Keeper Of The Mountains (23 page)

Despite her opinion of this type of climbing, however, she still thought it was important to keep records – accurate records. It took seven years before Batard's record was broken and even then she wasn't sure it was truly beaten. Tyrolean climber Reinhard Patscheider climbed from advanced base camp on the north side of Everest to the summit in 21 hours. But, as Elizabeth pointed out, although his ascent was faster, he started a thousand metres higher than Batard, so it wasn't really a record-breaker. The comparison was further complicated by the fact that advanced base camp on the north side was actually the bottom of the mountain. But she insisted that these records did matter and that the fine points needed to be acknowledged.

The question of motives was at the heart of a tragedy that took place on the Southwest Face of Everest when a small team of Czechoslovakia's best climbers attempted the first alpine-style ascent of this face, first climbed in 1975 by the British team led by Chris Bonington. The Czechs did climb the face, but all four died on the descent. They had no fixed ropes, no oxygen and no Sherpa support. They had many difficulties on the route and became exhausted, yet they “succeeded” in getting to the top. Elizabeth challenged their claim of success. “Can a climb be described as successful if one man does reach the summit but all four die in the descent?” She wondered about the pressure they must have felt from their government and fellow Czech climbers, for there were high expectations that they would make a notable mountaineering achievement and thereby pave the way for more government approval for future climbs.

These four deaths, combined with three additional Czech deaths
in the Himalaya in the same month, caused an uproar in Prague as messages went out to Czech climbers around the world instructing them to “stop immediately.” Perhaps more chilling than the political response to this tragedy, was the comment of a fellow Czech alpinist who wondered aloud who he would climb with in the future, as the country had lost so many of its best climbers.

Elizabeth was always careful to ask detailed and pointed questions of climbers when they returned to Kathmandu, and she was vigilant about recording and reporting the truth. But it wasn't always easy and she didn't always get it right. That may have been the case in the fall of 1988 when a climber came to report her ascent of Everest without oxygen. Lydia Bradey was a flamboyant young New Zealand climber who was climbing with a New Zealand team loosely associated with the tragic Czech group on the Southwest Face. She claimed to have reached the top illegally via the Southeast Ridge, by herself, without a watch to ascertain the time and with a frozen camera making it impossible to record the event.

As Elizabeth remembered the event, the Czechs had the permit for the Southwest Face but, to save money, they shared the permit with New Zealand team leader Rob Hall, Bradey and the other Kiwis. The Kiwis did not go onto the Southwest Face with the Czechs but over to the West Pillar, which was at the extreme edge of the Southwest Face. The Kiwis did not reach the summit, so they descended and returned to Kathmandu. All except Lydia. Just before they left base camp, they heard that Bradey had gone back up and reached the summit via the South Col. The problem was they didn't have a permit for either the South Col or the West Pillar route. So when they returned to Kathmandu, they issued a statement saying she could not have climbed the peak, because they didn't have a permit for that route. Rob Hall, the leader of her party, flatly dismissed her claim, stating, “It is simply not possible that she made the summit.”

Elizabeth saw that the Kiwis were upset and believed there were two reasons for it. The first had to do with an earlier climb in the Karakoram, where Lydia had also gone up a peak for which they had no permit. Part of their funding for the earlier climb was from the Hillary Foundation in New Zealand, so when they came back to Everest, having again secured backing from the Hillary Foundation, they swore she would behave herself. But she hadn't. That was the first
reason. The second reason, according to Elizabeth, was simple: she had reached the summit and they had not. Elizabeth was sure this was strictly macho sentiment on the part of Hall and Gary Ball. Their statement seemed a double blow, since they denied all responsibility for the climb and then said she didn't do it anyway! But Hall may have had other motivations for making the announcement, because, as the leader of a team in which someone climbed on a route without permission, he could be banned for climbing in Nepal for up to 10 years, and he made his living as a guide in Nepal.

However, when Lydia returned to Kathmandu she pointed out that they also lacked a permit for the Southwest Pillar on which they had been climbing. They countered that it was part of the Southwest Face. Elizabeth clarified to them that the ministry considered the Southwest Pillar a separate route, so in fact they were also in the wrong.

Elizabeth remembered that it was very unpleasant for Lydia to get “slapped” by Hall and Ball, and though she believed Lydia had made the summit, there was simply no conclusive evidence at the time. Lydia subsequently gave a written statement to the Nepalese government expressing “confusion” about whether or not she reached the summit, which she may have done to lessen the expected punishment. But away from the mountain, she maintained her claim. In her seasonal mountaineering report, Elizabeth expressed both Ball's opinion that the climb hadn't happened and Lydia's claim that it had.

As time passed, many in the mountaineering community came to believe Lydia's claim and assumed that political and economic pressures had prevailed upon her to sign the statement about her “confusion.” Several years later Elizabeth received confirmation of Lydia's ascent from a Spanish climber who said he had been on the same route on the same day. He hadn't climbed with her, but he was at the South Col when she came back. They descended to Camp
III
and, as Lydia was a “great chatterbox,” she talked about the climb in detail. The Spanish climber told Elizabeth that Lydia's description was detailed enough that he was convinced she had reached the summit.

Many wondered why Elizabeth didn't disclaim the statements made by Hall and Ball. They wondered if Lydia's personality struck Elizabeth as peculiar or unlikable, or whether perhaps Lydia had said something that made her skeptical. Lydia had a free-spirited, brash
personality that might have been off-putting to Elizabeth. Lydia didn't remember it that way at all, stating that she thought they got along just fine. Elizabeth remembered feeling sorry for her as she returned from an exhausting climb and tragedy on the mountain, only to be faced with rejection by her teammates. She came back from Everest and walked into a “guilty until proven innocent” situation, which Elizabeth placed firmly on the shoulders of Hall and Ball – but which others placed squarely on Elizabeth's. If nothing else, the incident illustrated the weight of Elizabeth's opinion in the climbing world at that time.

Writer and climber Greg Child later wondered whether Elizabeth comprehended the potential scale of the controversy. He doubted she did, because when he went to her years later for information on what had happened, she was as helpful as she could be, giving him signed statements from Hall and Ball stating that Lydia was a liar. They later denied the statements. Child was convinced that Elizabeth initially sided with Hall and Ball because of her past relationship with them, and that it took an enormous amount of fact-finding, and finally proof, to convince her otherwise. In the meantime, the damage was done to Lydia's climbing career. In Child's opinion, a large part of the damage was due to Elizabeth's report, which cast some doubt on Lydia's claim.

Lydia is ambivalent about Elizabeth now. From her pre-Everest meeting, she recalled liking Elizabeth's character and “wicked” sense of humour. Elizabeth seemed “grounded and realistic,” so she was surprised at her attitude at the post-climb meeting, which seemed to Lydia like a bad dream. But maybe it
was
a bad dream. After all, Lydia was exhausted and devastated by what had happened to her Czech friends on Everest. Perhaps she wasn't clear and firm with Elizabeth. She wasn't upset that Elizabeth had doubts about her climb, but she felt it was a shame that Elizabeth seemed to have developed those doubts even before speaking with her. She credits that to Rob Hall's singular focus and force of personality – “nobody, not even Elizabeth Hawley, could get in the way of Hall once he had an agenda,” claimed Lydia.

Talking about this incident 15 years later in her Kathmandu living room, Elizabeth's disdain was not directed at Lydia, but at Hall and Ball, whom she proclaimed to be chauvinists: “They were nice people but they were men!”

A
nother dispute arose, although not immediately, with the dramatic solo climb of Jannu by the Slovenian Tomo Česen in the spring of 1989. The 29-year-old sports journalist from Kranj arrived at the 7710-metre Jannu with only a physician who doubled as a cameraman, and no Sherpa support. He acclimatized on a nearby mountain and then headed up alone on a new route on the North Face. Twenty-three hours later he was on the summit, and he immediately descended the Northeast Ridge in howling winds. Perhaps it was his manner that made him so believable. When Elizabeth asked him how he felt about this achievement, he answered, “I am satisfied.” Messner was more effusive. “He climbed the only safe line. It is a beautiful line. This was the best climb of the season.” Česen professed to like climbing solo because it was quicker and there were fewer problems. And so this was reported, recorded and accepted as a significant achievement by a new star in the Himalaya. Time would tell.

In contrast to Česen's solo experience, a formidable Soviet assault was taking place on Kangchenjunga. Between April 9 and May 3, 27 Soviet climbers and one Nepali Sherpa made a total of 85 ascents of the four main summits of Kangchenjunga. Even more impressive were the simultaneous traverses by two parties in opposite directions over the long, exposed, summit ridges. This was the first-ever traverse of this mountain's ridges, and a logistical tour de force. It was a remarkable display of talent by the climbers, one of whom was Anatoli Boukreev.

That autumn, one of the brightest Himalayan climbing stars – Jerzy Kukuczka, the quiet, determined electrician from Katowice, Poland – fell. He arrived with the intention of achieving the first ascent of the vast, unclimbed South Face of Lhotse, and in fine style: lightweight and fast. He and his team had to compromise on style almost from the beginning, when bad snow conditions forced them into siege tactics. After six weeks, he was poised only 170 vertical metres from the summit. The weather had improved and he was perfectly acclimatized. Even the wind had died down. But Kukuczka slipped and fell, and then his belay rope broke. He fell nearly 3000 metres down the face to his death.

Some speculated about the poor quality of the rope used by some Eastern European climbers. Others wondered what a successful ascent would have done for his reputation, for it would have secured
him a record that even Messner didn't have: climbing all 14 of the 8000-metre peaks by either a new route or in winter. But Elizabeth only commented that it was a great loss of an intelligent, soft-spoken, patient, modest and well-liked man. It had not been a good decade for the Poles, as many of the best climbers had perished on ambitious and difficult routes. As Kukuczka's teammate noted after his death, “From the stock of best climbers, only a few are left in Poland.…”

Elizabeth had met Kukuczka many times, and he was always patient with her. She appreciated that. He was doing interesting things and had been close to overtaking Messner in that “horse race.” She also admired his patience on the mountain. On Manaslu he had waited for an entire month at the base of the mountain for the weather to clear and the avalanche danger to subside. Most expeditions complained about having bad weather for four days – they got trapped in a time-frame mindset that was rigid and unrealistic. They might have to go back to work, or they worried about their girlfriends or their families, or they just grew tired of waiting. In Elizabeth's opinion, they lacked motivation. She thought Kukuczka was different than most peak baggers. He had a stick-to-it attitude that she liked, something her mother had attributed to Elizabeth. Messner was much more communicative about why he did what he did, and it was more difficult to understand Kukuczka because of the language barrier, but Elizabeth felt she understood him instinctively.

The year that brought this tragedy to the climbing community ended with a bizarre event that even Elizabeth couldn't have predicted: a physical battle between two teams. It was probably inevitable, for the Nepalese authorities were granting more permits for the same mountain and even the same route. The incident happened on Cho Oyu, where Sherpas and members of a large South Korean team attacked members of a Belgian team with fists and sticks. The Koreans initially denied their part in the attack, but they admitted in the end that a Belgian did receive a head wound, that a rope was tied around his neck and that his arms were pinned behind his back. The Belgian team told Elizabeth that “mountain climbing should never turn into a battlefield.” Clearly, it had.

Elizabeth's mother, Florelle, celebrated her 90th birthday in the spring of 1984. The time had come for Elizabeth to address the issue
of where her mother would live out her last years. Florelle needed to leave her apartment in Palo Alto and was grasping for ideas on where to go. Elizabeth invited her to come to Kathmandu and stay with her, as it would be difficult for Elizabeth to return to the United States now and make a living. Florelle decided against this and instead moved back East to live next door to Elizabeth's cousin, Lee Kneerim.

But within four years her mother became too frail to live alone. She needed too much attention now. Florelle's choices were to either enter a nursing home or move in with Elizabeth. The prospect of this mentally alert and curious woman living in a nursing home was too unattractive for the family to contemplate, so Elizabeth's nephew, Michael, and his wife, Meg, brought 94-year-old Florelle to Kathmandu in 1988. It was hard for her American relatives to say goodbye when she left for Kathmandu, because they all knew she wouldn't return.