Miss Hawley in her home in Kathmandu (in 2016)

The legendary chronicler of Himalayan moutaineering has passed away. “I am very saddened to announce that after a short battle in hospital, Elizabeth Hawley has left us”, the German journalist and climber Billi Bierling informed. “Personally, I cannot put it into words how much this amazing woman has meant to me, how much she has taught me and how much I will miss her in my life.” Elizabeth Hawley was 94 years old when she died. Two years ago, she had handed over the work on her chronicle “Himalayan Database” to Billi.

Never on a high mountain

Miss Hawley had lived in Kathmandu since 1960. At the beginning the American worked for the news agency Reuters. “At that time mountaineering was becoming a very important part of a foreign correspondent’s job in Nepal”, Hawley recalled when I visited her at her home in the capital of Nepal in 2016. From Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first ascenders of Mount Everest, through to the clients of commercial expeditions – the chronicler had met them all. The highest mountain she herself ever climbed was only about 1,000 meters high, the old lady told me, “in Vermont in New England. It was just a walk. A mountain? No, it was like the hills around Kathmandu.” Nevertheless, again and again the American was able to unmask climbers as liars who previously had claimed to have scaled eight-thousanders or other high mountains in Nepal.

“Just a chronicler”

R.I.P.

This was the reason for getting nicknames like “Miss Marple of Kathmandu” or “Sherlock Holmes of the mountains”. “Actually I never heard any of them, you can keep them,” Miss Hawley told me: “There was a book and a documentary film about me called ‘keeper of the mountains’. I don’t know that I keep them. I am just a chronicler.”

Mount Everest

The Supreme Court of Nepal, the highest court in the Himalayan state, does not recognize the supposedly fastest ascent of Mount Everest. There was no evidence that Pemba Dorje Sherpa really ascended on 21 May 2004 in just eight hours and 10 minutes from the base camp on the south side of the highest mountain in the world to the summit at 8,850 meters, the court said, adding that there was no summit picture, nor could another climber confirm that Pemba Dorje had been at the top that day. The court said that the record was now back to Lakpa Gelu Sherpa, who had reached the summit on 26 May 2003 in ten hours and 56 minutes.

Long dispute

Pemba Dorje Sherpa with record certificate

The two Sherpas have been arguing about the record for 14 years. First, Pemba Dorje had set a new best time on 23 May 2003, climbing up in 12 hours and 45 minutes, which Lakpa Gelu had undercut by barely two hours only three days later. Pemba doubted Lakpa’s time and demanded an official investigation. The Ministry of Tourism looked into the case and acknowledged Lakpa Gelu’s time. A year later, Pemba Dorje presented his new best time, which was also listed in the Guinness Book of Records.

“Not impossible, but unlikely”

Now it was Lakpa who accused Pemba of lying – and who enjoyed a late legal success with his appeal before the Supreme Court today. Elisabeth Hawley, the now 94-year-old legendary chronicler of mountaineering in the Himalayas, also expressed her skepticism about the record time of eight hours and ten minutes in 2004. “Pemba Dorje doesn’t have any substantiation. He says he got to the summit at 2 am and not a soul was there,” the American then said. “The weather conditions were dreadful, which doesn’t make it impossible but unlikely.”