Celebrated mountaineer Jim Whittaker, the first American to summit Mount Everest, has died. He was 97. Whittaker died Tuesday at his home in Port Townsend, Washington, according to a statement from his family. The 1963 ascent of Everest alongside Nawang Gombu came 10 years after the pioneering climb of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the AP reports. The feat made the once-shy, rangy climber—who later became the first full-time employee of outdoor retailer REI and its president and CEO—an instant celebrity, in demand for public appearances and expected to lend his support to good causes.
And it gained him entree into the world of celebrities, including the inner circle of the Kennedy clan. Whittaker became a close friend of Robert Kennedy, with whom he climbed a 14,000-foot Canadian peak that was later named Mount Kennedy after the senator's assassination in 1968. Whittaker, who had been state chairman for Kennedy's campaign, was at Kennedy's bedside when he died. The mountaineer grew up in Seattle and began climbing with his twin brother Lou in the 1940s with the Boy Scouts. At 16, they summited 7,965-foot Mount Olympus, the highest peak in the Olympic Mountains west of Seattle, Jim Whittaker recounted in his memoir, A Life on the Edge. When they reached the town of Port Angeles on their way home, they found cars honking and people celebrating: World War II had ended.
His achievements on the remote, snowy slopes of Mount Everest and nearby K2, the world's second-tallest peak, assured him a niche in the record books. When Jim got tired of attending parades or other events in his honor, his twin filled in. "Only our families and closest friends ever knew the difference," Lou Whittaker wrote. Jim Whittaker led many additional climbs, including the 1990 Mount Everest International Peace Climb, which brought together climbers from the US, the Soviet Union, and China "to demonstrate what could be accomplished through cooperation and goodwill," his family said in a statement.
Whittaker scaled Mount Rainier more than 100 times but did not take its familiar flanks for granted. The caprices of the weather, even on a comparatively modest mountain, "can turn a good climber into a beginner" in a matter of hours, he once noted. Former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee called Whittaker's legacy "just as impressive, and just as lasting, as Mount Rainier itself." Whittaker once reflected that the beauty and danger of his sport sharpened the senses, saying, "When you live on the edge, you can see a little farther."
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
