| Sandy Hill | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 12, 1955 Los Gatos, California, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Former New York fashion editor, Mountaineer and Published Author |
| Known for | 1996 Everest disaster, second American woman to ascend the seven summits of the world |
| Spouse | Jerry Solomon (1977-1978), Robert W. Pittman (1979-1997), Thomas Dittmer (1998-current) |
Sandy Hill (born April 12, 1955,[1] formerly Sandy Hill Pittman) is a mountaineer who was the fourth American woman to ascend the Seven Summits.[2][3] as well as an author and former New York fashion editor and contributing editor to Vogue, Allure and Conde Nast Traveler. She is the 34th woman to ever climb and reach the summit of Mt. Everest.[4]
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Sandy Hill grew up in Los Gatos, California.[5] Her father ran a successful business that rented mobile facilities to construction sites.[5] She graduated from UCLA[2] before moving to New York for her first job, working for the now defunct Bonwit Teller.[5] After meeting an editor at Mademoiselle, she landed her second job as Merchandising Editor of the magazine.[5][2] In addition, Hill was a television producer, and ran a division of RJR Nabisco called In Fashion where she produced shows about fashion and style. One of those shows was Fashion America, which was the first TV program to feature fashion commentary, videos and runway footage.
In 1997, Hill attended the Graduate School for Architecture and Planning at Columbia University in New York. She graduated in 1999.
Hill was briefly married to Jerry Solomon, who works in the sport business and was a graduate student of Columbia at the time; the couple were divorced by the time she was 23.[5] In July 1979, Hill married MTV co-founder Robert W. Pittman;[2] the couple divorced in 1997.[6] They have one son.[6]
Hill was later married to former futures trader Thomas Dittmer. The couple are currently separated.[3]
Hill was one of the survivors of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.[7][6][8] As part of the Mountain Madness expedition headed by Scott Fischer, during what was her third attempt to climb Mount Everest, she made an agreement with NBC Interactive Media, which streamed the information to schoolchildren in the United States, to do a daily video blog and talk about her team's journey.[9][10] Hill's team was moving through the Southeast Ridge when the storm hit them, making it impossible for her and her teammates, including Tim Madsen and Charlotte Fox, to find their camp base. The three climbers were rescued by Anatoli Boukreev.[10]
Much controversy around the 1996 climb to the top was published in numerous magazines, through interviews with other survivors and even books, including Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air,[7][2][3] which has generated considerable criticism, both from the climb's participants and from renowned mountaineers such as Galen Rowell, who cited numerous inconsistencies in his narrative while observing that Krakauer was sleeping in his tent while Boukreev was rescuing other climbers.[11] Hill rebutted all negative claims in various media outlets, including an interview with Newsweek where she stated, "We behaved like a team at all times,"[12] and because she was the most visible person in the expedition, she believed she was "pigeonholed as a rich New Yorker" and that "painted such an easy picture of a villain right there."[13][14]
"We're all very quick to form opinions and assign blame, sometimes too quick." -- David Breashears
In a 2006 interview with Outside, Hill defended Boukreev's decisions on Everest and attacked the media and various authors and journalists who covered the disaster in a defamatory light saying that "most of what was reported in 1996 was prejudiced, sensationalist, and overblown—thrilling fiction at best—but not journalism."[15] Boukreev was given an award for heroism by the Alpine Club and defended by Hill in his 1997 book, The Climb: Tragic Ambitions on Everest, which was at least partly a response to Krakauer's account in which he had laid some of the blame for the disaster on Boukreev, Hill and a few others. Martin Adams, a retired Wall Street bond trader and survivor of the 1996 disaster, implied in an interview that Krakauer had every reason to vilify Boukreev. "Krakauer couldn't acknowledge Anatoli as the hero of this story because if Anatoli is the hero, who's going to get the book contract? Anatoli, not Jon."[16]
"To thumb through the pages of Fandango is to enter an idyll, and to imagine a better, tastier and more beautiful life than the one we’ve been living." -- Jay McInerney, author of Bright Lights, Big City
In the August issue of Vogue that same year, Hill wrote about the whole experience and went into detail about her long history as a climber and her passion for mountain climbing that developed since a young age.[5] She talked about the difficulties she experienced during her climbs of the Seven Summits and about the real dangers she experienced during her final climb of Everest.[5]
The 1997 TV movie Into Thin Air: Death on Everest, based on Krakauer's book, stars Peter Horton, Nathaniel Parker and Richard Jenkins, with Pamela Gien playing the role of Sandy Hill.[17]
If Santa Barbara County wine country ever needed a poster girl, it could do no better than Hill.
Hill was interviewed in the 2008 documentary film Storm Over Everest by David Breashears, which was aired on the PBS program Frontline on May 13, 2008.[13][14]
Hill is the main author of the 2007 book Fandango: Recipes, Parties, and License to Make Magic. The book talks about Sandy Hill's lifestyle and includes various party recipes that were co-authored by Stephanie Valentine and advice on how to decorate and host, using 18 parties that Hill designed and hosted as examples.[18] The book received praise from The New York Times and other authors.
Hill released her second book, Mountain: Portraits of High Places, in October 2011. The book is a compilation of photographs and art with rarely seen images from prominent nature photographers, including Galen Rowell, Peter Beard, Ansel Adams, and Frank Smythe.[19]