Liz Hawley

Some time in the next year, Hawley will publish the fruit of her lifetime of meticulous interviews, reporting, and collecting information, a comprehensive volume she is putting together with the help of fellow American, computer expert and climber Richard Salisbury. The book will also include original statistical analyses of climbing trends in Nepal. Hawley continues to report on mountaineering and writes for climbing journals in nine countries, and manages Sir Edmund Hillary’s charity, The Himalayan Trust, and serves as New Zealand’s Honorary Consul in Nepal.

Hawley first came to Nepal in 1959, having quit her job as a research assistant at Fortune magazine in New York to travel extensively through Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and West and South Asia. She decided to return to Nepal to “see how it would cope with the 20th century”. Reporting on the political changes over the next two years began Hawley’s career as the Kathmandu-based foreign correspondent for Reuters and Time magazine.

But all this while, Hawley was also meeting returning expeditions at Tribhuvan Internatonal Airport, getting all the information while it was still fresh in climbers’ minds. Things have changed over the past decade or so; it is now considered mandatory for climbers to pay their respects to the 77-year-old Hawley. She also employs two assistants to meet expeditions, as the climbing season is far more busy now than it used to be when Hawley started out documenting the sport. The developments in satellite technology and live coverage of climbing exploits have only strengthened Hawley’s work; she continues to be the person to assess the significance of a climb, put it in perspective.

In 1994, the American Alpine Club, of which she is a member, presented her with its literary award. In 1998, she was awarded the King Albert Medal presented by a Swiss foundation to “persons or institutions who have distinguished themselves in some way in the mountain world”.