Keeper Of The Mountains (15 page)

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.

S
o 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.

“Memshab, we have accident.”
“What happened, Kumar?”
“We have bad accident – plane crash.”

O
ne 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.