Seattle (AP) — Jim Whittaker, who in 1963 grew to become the first American to attain the highest of Mount Everest, has died. He was 97.
Whittaker’s 1963 ascent to the summit of Mount Everest got here 10 years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first scaled the height.
Whittaker died Tuesday at his residence in Port Townsend, Washington, in accordance to an announcement from his household.
His Mount Everest feat made the once-shy, rangy climber an instantaneous celeb, in demand for public appearances and anticipated to lend his assist to good causes.
And it gained him entree into the world of celebrities, together with the internal circles of the Kennedy clan. He grew to become an in depth good friend of Robert Kennedy, with whom he climbed a 14,000-foot (4,267 meters) Canadian peak named Mount Kennedy after the 1968 presidential contender’s assassination.
Whittaker, who had been state chairman for Kennedy’s marketing campaign, was devastated by his loss of life.
Bobby Kennedy was “one of the grittiest little guys you’ve ever seen,” the 6-foot-5 Whittaker as soon as remarked. “It’s not how big you are but how tight you are wound that counts.”
Whittaker’s profession on the mountain slopes started when he took on the Washington’s Olympic Mountains as a Boy Scout, and he as soon as mirrored that the sweetness and hazard of his sport sharpened the senses.
“You’re in nature, participating in God’s creation … it’s such a high, such a spiritual thing,” Whittaker mentioned in a 1981 interview.
“I think it’s good to participate in that and to face life,” he added. “When you live on the edge, you can see a little farther.”
The dangers are a part of the sport.
“The mountains are fair, but they really don’t care,” Whitaker famous in 1987.
His achievements on the distant, snowy slopes of Mount Everest and close by K2, the world’s second-tallest peak, assured him a distinct segment within the document books. He shared world-class climber standing along with his equivalent twin, Lou, who led the first American expedition to scale Mount Everest’s north face.
Lou Whittaker died in 2024 at age 95.
But Jim Whittaker himself mentioned one among his proudest moments got here in 1981, when he led 10 handicapped climbers up 14,410-foot Mount Rainier. For them, he mentioned later, “that was Mount Everest.”
Whittaker scaled Mount Rainier greater than 100 occasions however didn’t take its acquainted flanks as a right. The caprices of the climate, even on a relatively modest mountain, “can turn a good climber into a beginner” in a matter of hours, he as soon as famous.
And after years of threat on the world’s most dizzying pinnacles, Whittaker mentioned in a 1980 interview that he hoped to “die in my sleep with the television on.”
In current years, Whittaker was one among many climbers who resisted the concept of requiring climbers to put on digital locators in some circumstances. Such a proposal was made for climbers on Oregon’s Mount Hood, the place greater than 35 climbers had died because the early Eighties.
Whittaker informed The Associated Press in 2007 that it was advantageous for particular person climbers to put on the units, however imposing the requirement would take loads away from the mystique of climbing.
“If you take all of the risk out of life, you lose a lot. You’re removing a personal liberty from somebody who wants to go and explore without having a safety net,” Whittaker mentioned by cellphone from Idaho, the place he was on a climbing journey. “You want to go into the wild and enjoy nature and not be followed.”
Correction:
A earlier model of this story misspelled Sir Edmund Hillary’s final title.