Published: 09:08 AM, 01 June 2026
Legacy of Himalaya's 'Sherlock Holmes' lives on in digital
In a crowded Kathmandu restaurant far from Nepal's famed icy peaks, Billi Bierling questions climbers about their ascents, preserving each triumph in the Himalayan Database, mountaineering's revered 60-year-old register of success.
German climber Bierling, 58, inherited the stewardship of the archive from her mentor, the late Elizabeth Hawley, an American journalist who began the post-expedition interviews in Nepal while covering an American Everest expedition in 1963.
"It was her fascination," Bierling told AFP, after interviewing a Russian and a Ukrainian climber about their ascent of Manaslu, the world's eighth-highest mountain.
"She never climbed," Bierling said. "She never even went to a base camp -- but the people interested her."
Hawley's 50 years of chronicling climbs in the Himalayas earned her the moniker "the Sherlock Holmes of the mountaineering world" from Edmund Hillary, who with Tenzing Norgay made the first summit of Everest.
By the time she passed away in 2018, she had built a reputation as one of the most authoritative voices on Himalayan mountaineering.
The database she began had become the definitive record of Himalayan expeditions -- used by climbers, historians and researchers alike.
"She was very, very keen on her data, on her information," said Bierling, who first met Hawley in 2001 -- when she was in Nepal to climb the 7,129-metre (23,390-foot) Baruntse -- and began assisting her in 2004.
She described how Hawley would give the same grilling to all -- whether a climbing legend or an unknown.
"It didn't matter whether you were Reinhold Messner or you were Ueli Steck," she said, referring to the Italian great who made the first solo ascent of Everest, as well as the late Swiss speed climber.
"Or if you were Billi Bierling, a nobody," she said with a smile.
Bierling is now part of the team that continues her work, updating the vast database year after year.
At a time when each year more climbers are attempting the world's highest peaks than ever before, the task of recording the ascents is even more important.
