth Hawley. Golden, Colo.: American Alpine Club Press, 2004.

Hemmleb, Jochen, Larry Johnson and Eric Simonson. Ghosts of Everest. Seattle: The Mountaineers Books, 1999.

Hillary, Edmund. View from the Summit. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.

Hillary, Louise. A Yak for Christmas. New York: Doubleday, 1969.

Humar, Tomaž. No Impossible Ways. Ljubljana: Mobitel, 2001.

Iyer, Pico. Video Night in Kathmandu and Other Reports from the Not-So-Far East. New York: Knopf, 1988.

Krakauer, Jon. Into Thin Air. New York: Villard, 1997.

Leuchtag, Erica. Erika and the King. New York: Coward-McCann, 1958.

Peissel, Michel. Tiger for Breakfast. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1966.

Roskelley, John. Stories Off the Wall. Seattle: The Mountaineers Books, 1993.

Simpson, Colin. Kathmandu. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1976.

Suyin, Han. The Mountain Is Young. London: Jonathan Cape, 1958.

Tenzing, Tashi. Tenzing Norgay and the Sherpas of Everest. Camden, Me.: Ragged Mountain Press, 2001.

Venables, Stephen. Everest: Kangshung Face. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989.

——. Everest: Summit of Achievement. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.

Webster, Ed. Snow in the Kingdom: My Storm Years on Everest. South Freeport, Me.: Mountain Imagery, 2000.

Wielicki, Krzysztof. Crown of the Himalaya: 14 × 8000. Kraków: Wydawnictwo ATI, 1997

INDEX

The page numbers in this index refer to the print edition and have been linked to corresponding anchors in this electronic edition. Depending on your reading device and personal settings, you may have to continue scrolling down or turning pages before the index entry appears on your screen.

Abel, Elie 55, 66, 68

Abu Reish, Mahmoud 61

Adams, Barbara 78, 94, 104, 131, 132

Adventure Consultants 196

Agence France-Presse 111

Agnew, Spiro, U.S. vice-president 98

Aleppo, Syria 57

al-Said, Nuri, Iraq premier 57, 58

Ama Dablam 81, 124, 216, 220

American Alpine Club 231, 235

American Alpine Journal 99, 100, 224

Amman, Jordan 61

Anderson, Robert 161

Anker, Conrad 15, 202, 207

Annapurna 91, 104, 121, 234

1970 South Face expedition 105

2002 traverse by Lafaille and Iñurrategi 224

Annapurna Hotel 141

Annapurna I 140, 184, 188, 202

1978 all-women expedition 122

1992 Béghin and Lafaille summit attempt 184

1997 South Face ascent by Boukreev 202

Annapurna IV 182

Aqaba, Jordan 62

Arab Nationalism, 1958 62

Arsentiev, Sergei and Francys 202, 203

Aryaghat 221

Asch, Sholem 61

Aufschnaiter, Peter 79

Babanov, Valeri 215, 224

Bagmati River 113, 170, 222

Bahadur Bhawan 74

Ball, Gary 165

Batard, Marc 163, 203

Baween 73

Beckwith, Christian 224, 236

Béghin, Pierre 134, 140, 184, 185

Belak-Šrauf, Stane 212

Belgrade, Yugoslavia 48, 55

Bell, Gertrude 56, 57, 62

Beni Bazaar, Nepal 229

Berlin, Germany 49

Bhadgaon, Nepal 71

Bianchi, Marco 188

Bishop, Barry 84, 85, 86

Bista, Kirtinidhi, Nepalese prime minister 96

Blum, Arlene 121

Blum, Dick 134

Boardman, Peter 116, 122, 137

Bobaye 233

Bodhnath, Nepal 71

Bonington, Chris 81, 104, 108, 109, 116, 117, 136, 137, 139, 185

Boukreev, Anatoli 26, 167, 197, 201, 202

Boysen, Martin 104, 116

Bradey, Lydia 164, 165, 166, 188

Breashears, David 28, 128, 134, 237

Brice, Russell 13, 172, 211

Brown, Michael 214, 217

Buhler, Carlos 101, 238

meets Elizabeth for the first time 14

Bulganin, Nikolai 53

Burke, Mick 105, 108, 116

Cairo, Egypt 59

Carsolio, Carlos 184, 189, 198

Carter, Ad 231

Carter, Jimmy, U.S. president 94, 141

Česen, Tomo 167, 175–177, 211

Chamoux, Benoît 191

Cheney, Mike 100, 144

Chhiri, Babu 216, 228

Chhiri, Dawa 215

Child, Greg 15, 28, 166, 185

Chivas Regal 227

Choegyal (née van Greisen), Lisa 93, 134

Cholatse

1982 American ascent 135

Cho Oyu 116, 163, 168, 186, 190

1989 battle between Belgians and South Koreans 168

Christie, Agatha 104

Chuldim 28

Cichy, Leszek 125

Clarbrough, Mal 239

Clinton, Hillary 94

Clough, Ian 105

Coapman, John 92

Coburn, Broughton

Elizabeth’s relationship with Himalayan Trust and climbers 130

Crouse, Bill 238

Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal 220

massacre of royal family 222

Crown Prince Paras of Nepal 226

Cultural Revolution 89

Czechoslovakia 164

Czok, Andrzej 126

Damascus, Syria

1958 plebicite 58

David-Néel, Alexandra 56

De Stefani, Fausto 195

Devi, Nanda 86

de Zwart, Milja 200

Dhaulagiri 91, 188, 189, 211, 233, 234

1999 South Face ascent by Humar 212

Dhaulagiri I 99, 110, 138, 180

1973 American expedition 110

1996 East Face climb by Vos 200

Dickinson, Leo 16, 209

Diemberger, Kurt 29, 138, 139, 214

Dinesen, Isak 56

Dixit, Kunda 230, 232

Dorje, Pemba 228

May 20-21, 2004, Everest ascent 21, 29

Douglas, Ed 15, 239

Duke of Argyll 227

Dunn, Cyril 66

Dyhrenfurth, Hettie 192

Dyhrenfurth, Norman 84, 105, 106

Edwards, Jim 92, 93, 141

El Amin, Mamoun 50, 51

es Sabbah, Sheikh Abdullah Mubarak, Kuwaiti deputy ruler 63

Estcourt, Nick 105, 108

Everest 105, 110, 120, 125, 140, 181, 187, 188, 195, 198, 203, 204, 216, 234

1963 American Mount Everest Expedition 86

1971 International Himalayan Expedition 106

1972 First Southwest Face expedition 108

1972 Second Southwest Face expedition 109

1973 Italian Everest expedition 109

1975 all-women Japanese expedition 115

1975 British Everest Southwest Face Expedition 117

1978 attempt without bottled oxygen 121

1979-80 Polish winter ascent 125

1979 Yugoslav West Ridge expedition 122

1980 Messner solo 126

1980 Polish South Pillar route 126

1981 American Kangshung Face route 135

1982 American Great Couloir route 137

1982 British Northeast Ridge route 137

1986 North Face 140

1988 British–American–Canadian expedition 162

1988 Chinese-Japanese-Nepalese Friendship Expedition 161, 162

1988 Czech Southwest Face summit and tragedy 163

1988 New Zealand expedition; Lydia Bradey summit 166

1993 summit attempt of Pasang Lhamu Sherpa 186

1996 commercial guiding disaster 197

1996 South African expedition 198

1997 ascent by Tashi Tenzing 202

1998 Arsentiev tragedy 203

1998 speed ascent by Sherpa Kaji 203

2003 50th anniversary of first summit 229

Batard speed climb 163

outstanding climbs according to Elizabeth 233

Patscheider speed climb 163

Everett, Boyd 99

February, Ed 197

Finland 50

Fischer, Scott 196, 197

Fortune magazine 44, 45, 97

Four Against Everest 83

Frank, Ralph 205

Friedberg, Judy 48, 52, 63

Frost, Tom 105

Furth, Albert 69

Gandhi, Indira, Indian prime minister 109

Gaurishankar 89, 122

1979 summit by John Roskelley and Dorje Sherpa 123

Gelu, Lhakpa 228

Gokyo Valley 135

Golden Age of Polish mountaineering 126

Gomulka, Wladyslaw 52

Gore, Amanda (maternal grandmother) 31

Gore, Edward (maternal grandfather) 31

Gray, Dennis 88

Gresham, Bill 84

Griffin, Lindsay 225, 236

Grošelj, Viktor 122, 176

Gustafsson, Veikka 188

Habeler, Peter 120, 127

Hagen, Toni 79

Hahn, Dave 26, 182, 203, 204, 208

Hajzer, Artur 140

Hall, Rob 164, 185, 188, 196, 197

Hargreaves, Alison 188

Haston, Dougal 105, 108, 116

Hawley, Ann (sister-in-law) 46

Hawley, Elizabeth 129, 139, 188

1957 travels to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union 55

1958 travels to Turkey and the Middle East 63

1959 travels to South and Southeast Asia 68

1973 Japanese expedition scoop 111

1975 Ministry of Tourism ban on her reporting 111, 120

1985 press accreditation denied 141, 142

1996 reporting on Everest disasters 198

1999 discovery of Mallory’s body 208

20th anniversary of Junko Tabei’s Everest ascent 192

American Alpine Club Literary Award 231

apartment in Kathmandu 72

appearance of 23

application to Ford Foundation Foreign Area Training Fellowship 70

application to USIA 69, 70

arrangement with Knickerbocker Foundation 70, 75

arrangement with Reuters 83, 85, 105

arrangement with Time Inc. 70, 75, 77, 82

at Fortune 45, 47, 48, 51

at Life 69

birthdate 31

character of 14, 20, 28, 44, 239

childhood polio 33

commercial and guided climbing in the Himalaya 180

comparison with Audrey Salkeld 209

covering Nepal’s first election 66

criticism of 214, 225

death of mother, Florelle 171

early interest in international affairs 38

early travels 46, 51

early work on mountaineering database with Richard Salisbury 183

early years 35

first impression of Kathmandu 65

friendship with Barbara Adams 79, 104

friendship with Colonel Jimmy Roberts 91, 100

friendship with Micky Weatherall 78

friendship with Professor Preston Slosson 38

friendship with Reinhold Messner 128

friendship with Sir Edmund Hillary 114, 240

Himalayan Trust 103

Honorary Queen’s Service Medal for Public Services 233

interviewed by San Jose Mercury News 107

interviewing schedule 27

interview sleuthing 29

introduction to life as foreign correspondent 54

King Albert I Memorial Foundation award 232

mother’s failing health 143

mountaineering archive 21, 235, 236

New Zealand honorary consul 174

Post-War Council 40

reaction to brother’s death 46

relationship with father, Frank 39

relationship with mother, Florelle 38, 40, 112

relationship with nephew, Michael 46

relationship with servants 73

romantic relationships 42, 51, 83, 84, 89, 240

Royal Nepal Airlines hostesses 143

Sagarmatha National Award 232

schedule of 25

sharing information 101

speaking Nepali 82

special citation from Reuters 231

style of writing for alpine magazines 100

successor 236

theory of romance with Edmund Hillary 16

undergraduate years 43

with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) 57, 58

work for Mountain Travel 91

working with Heather Macdonald 206

work with Tiger Tops 92, 94

Hawley, Frank (father) 31, 32

death of 112

early life 31

relationship with Elizabeth 34

Hawley, John (brother) 33, 42

death of 46

Hawley, Michael (nephew) 46

Hawley (née Gore), Florelle (mother)

early life 31

failing health 143

funeral and internment 171

last days in Kathmandu and death of 170

meets husband Frank 31

Hawn, Goldie 93

Helsinki, Finland 49, 53

Hemmleb, Jochen 207

Herrligkoffer, Dr. Karl 108

Herrod, Bruce 197

Hetauda, Nepal 119

Hillary, Belinda 112

death of 113

Hillary, Lady June 17, 124, 142

Hillary, Lady Louise 112

death of 113

Hillary, Peter 113, 124

Hillary, Sarah 113

Hillary, Sir Edmund 86, 94, 112, 124, 131, 135, 142, 207, 227, 232

1953 ascent of Everest 102

1960 high-altitude expedition 81

1973 Italian Everest expedition 110

80th birthday party 201

altitude ceiling 135

death of wife Louise and daughter Belinda 115

high commissioner to India and Nepal 115

Himalayan Trust 103

honorary Nepalese citizenship 226

on Elizabeth’s character 15

on Elizabeth’s friendships in Kathmandu 104

Hillary Foundation 164

Himalayan Trust 19, 103, 124, 129, 130, 170, 232, 235

Himalayan Trust Sherpas 227

Hinkes, Alan 190, 191, 196, 201

Hoey, Marty 137

Hornbein, Tom 84, 85

Horseshoe Traverse 192, 234

Hotel Gaurishankar 206

Houston, Dr. Charles 15, 27, 129, 232

Houston, Robin 27, 28, 225

Humar, Tomaž 195, 212, 225, 233

Hunt, Sir John 81, 90, 232

Iñurrategi, Alberto 223, 234

Iraq 63

Irvine, Andrew 207

Israel 61

Istanbul, Turkey 57

Jangbu, Nuru 29

Jannu 212

1989 Slovenian ascent 167

Jeglič, Janez 194

Jerstad, Lute 84, 85

Johnston, Mary 47

Jones, Finn-Olaf 215

K2 187, 188

Kali Gandaki Valley 99

Kammerlander, Hans 138, 139, 224

Kangchenjunga 138, 183, 187, 189, 190, 192, 234

1979 new route 122

1982 Messner ascent 135

1989 Soviet ascents 167

Kangtega 215

Karachi, Pakistan 63

Kathmandu, Nepal 65

in 1960 73

Kennedy, President John F. 85

Khartoum, Sudan 50

Khatri, Major General Padma Bahadur 84

Khrushchev, Nikita 53

Khumbu 94, 130, 135

Khumbu Icefall 109, 217

Khumjung, Nepal 103

King, Elaine 98

King Birendra of Nepal 108, 112, 119, 216

King Gyanendra of Nepal 221, 222, 226

King Mahendra of Nepal 66, 67, 68, 74, 76, 82, 83, 88, 107

1960 political reorganization 77

King Tribhuvan of Nepal 66, 67, 74

Kissinger, Henry 94

Klatzel, Frances 238

friendship with Elizabeth 131

Klein, Herb 92

Kneerim, Lee (cousin) 47, 169

Kneerim, Will (cousin’s son) 73

Knickerbocker Foundation 70, 75

Koestler, Arthur 63

Koirala, B.P., Nepalese prime minister 75, 76, 96, 118, 119, 136

Kopczynski, Chris 126

Krishna Loaf 73

Kukuczka, Jerzy 126, 128, 138, 139, 140, 168

Kumar 72, 73, 113

Kunde 130

Kurtyka, Voytek 140

Kusum Kanguru 182

Kuwait 63

Lafaille, Jean-Christophe 185, 187, 215, 224, 234

Lawrence, T.E. 63

l’Esprit d’équipe 189

Lhamu Sherpa, Pasang 186

Lhasa, Tibet 180

Lhotse 111, 125, 126, 128, 139, 195, 199, 218

1974 Polish winter expedition 111

1989 Kukuczka tragedy 168

1990 South Face 177

Lissanevitch, Boris 74, 80, 104

Łódź 52

Loretan, Erhard 139, 190, 191, 232

Lowe, George 239

Lowe, Mary 239

Ma’an, Jordan 62

Macdonald, Heather 44, 82, 206, 208, 240, 241

on Elizabeth’s character 14, 44

on Elizabeth speaking Nepali 82

MacInnes, Hamish 108

Makalu 81, 126, 135, 139, 191, 234

1980 American West Pillar route 126

1995 summit by Viesturs, Hall and Gustafsson 188

Mallory (Lhasa apso) 142

Mallory, George 208

Manaslu 127, 128, 168, 198, 199, 215, 219

1981 French ascent 134

Martinez, Jesús and José Antonio 195

Martini, Sergio 180, 190, 191, 195, 196

Matlak, Krawetz 174

Matsumoto, Norichika 203

Mauduit, Chantal 124, 199

Mazeaud, Pierre 105

McDonald, Caroline 232

McDougal, Chuck 92

Menlungtse

1992 Slovenian Southeast Face route 185

Messner, Günther 139

Messner, Reinhold 120, 121, 124, 126, 128, 135, 138, 139, 140, 162, 211, 227, 236

friendship with Elizabeth 128

on Elizabeth’s character 15

Miura, Yuichiro 104

momo 132

Monzino, Guido 109

Moores, Thomas 218

Moran, Father 79

Moro, Simone 202, 218

Morocco 50

Moscow, USSR 54

Moses Mountain, Sinai 59

Mother Theresa 133

Mountain Madness 196

Mountain Travel 90, 91, 93, 99, 123, 134, 135

Mount Fuji 192

Mulgrew, Peter 124

Namche Bazaar, Nepal 222, 228

Nanga Parbat 139, 196

Nasser, Gamal Abdel, Egyptian president 57, 62

Nehru, Pandit 67

Nepal

1977-80 political unrest 119

1980 referendum and aftermath 120

1985 political unrest 141

2000 rise in crime 219

2001 terrorism 223

2003 Maoist insurrection 230

2003 massacre at Beni Bazaar 229

commerical and guided climbing 194

development in 1967 95

early days of mountaineering 81

fall of Rana rule 67

first election in 68

impact of conflict between India and Pakistan on 107

Rana rule in 66

re-establishment of prime minister and Parliament 96

relations with Chinese-occupied Tibet 89

Nepali Times 230

Nepal Ministry of Tourism

1996 peak fees 193

1996 permits for Everest 198

climbing permits 179, 220

commercial and guided climbing 180

Nepal Mountaineering Association 181

Norgay, Tenzing 27, 102, 186, 201, 207

Noshaq 125

Nowak, Jim 214

Nuptse 194, 224, 233

1997 West Face ascent by Humar and Jeglič 195

Odell, Noel 207

O’Dowd, Cathy 197, 227, 234

Oiarzabal, Juanito 189, 195, 196

Palace of Culture, Warsaw, Poland 52

panchayat system 119

Paroli, Tony 172, 173

Pasaban, Edurne 222

Pashipatinath 136

Patan, Nepal 71

Patscheider, Reinhard 163

Petra, Jordan 62

Phaphlu, Nepal 113, 114

Philby, John 57

Philby, Kim 57

Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh 80

Pokhara, Nepal 110

Poland 53

Prague, Czechoslovakia 54

Prezelj, Marko 185

Prince Basundhara of Nepal 74, 78, 86, 103, 107, 112

Prince Charles of England 112, 134

Profit, Christophe 218

Pumori 214

Queen Mother Ratna of Nepal 221

Rackl, Robert 216

Ram Krishna (cook) 72

Rana, General Mrigendra Shumsher Jung Bahadur 78, 86

Read, Al 99, 123, 135

Redford, Robert 93

Reichardt, Lou 110, 134

Reuters 70, 82, 84, 136, 141, 144, 220, 231

Rita, Ang 24, 131, 170, 210, 235

Roberts, Colonel Jimmy 84, 90, 91, 93, 99, 105, 108, 134

Rockefeller, Nelson 69

Rombauer, Irma (cousin) 47

Roskelley, Jess 229

Roskelley, John 110, 123, 126, 134, 135, 185, 229

Rovaniemi, Finland 49

Royal Hotel 74, 103

Royer, Bernard 190

Rüedi, Marcel 139

Rum Doodle 209

Rutkiewicz, Wanda 124, 184, 232

Sagarmatha National Park 130

Said, Nuri. See al-Said, Nuri, Iraq premier

Salinger, Pierre 85

Salisbury, Richard 182, 183, 235

Salkeld, Audrey 209

Samden, Nawang 110

Sayre, Woodrow Wilson 83

Schmatz, Gerhard 123

Schmatz, Hannelore 124

Schwartz, Eleanor 14, 47

Scott, Doug 16, 108, 116, 122

Seti, Nepal 219

Shah, General Surendra Bahadur 84

Shah, Prithvi Narayan 108

Shaha, Rishikesh 86, 96

Shand, Peter 113

Sharma, Gopal 141, 142, 171

Sher Bahadur Deuba, Nepalese prime minister 230

Sherpa, Apa 210

Sherpa, Dorje 123

Sherpa, Kaji 203

Sherpa, Lhakpa Gelu 20

Sherpa, Pertemba 91, 116, 117, 123, 134

Sherpa, Sungdare 210

Sherpa Center 215

Sherpas 76, 94, 95, 115, 116, 121, 122, 131, 186, 211, 233

Shipton, Eric 91

Shishapangma 186, 187, 188, 189

Shringi Himal 219

Shringi River 219

Side, Turkey 60

Siffredi, Marco 216

Simonson, Eric 207, 208

Sindhu (Lhasa apso) 83, 96, 97, 111, 112

Škarja, Tone 122

Slosson, Professor Preston 37, 42

Snow in the Kingdom 161

Soaltee Hotel 103

Sobolev, Dmitri 202

Sokwitne, Harold 41

Solukhumbu, Nepal 223, 240

Šrauf, Stane Belak. See Belak-Šrauf, Stane

Stark, Freya 56, 104

St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai 59

St. Catherine’s Mountain, Sinai 59

Štremfelj, Andrej 122, 185, 211, 212

Štremfelj, Andrej and Marija 178

Štremfelj, Marko 122

Suben 23

Sudan 51

Suviga, Vladimir 225

Tabei, Junko 115, 116, 192

Taksindu, Nepal 216

Tashigaon, Nepal 222

Tasker, Joe 122, 137

Teare, Paul 161, 162

Tehran, Iran 63

Tenzing, Tashi 28, 202

Terai, Nepal 92

Terray, Lionel 218

Terray, Nicolas 218

Thamserku (trekking agency) 185

Thapa, Nepalese prime minister 230

The Climb 197

The Himalayan Database 235

The Man Who Skied Down Everest 104

Tibet 144

Tiger Mountain 93

Tiger Tops 25, 92, 93, 95, 98

Tigger (Lhasa apso) 96, 97, 111

Tigger II (Lhasa apso) 112, 142

Tighe, Tony 109

Time Inc. 77

Tito, Marshal 48

Todd, Henry 215

Troillet, Jean 140, 190

Tshering, Ang 199

Tshering, Babu (Ang Babu) 210

Tshering, Sonam 186

Tukche, Nepal 110

U.S. Information Agency (USIA, USIS) 69

Uemura, Naomi 128

Ulan Bator, Mongolia 132, 133

United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) 57

Unsoeld, Willi 84, 85, 86

Venables, Stephen 161, 162, 182

Vertical 176

Vienna, Austria 54

Viesturs, Ed 16, 27, 188

Vilna (Vilnius), Poland (Lithuania) 52

Vos, Bart 200

Wadi Rum desert, Jordan 62

Walmsley, Joseph 81

Washburn, Brad 232

Weatherall, Micky 77, 83, 86

Webster, Ed 161

Weihenmayer, Erik 228

Whillans, Don 16, 89, 104, 108

Whittaker, Jim 84

Whittaker, Lou 136

Wickwire, Jim 185

Wielicki, Krzysztof 125, 138, 191

Wignall, Sidney 89

Woodall, Ian 197, 227

Wynne, Jr., Toddy 92

Wyszyński, Cardinal 52

Yadav, Santosh 234

Yak and Yeti Hotel 103, 232

Young-Seok, Park 195

Yugoslavia 48

Zawada, Andrzej 111, 125, 126

Copyright © 2012 Bernadette McDonald

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Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

Published by RMB in paperback in 2012

ISBN 978-1-927330-15-9

This electronic version published in 2012

EPUB ISBN 978-1-927330-16-6

Cover: Sunset on Mt Everest high altitude Himalaya mountains Khumbu Nepal © fotoVoyager, old palace © Mehmet Salih Guler, Portrait of Elizabeth as a young woman Courtesy of the Michael and Meg Leonard collection

Rocky Mountain Books acknowledges the financial support for its publishing program from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

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