Sandy Hill (mountaineer)
Sandra Hill (born April 12, 1955, formerly Sandra Hill Pittman) is a socialite, mountaineer, author, and former fashion editor. She survived the 1996 Mount Everest disaster shortly after becoming the 34th woman to reach the Mount Everest summit and the second American woman to ascend all of the Seven Summits. Personal life Sandy Hill grew up in Los Gatos, California. Her father ran a successful business that rented portable toilets to construction sites. She graduated from UCLA before moving to New York for her first job, working as a buyer for the now defunct Bonwit Teller. After meeting an editor at Mademoiselle, she landed her second job as Merchandising Editor of the magazine, and, a few years later, she became Beauty Editor of Brides magazine. Hill then served until 1986 as president of a division of RJR Nabisco called "In Fashion" where she produced television 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. Hill has also been a contributing editor to Vogue and Condé Nast Traveler, and written feature articles for other publications. Hill was briefly married to Jerry Solomon, who worked in the sport business and was a graduate student of Columbia at the time; the couple were divorced by the time she was 23. Solomon later went on to marry figure skater Nancy Kerrigan. In July 1979, Hill married MTV co-founder and media executive Robert Pittman; who was a radio disc jockey and the Program Director of WNBC in New York when they met. They have one son, Robert T. "Bo" Pittman. The couple divorced in 1997, and Hill received a settlement of $20 million from Pittman. Hill met snowboarder Stephen Koch while climbing Mount Everest in April 1996, and they lived together in New York until 1997. In 1998, Hill attended the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York to study architectural preservation and restoration. She graduated in 2000. Hill married commodities trader Thomas Dittmer in April 2001, and they purchased a ranch and vineyard in the Santa Ynez Valley. Hill filed for divorce in 2008, and attempted unsuccessfully to legally invalidate the couple's prenuptial agreement. Mountaineering Hill began mountaineering as a teenager; her first summit at age 13 was Disappointment Peak in the Teton Range. In 1992 she began a quest to become the first American woman to scale the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each continent. She summitted Aconcagua (1992), Denali (1992), Vinson Massif (1993), Mount Elbrus (1993), Mount Kilimanjaro (1993), Mount Kosciuszko (1994), and Puncak Jaya (1995). Hill finally reached the Mount Everest summit in 1996, thus becoming the second American woman to scale the Seven Summits, following Mary "Dolly" Lefever. Hill had attempted Everest twice before her successful ascent in 1996. In 1993, she reached on a guided expedition following the traditional South Col route. On this expedition, she wore a cross necklace custom-made by jeweler Barry Kieselstein-Cord to bury