Elizabeth Hawley

Elizabeth Hawley (9 November 1923 – 26 January 2018) was an American journalist, author, and chronicler of Himalayan mountaineering expeditions. Hawley's The Himalayan Database became the unofficial record for climbs in the Nepalese Himalaya. She was also the honorary consul in Nepal for New Zealand. She covered the 1963 American Everest expedition that traversed Mount Everest. Her article on the death of the Nepalese prime minister made the front page of The New York Times. Sir Edmund Hillary, one of her closest friends (she was an executive officer for Hillary's Himalayan Trust), once called her "a bit of a terror".

Hawley's detailed mountaineering records are summarized in The Himalayan Database, and have been used both as a record of successful ascents, and also of establishing success rates and fatality rates, for climbers in the Nepal Himalaya. Having a Himalayan ascent logged on Hawley's database became an essential requirement for mountaineers, which has led to many disputes, including: In 2010, Hawley was called on to assess whether Korean climber Oh Eun-sun had become the first woman to complete all 14 eight-thousanders; she found that her claim was unlikely, based on the terrain of her summit photograph on Kangchenjunga. Oh would later concede to not having reached the true summit, and Spaniard Edurne Pasaban became the first woman to achieve the feat. Hawley also saw Alan Hinkes's claim to be the first Briton to complete all 14 eight-thousanders removed from the record books by placing a "disputed" mark over his 1990 ascent of Cho Oyu.

American climber Ed Viesturs re-climbed the true main summit of Shishapangma in his quest to climb all 14 eight-thousanders; Hawley's Himalayan Database would not accept ascents of Shishapangma's central (west) summit as full ascents of the mountain.

Awards and honours In 2008, French ice climber François Damilano named a peak in Nepal after Hawley, having made the solo first ascent of the 6,182 meter peak in the Dhaulagiri Group on 9 May 2008. In 2014, the Nepalese State officially confirmed the naming of Peak Hawley.

She was the honorary consul in Nepal for New Zealand for 20 years until her retirement in 2010, for which she received the Queen's Service Medal in 2004.