The mountain chronicler

Once averse to the mountains, Billi Bierling now dedicates her life to recording Nepal’s climbing history. Through the Himalayan Database, she captures the evolving face of mountaineering.

Billi Bierling was not a sporty child, even though her father was a runner. “Once, my dad offered me money to jog around a lake close to our house—an 8-kilometer run. I told him he was crazy. I would never do this.” Nor did Bierling like to hike the mountains surrounding the family's home in the German town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. “I considered them a nuisance as they were limiting my horizon.” In the end, a British man and an American woman brought a change in her heart. They set her on the path to be the face and soul of the Himalayan Database, which has recorded all important ascents in the Nepal Himalayas since 1963.