Keeper Of The Mountains (3 page)

Before we settled into a serious interview session of our own, Elizabeth showed me around her home, pointing out items of interest. Her office is filled with mementos, photos, mountaineering books, and two paintings by Khumbu Sherpas. Most of the furniture is made of wood and simply built. A small sofa and two upholstered chairs appear a little worn. Fully one-third of the room is taken up with a large desk, a smaller table, upright wooden chairs and the usual office equipment. This room, functioning as both her office and living room, is all hard surfaces – there is not much soft about it and it feels a little severe.

Old-fashioned wooden cabinets stuffed with mountaineering files stand against the office walls. Every climb Elizabeth has covered is documented in a file organized by year, mountain and route. Each file has an arrival form, bio forms for each expedition member, a return form, letters, photos and route drawings. On an interesting or unusual climb, she makes notes regarding exact locations of camps, landmarks, distances, times between camps, oxygen information and anything of interest. If any letters or photos are supplied to her, she attaches them to the file. In some cases, she asks the expedition leader for a detailed, blow-by-blow, day-by-day account of the climb. There are thousands of such folders. The history of Himalayan climbing in Nepal is contained within these files. Upon closer examination, I realize that all of the bookcases and file cabinets are firmly attached to the wall, the
computer is chained to the wall and the fax machine is chained to the table on which it sits. “Earthquakes,” she explains. “They're not uncommon here. We're due to have a major one any minute now,” she adds with a grin.

Adjoining the office is a dining room, lovely in its simplicity. A wooden table with ample seating space for six occupies the centre of the room. On it lies a small notepad. A china cabinet holds her dishes – and that's it, very simple. Tall French windows open onto a shallow balcony. I imagine Elizabeth holding court at the head of the table as famous mountaineers and adventurers regale her with their stories. This is the kind of dining room meant for interesting people, languid lunches, stimulating conversation and laughter.

A hallway leads to a curious little bathroom – nooks and crannies peek out from the walls, each with a specific purpose. A large nook housed a water heater in days gone by; another is an alcove for towels; on a small shelf rests another notepad. The toilet features an old-fashioned, elevated, water tank dangling a long slender chain for flushing. The tub looks barely big enough for a leisurely soak, but luckily Elizabeth is a small woman.

In her bedroom, nothing is king-sized, queen-sized or even double-sized. The wardrobes are conservative, the dresser is small and the proportions of her canopy bed are elegant but diminutive. Draped with mosquito netting in the warm months, the narrow mattress looks functional but hardly comfy. Another notepad is handy on a small bedside table.

Passing from room to room, I notice that all the walls are similar shades of ivory, though Elizabeth points out slight differences in hue, each selected by her. It's a sensory shock, then, to walk into a screamingly bright, mustard-yellow kitchen. Did she choose this colour, too? “Oh, Lord, no,” she scoffs, “my cook chose this colour. He's the one who spends all his time in the kitchen. I certainly never do.” It's a tiny room, but looks well organized and efficient.

Four massive truck batteries sit on her balcony, standing by, ready to power various pieces of equipment when the power goes off, which it frequently does. In addition, she has rechargeable battery-operated lamps close at hand to navigate the rooms not connected to the truck batteries. The wiring in her apartment is an eclectic mix of two-pronged plug-ins, narrow three-pronged plug-ins, fat three-pronged
plug-ins and plug-ins for both narrow and fat prongs, a representative collection that tells the history of the evolution of electricity in Kathmandu.

Finally, I ask about the notepads. A distinct twinkle in her eye suggests she's been waiting for that question. She explains she never knows when she might think of something, and she detests the thought of losing an idea, or a detail, or a to-do item. “I'm full of systems,” she offers. “When you went into the bathroom, everything was neat and tidy, and that wasn't just for your benefit, you know.” We return to the bathroom so she can explain her bath towel system: “When I get out of the bathtub, I take my towel and divide it into quadrants. Each quadrant is carefully used for a portion of the body, ensuring that, at no point, will I be drying myself with a wet towel.” As a postscript, she points to the notepad within easy reach of the bathtub.

Although her mind is robust and agile and she is clearly having fun at my expense, Elizabeth appears fragile and thin. She wears a light, cotton, short-sleeved, pastel, patterned frock. Her hair is neatly done up and those reading glasses still rest on her nose. Her legs are slender, bare and tan. At about 1.6 metres, she isn't as tall as I expected, but she may have been taller at one time. Her eyes are dark brown, large and clear. It appears she's wearing eye makeup, as well as a bright shade of lipstick.

The tour ends and, back in her office, the phone rings frequently. Her response varies – sometimes she's smooth as silk, other times she's impatient to the point of rudeness. Her voice can be rather sharp, a marked contrast to the conversational tone I've enjoyed so far. Occasionally, someone from the Himalayan Trust or one of her staff comes in; she speaks sharply to each one. The only exception is her driver, a handsome young man named Suben, who confers with her about a metal part somewhere in the depths of her car's motor. It is not working and he is attempting to get it fixed. He seems to know what he's doing, so she agrees he should keep doing it and gives him money to pay for whatever he needs. Maybe it's due to her lack of expertise in auto mechanics, but he's the only one who escapes reproach this afternoon.

A painting she cherishes has fallen off the wall and leans against a file cabinet. She explains that it was hung probably 40 years ago on a string that finally rotted. A staff member and a carpenter arrive to
make it right, and she barks out orders, which are followed by considerable banging and scraping. Soon the painting is hanging again, but at a sharp tilt. She fumes that the only way to get anything done right is to do it herself.

She describes a typical Hawley day, which starts with an early breakfast and a thorough read of the two local daily papers. Meetings begin at 8:00 a.m., when Ang Rita from the Himalayan Trust comes upstairs to discuss funds he needs for a school or hospital project he's working on. Elizabeth doles out money from the trust account and confirms what needs to be done.

Next, she calls climbing expedition leaders and makes appointments for interviews. She prefers to go to their hotels because they can't easily find her (I'm relieved to learn I'm not the only one who gets lost). She does one or two interviews in the morning, with her driver delivering her from hotel to hotel. The locations vary from elegant, expensive hotels to mean hostels, depending on the expedition.

Back home, she eats an early lunch in the dining room, noting, “It takes me two minutes to get from my desk to my lunch.” She has an excellent cook who prepares a light meal, such as a soufflé or shrimp with rice. Then it's time to take the information she gleaned from the expedition interviews and type it up in the afternoon, into the evening if necessary. During the afternoon, she calls trekking agencies and hotels: Is the expedition coming tomorrow? Have they checked in yet? Have they changed their plans? She knows when the daily Thai Airways flight arrives, so shortly after touchdown she's on the phone calling expedition leaders at their hotels to arrange meetings for the following day.

Dinner is at 5:30 p.m. Evenings are a good time to phone people she wasn't able to catch during the day, as well as for more writing. Although her work is computerized, she prefers to do some things manually. She keeps lists of trekking agents, hotels and expeditions, which are organized by mountain, leader's name, hotel name and expected arrival and departure dates. To best organize her time, she creates a document that lists the chronological order of the expeditions' arrival dates. Several times a week, she revises this five-page schedule because plans change constantly. But she resists doing it electronically “because it would take a lot longer.” She describes the task as “a great evening's entertainment.”

W
hen Elizabeth stops working, at around 9:00 or 10:00 p.m., she reads the
International Herald Tribune
, a daily ritual begun in her early days of travel, as well as an Indian daily paper. To relax, she does the
Tribune
's crossword puzzle followed by perhaps an hour of solitaire on her computer. Then it's time to shut down the computer and place her backup files in a locked tin trunk beside her bed – in case of an earthquake she can escape with it out the back stairwell. Finally, it's time to choose her clothes for the next day and then retire. Sixteen-hour days are normal.

But there are a few diversions; for example, Thursday morning is her weekly hairdresser's appointment. In addition to getting her hair done, she catches up on local gossip, and since she uses the same hairdresser as the queen of Nepal, there's always something interesting going on. “It's pretty good entertainment for a Thursday morning,” she says. On Saturdays, the telephone rings less often and there are fewer interruptions. Weekends are her time for writing end-of-month reports for the adventure travel company Tiger Tops, working on the seasonal mountaineering report and tidying up any leftover accounting for the Himalayan Trust.

The Tiger Tops report is a kind of “state of Nepal” analysis that includes political, economic and tourism news which she writes for the company's executive director. In preparation, she clips anything of interest from the daily papers and saves it for the weekend writing exercise. She claims to actually hate writing, but she loves the research.

She tells me there is virtually no day that she doesn't work, even at age 80. On reflection, she concedes that every once in a great while there comes a day – usually a Saturday, maybe near the end of July – when she doesn't have anything pressing to do. On that glorious day, she luxuriates in an all-day read of a murder mystery. She hasn't indulged herself for a few years now, she admits, but remembers a day such as that some time ago, and it was wonderful. She prefers murder mysteries because they are full of problems and puzzles, and she loves problem solving.

Elizabeth's excursions out of the apartment are all business. She never shops for food. “Me? Shop?” Her recurring theme is “the staff does what they can do, and what they cannot do, I do.” Shopping for food is something they can do. She doesn't even tell the cook what she wants to eat; he knows what she wants and he finds it.

S
he spends most of her time conducting mountaineering inter­views. They form the core of the mountaineering reports she provides for a number of journals and mountaineering magazines around the world: the
American Alpine Journal
in the United States,
Desnivel
in Spain and
Klettern
in Germany, among others. She doesn't press for a lot of detail from those who climb the most frequented routes, but she does expect detailed accounts from those doing anything out of the ordinary. She asks them exactly where their camps were – in a crevasse, beside a rock outcropping or on a ledge? From those facts, she builds her information base.

Her forms have evolved little over the years. “What is your email address?” was introduced after a request from Christian Beckwith when he was editor of the
American Alpine Journal.
She used to ask for “nationality,” but changed it to “citizen of” because of the complex nationality issues that emerged as large states broke into smaller nations. Anatoli Boukreev was a prime example. On the form, he said he was Russian. She pointed out that he was travelling on a Kazakhstani passport. “But I am Russian!” he insisted. In fact, his father and mother were ethnic Russians, but he lived in Kazakhstan. Just as a Sherpa would sign on as Sherpa rather than Nepali, Boukreev's nationality under the Soviet system was Russian because of his parents. She also got “Jewish” as a nationality because the old Soviet system identity papers classified people as Jewish, not Soviet. Someone once wrote “gypsy” in answer to the nationality question.

Many have questioned her need for all this detail on the biographical forms, and some have been irritated by her insistence that everything be filled out. What does she need this for? She explains that one of her jobs as a reporter is to write obituaries for the climbers who don't come back.

American climber Dave Hahn, who has done 20 expeditions to 8000-metre peaks, sees Elizabeth before and after every trip. He chuckles at her unwillingness to change her form to accommodate the changing times. She still has a box to check for “living with girlfriend,” but none has yet emerged for “living with boyfriend.” She doesn't see the need to change, although she agrees that the combinations are endless – she once received a form filled out by a female climber who checked off “living with girlfriend.” Assuming it was an error, Elizabeth corrected it while the climbers were on the mountain,
but when they returned, the woman laughed as she pointed out that “living with girlfriend” was the correct answer.

Elizabeth covers all of the expeditions that climb inside Nepal or on the other side of the border mountains. As she explains, “You can't do just half of Everest.” The interviewing work takes about three and a half months each year, with three main climbing seasons: spring, fall and winter. The spring season is the busiest, with its warmer weather, but it also presents the constant threat of the onset of the monsoons. During the climbing seasons, Elizabeth spends “half my waking hours” doing interviews and recording the results.