Keeper Of The Mountains (4 page)

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.

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

W
here 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: