Jim Whittaker, first American climber to scale Mt. Everest, dies at 97

Jim Whittaker spent 20 minutes of his life on top of the world.

he was First American to summit Mount EverestOn May 1, 1963, he and Sherpa Nawang Gombu reached the highest point in the world.

“We were standing in the jet stream, on the edge of space,” Whittaker wrote in his 1999 memoir “A Life on the Edge.”

He returned home a hero, with a picture on the cover of Life magazine, a banquet at the White House, and unexpected fame. And although life off the mountain wasn’t always smooth sailing, he disdained regret.

“If you stick your neck out by climbing mountains or speaking up for something you believe in, you have at least a fifty-fifty chance of winning,” he wrote. “On the other hand, if you never stretch your neck, your probability of losing is pretty close to 100%.”

Whittaker, an adventurer to the end, died Tuesday at his home in Port Townsend, Washington, his son Leif confirmed. New York Times. Whittaker was 97 years old.

He was 34 when he climbed Everest, a feat that shaped the rest of his life. The Washington state license plate read 29028; this was the generally accepted height of Everest when climbing. (GPS surveys later revealed this to be approximately 29,035 feet.)

He was chosen by the expedition’s leader, Swiss climber Norman Dyhrenfurth, because of his experience climbing in icy conditions, including multiple summits of Mount Rainier near his home in the Seattle area.

However, Everest, which was first climbed in 1953 by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, was a much more challenging and dangerous beast. And even if the Dyhrenfurth expedition was successful, only a select few of the 19 team members would reach the summit. Still, Whittaker thought his chances were good.

“I worked so hard, I put 60 pounds of bricks in my backpack,” he told National Geographic Adventure magazine in 2003. “I swam in Lake Sammamish in the winter to survive the cold we would encounter.

“I didn’t know anyone who was better off.”

On only the group’s second day of climbing from base camp, tragedy struck when a giant section of the icefall (a glacier formation resembling a frozen waterfall) slid and crushed team member Jake Breitenbach.

“I told everyone at home that Everest wasn’t a technically difficult climb; the only problem was the lack of oxygen and air,” Whittaker wrote in “Life on the Edge.” “Now he had killed one of us and we had only just begun.”

Since the only way to get back to base camp was through this icefall, Whittaker chose to remain on the mountain for five regular weeks while more camps were established on Everest. He lost 25 pounds and a significant amount of strength due to the thin air.

Still, he was in better shape than most of the other climbers, and Dyhrenfurth chose him for the final assault. He and Gombu left the last camp in the middle of a storm, with insufficient oxygen.

How difficult was it to breathe? “Put a pillow over your face, run around the block and try to get oxygen into that pillow,” he said. The weather was so cold that one of his eyeballs froze and became unusable.

They reached the summit a few hours later and stayed only long enough to take photos and raise flags as winds of up to 50 miles per hour blew around them.

“When you’re there, you’re not ecstatic, you’re not afraid,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2013. “You’re really nothing. But in the back of your mind, you know one thing: You have to go down. Half the climb is going up, the other half is going down.”

James Whittaker was born in Seattle on February 10, 1929, about 10 minutes before the birth of his twin brother, Louie. As the boys grew older, they moved to rough housing around the house, much to their mother’s chagrin.

“I believe the command to ‘go outside and play’ is what started Louie and I on the path we have been on ever since,” Whittaker wrote.

He was active in the Boy Scouts and, as a teenager, joined a mountaineering club that sponsored climbs at the nearby Olympic and Cascade courses. He tested himself on higher and higher peaks and enjoyed moments like breaking through layers of clouds.

“I think nature is a great teacher,” he told the Seattle Times in 2013. “Being in nature like this is a good way to discover who you are.”

After graduating from West Seattle High School, Whittaker attended Seattle University and graduated in 1952. He was immediately drafted into the military, but his mountaineering experience led him to be assigned to the Mountain and Cold Weather Training Command in Colorado rather than combat duty in Korea.

In 1955, he became the first full-time employee of the Amusement Equipment Cooperative (later known as REI), located in a 20-by-30-foot space above a restaurant in Seattle. In its first year, it expanded the co-op’s offerings to include ski equipment and increased sales by introducing new concepts, such as opening on Saturday mornings so customers could pick up equipment for weekend trips.

In the photo taken in Seattle on April 12, 1975, Whittaker shows off some of the equipment he will take with him on an expedition to climb K2 on the China-Pakistan border.

(Associated Press)

Because of his affiliation with the cooperative, he was appointed equipment coordinator for the Everest climb, and REI agreed to keep him on the payroll during the expedition.

In July 1963, he and other members of the Everest team, including Gombu, were presented with the Hubbard Medal of the National Geographic Society—which had partially sponsored the expedition—by President Kennedy, four months before the president was assassinated.

Two years later, Whittaker led a climbing party with Senator Robert F. Kennedy on an ascent of Mount Kennedy, a nearly 14,000-foot Canadian peak named for JFK. The two men formed a close friendship that extended to the wider Kennedy clan. In the following years, Whittaker went on ski vacations with the Kennedys, lodged at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and hosted gatherings in Seattle that included mountain climbing.

Whittaker organized Robert Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign efforts in the Pacific Northwest and spoke to the candidate by phone just minutes before he was fatally shot in Los Angeles. Whittaker boarded a plane to Los Angeles and was at the senator’s hospital bedside when he died, and later served as a pallbearer at the funeral.

In mountaineering, Whittaker was closely involved in more high-profile ventures. In 1975 he led an expedition that climbed K2, the world’s second highest mountain, but failed to reach the summit. His return trip in 1978 was successful, but he chose not to go to the summit himself.

That same year, he decided to leave REI, partly due to friction with the co-op’s board of directors. He had been president and chief executive officer since 1971, and when he left the co-op was a $46 million business with more than 700 employees.

Whittaker throws out the ceremonial first pitch before a baseball game between the Mariners and Angels in 2013.

(Elaine Thompson / Associated Press)

Income from an endorsement deal helped him stay financially solid, but an investment in a new outdoor gear company turned out to be a disaster. The financial irregularities of a partner convicted of felony bank fraud doomed the venture, leaving Whittaker holding the financial bag.

He was nearly destroyed, but his finances rebounded in 1986 when a venture capitalist asked him to become chairman of the board of a new company called Magellan, with stock options. GPS is a pioneer in the field of consumer electronics and holds numerous patents in this field.

Appropriately, in the middle of his book, Whittaker titled one of the chapters “Roller Coaster.” But he finished it off with ‘Life Was Well Lived’.

“Unless you live on the edge,” he wrote, “you take up too much ground.”

Whittaker is survived by his wife Dianne Roberts and their children Bobby, Joss and Leif.

Colker is a former Times staff writer.