Jim Whittaker, First American to Summit Everest, Dies at 97

Jim Whittaker, the first American to stand atop Mount Everest, died Tuesday at his home in Port Townsend, Washington. He was 97. His family did not disclose the cause of death.

Born February 10, 1929, in West Seattle's Arbor Heights neighborhood, Whittaker summited Everest on May 1, 1963, at age 34 alongside Sherpa Nawang Gombu, a nephew of Tenzing Norgay. The pair left Camp 6 at 27,300 feet at 6 a.m. into howling winds and temperatures of 35 degrees below zero. Expedition leader Norman Dyhrenfurth turned back by 7 a.m., but Whittaker and Gombu pressed on, running out of oxygen before reaching the summit at approximately 1 p.m. Their ascent fell exactly 10 years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay completed the first-ever Everest summit in 1953.

The climb reordered American outdoor culture. Whittaker had joined REI as its first full-time employee on July 25, 1955, hired by co-founder Lloyd Anderson, and used that expertise to personally select, arrange, and ship the gear for the four-month 1963 expedition, securing sponsorships from Seattle-based Eddie Bauer and Rainier Beer. REI's gross income topped $1 million for the first time in 1964. He eventually became the co-op's president and CEO, helping transform what had been a small Seattle climbing club supplier into the country's leading outdoor retailer, retiring after 25 years with the company.

Whittaker's summit also drew him into the Kennedy family's orbit. A month after returning from Nepal, the American Mount Everest Expedition met President John F. Kennedy at the White House, where Whittaker received the National Geographic Society's Hubbard Medal on July 8, 1963. In 1965, he guided Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on the first ascent of Mount Kennedy, a 14,000-foot peak in the Canadian Yukon named for the slain president; RFK placed a black flag on top in his brother's memory. By 1968, Whittaker was Kennedy's Washington state campaign chairman and was among those close to the family when Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles.

Everest was not his ceiling. Whittaker led the first U.S. expedition to summit K2, the world's second-highest peak, in 1978. He climbed Mount Rainier more than 100 times and in 1981 guided 10 handicapped climbers to its 14,410-foot summit, saying afterward that for them, "that was Mount Everest." In 1990, at age 60, he organized the Mount Everest International Peace Climb, uniting mountaineers from the United States, the Soviet Union, and China; the expedition achieved 20 summits. Ed Viesturs, then a young guide on the climb, later recalled: "Jim stepped in and became the leader, as he typically did."

Whittaker and his identical twin brother Lou began climbing through the Boy Scouts in Seattle in the 1940s. At 16, in the summer of 1945, they summited 7,965-foot Mount Olympus in Washington's Olympic Mountains and returned to Port Angeles to find crowds celebrating the end of World War II. Both brothers later served with the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale, Colorado, during the Korean War. Lou Whittaker, also a celebrated mountaineer, died in 2024 at age 95.

After leaving REI, Whittaker sailed nearly 20,000 miles with his family over four years. He published his autobiography, "A Life on the Edge: Memoirs of Everest and Beyond," in 1999. His son Leif, who authored his own Everest memoir in 2016, released a family statement: "Whether at home, in the mountains, or at sea, he sought to share adventure, joy, and optimism with those around him."

He is survived by his wife of 52 years, Dianne Roberts; sons Bob, Joss, and Leif; three grandchildren; and one great-grandchild. Big Jim Mountain in Chelan County, Washington, bears his name.