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.
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.
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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.
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.