The high priestess of the Himalayas
From her home in Kathmandu, 87-year-old Elizabeth Hawley has been documenting every climbing expedition in the mountain range since 1963.
Elizabeth Hawley is the historian of the Himalayas, said Eric Hansen in Outside. From her home in Kathmandu, Nepal, the 87-year-old Hawley has been documenting every climbing expedition in the mountain range since 1963, some 80,000 climbs. A world traveler, Hawley came to Kathmandu in 1957 and was hooked. She came back a year later to stay for good, taking a job as a journalist for Reuters. Every day during climbing season, she gets up at “dead-on seven o’clock,” and sets to work contacting climbers through her network of outfitters and tourism officials. “I make sure I know what flight they’re arriving on,” she says. “If it’s the Thai flight, which gets in at noon, then at 1:45 I’m on the telephone to their hotel to get an appointment for the next day.”
Hawley can provide a trove of information about the weather, the topography of every peak, past climbing accidents, and record-setting climbs. Climbers have learned that she’s remarkably accurate, which is all the more remarkable when you consider that the bird-like Hawley has never actually ascended a mountain. “I like to sleep in a comfortable bed, eat hot food in a chair at a table,” she says. “I don’t like trekking at all.”
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