Keeper Of The Mountains by Bernadette McDonald Page B

trainee, earning $39.40 a week. Researchers were first assigned six months of training in “the morgue,” where thousands of files on people and issues were kept. Each file had original material – tear sheets, letters, photographs – supporting and informing that particular topic. It was her job to learn what was in those files, to regularly update them from newspaper clippings and other materials, and to access that information whenever the magazine needed it. It’s easy to recognize the similarity between the morgue system and Elizabeth’s future mountaineering archive.
    Unfortunately, there was a not-so-subtle hierarchy at Fortune at that time. Without exception, researchers were women and writers were men. Elizabeth saw no way to break that mould. In retrospect, she’s not sure she had the makings of a writer, and others agree with her. Former colleagues described her as “brilliant and literal,” but not terribly imaginative. Even as a lowly researcher, however, she found opportunities. Sometimes she travelled with a writer and took notes, and sometimes she travelled alone, doing research in the States as well as in Canada and Brazil. After the writer finished the piece, it would come back to her to be checked – every word required a dot above it to indicate it had been checked, rechecked and cross-checked. It was an arduous system that took considerable time and effort, but it appealed to her sense of order.
    She lived in an apartment at 220 Madison Avenue and her first office was in the Empire State Building, later moving to the Time & Life Building in Rockefeller Center. She started her day at about 10:00 or 11:00 a.m., worked until 2:00 a.m. and then walked home. The first thing she did each morning was read the New York Times .
    From her recent university studies in world politics, she had developed a curiosity about far-off places. That led to an interest in travel and, now that she was working and had a salary, she began to use her annual vacation and unpaid leave to do just that. Her salary was small and she lived frugally, eating a tomato sandwich with mayonnaise for lunch most days. But by living simply she saved enough to travel widely and in good style – usually alone.
    Elizabeth’s first trip abroad was to England in 1948 when, in October, she boarded the RMS Queen Mary for Southampton. Her first stop was London and all that it had to offer. She loved it: Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, London cabs, the architecture and the fog. Then it was north to Scotland and into the countryside of Wales andrural England. After all that she had studied and read and observed in movies, it astonished her how different and rich the experience was when seeing it for herself. “Britain is a fascinating place and I’m having the time of my life,” she wrote to her mother.
    After cramming in as much of Britain as possible, Elizabeth moved on to immerse herself in the great cities of Europe, including Paris, Rome and Florence. She walked and walked, mentally cataloguing the sounds and smells of the streets, inspecting museums, historical monuments, palaces, gardens and churches.
    But it had to end, and it was with reluctance that she sailed home. It had been an unforgettable experience, one she hoped to have again. Her appetite for travel had been whetted in a serious way – back in New York, where it was work and more work, she immediately began scrimping and saving for the next big trip.
    But a family tragedy awaited her. Having recovered from tuberculosis and completed his medical degree, John had begun practising as a physician and married Ann, whom he met while doing medical research. They had a child and named him Michael. But John’s health took another downturn when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. After a five-year battle with the disease, Elizabeth’s brilliant brother and only sibling died in 1955 at