Elizabeth Hawley

Who is Elizabeth Hawley?

Elizabeth Hawley is an American former journalist and chronicler of Himalayan expeditions. She traveled to Nepal in September 1960 and never left.

She was educated at the University of Michigan. She moved to Nepal after giving up her job as a researcher for Fortune magazine in New York and visiting Kathmandu on a round-the-world trip. Working briefly as a reporter, Hawley went back to San Francisco, returning to Nepal a few years later as journalist for Time.

She found work with the Reuters news agency covering mountaineering news, including the 1963 American expedition that was the first from the United States to traverse Mount Everest.

While she has never climbed a mountain herself, Hawley has been the best-known chronicler of Himalayan expeditions for over four decades. She is respected by the international mountaineering community because of her complete and accurate records, despite their unofficial status. Her records are summarized in a database used in several analyses of success and death rates for climbers in the Nepal Himalaya.

French ice climber François Damilano named a peak in Nepal after Elizabeth Hawley.