The 'Sherlock Holmes' of Himalayan mountaineering

When a deadly avalanche hit Mount Everest last April, reporters made a beeline for 90-year-old Elizabeth Hawley, the woman Edmund Hillary once called "the Sherlock Holmes of the mountaineering world".
The ice avalanche struck a group of Nepalese guides early on April 18. By 1 pm, nine people had been killed and the toll would eventually rise to 16, making it the worst disaster in the mountain's history.
More than 50 years after the Kathmandu-based mountaineering expert began chronicling the triumphs and tragedies on the roof of the world, recording deaths remains a struggle.
"It's the hardest part...It's just very sad", Hawley said, as she recalled a busy day spent fielding calls from journalists and going through drawers containing her life's work -- folders filled with thousands of pages charting every significant Himalayan ascent.

The April 18 avalanche spurred a debate over the risks undertaken by sherpas on behalf of foreign clients and eventually led to a virtual shutdown of Everest, with hundreds of guides reluctant to climb this season.
Hawley, who has spent decades working with the Himalayan Trust, a sherpa-focused aid organisation set up by Edmund Hillary in 1960, said the deaths of so many guides was "tremendously demoralising" for the community.

But she said the shutdown was unlikely to have a permanent impact on Nepal's mountaineering industry.
Hawley was born on November 9, 1923 and she attended university in Michigan and promptly moved to Manhattan after graduation in 1946, landing a job as a researcher with Fortune magazine.

Soon, she was bitten by the travel bug.
Her travels took her through France, Germany, the former Yugoslavia, and eventually to India, where the Time bureau chief asked if she would report for the magazine while visiting Nepal.
By then, she was running out of money and the offer was too tempting to refuse. She arrived in Kathmandu in February 1959, just in time for the country's first general elections.
"I knew then that this place was going to change enormously and that intrigued me," she said.
She landed her first major scoop during the 1963 US expedition of Everest when the American military attache offered her access to secret radio communication between Everest base camp and the embassy, enabling her to be the first to file when they reached the summit.