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

For 20 minutes of his life, Jim Whittaker was on top of the world.

He was the first American to summit Mount Everest, reaching the highest point on Earth on May 1, 1963, with Sherpa Nawang Gombu.

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

He returned home a hero, with his photo on the cover of Life magazine, a party at the White House, and unexpected celebrity. And although life off the mountain did not always go smoothly, he disdained regret.

“If you take a risk, whether it's climbing mountains or standing up for something you believe in, your chances of winning are at least fifty percent,” he wrote. “On the other hand, if you never take risks, your chances of losing are pretty close to 100%.”

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

He was 34 years old when he climbed Everest, a feat that marked much of the rest of his life. His Washington state license plate read 29028, the generally accepted height of Everest when he climbed it. (Later GPS surveys placed it at about 29,035 feet.)

He was chosen for the expedition by its leader, Swiss mountaineer Norman Dyhrenfurth, because of his experience climbing in icy conditions, including numerous summits of Mount Rainier near his Seattle-area home.

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

“I had trained 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 prepare for the cold we would encounter.

“I didn't know anyone who was in better shape.”

On just the second day of the group's ascent from base camp, tragedy struck when a giant section of an icefall (a glacial formation resembling a frozen waterfall) moved, crushing team member Jake Breitenbach.

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

Because the only way to get back to base camp was through that icefall, Whittaker decided to stay atop the mountain for five steady weeks while more camps were set up on Everest. He lost 25 pounds and a considerable amount of strength due to the thin air.

Still, he was in better condition than many of the other climbers and Dyhrenfurth chose him for the final assault. He and Gombu left the last camp in the middle of a wind storm and with little oxygen supply.

How difficult was it to breathe? “Put a pillow on your face, run around the block and try to suck in oxygen through that pillow,” he said. It was so cold that one of his eyeballs froze, rendering it unusable.

Reaching the summit after several hours, they stayed only long enough to take photos and plant flags as 50 mph winds whipped around them.

“When you're up there, you're not elated, you're not afraid,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2013. “You're really nothing. But deep down, 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 on February 10, 1929 in Seattle, about 10 minutes before the birth of Louie, his twin brother. As the children grew, they began making a ruckus in the house, much to their mother's annoyance.

“I think that command to 'Come out and play' is what started Louie and me on the path we've been on ever since,” Whittaker wrote.

He was active in the Boy Scouts and as a teenager joined a mountaineering club that sponsored climbs in the nearby Olympic and Cascade mountains. He tested himself on higher and higher peaks, enjoying 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 that is a good way to figure out who the hell you are.”

After finishing West Seattle High School, Whittaker entered Seattle University, graduating in 1952. He was quickly drafted into the Army, but his mountaineering experience led him to be assigned to the Mountain and Cold Weather Training Command in Colorado instead of serving in combat in Korea.

In 1955, he became the first full-time employee of the Recreational Equipment Cooperative (later called REI) when it was located in a 20-by-30-foot space above a Seattle restaurant. In his first year, he expanded the co-op's offerings to ski equipment and introduced new concepts (such as opening on Saturday mornings so customers could pick up equipment for weekend trips) that boosted sales.

Whittaker, photographed on April 12, 1975, in Seattle, displays some of the equipment he would carry on an expedition to climb K2 on the China-Pakistan border.

(Associated Press)

Because of his connection to the cooperative, he was named team 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, received the Hubbard Medal of the National Geographic Society, which partially sponsored the expedition, from President Kennedy, four months before the president was assassinated.

Two years later, Whittaker led a climb of Mount Kennedy, a nearly 14,000-foot Canadian peak named after JFK, with Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the climbing group. The two men forged a close friendship that extended to the Kennedy clan at large. In the years that followed, Whittaker went on skiing vacations with the Kennedys, was invited to the family resort in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and hosted gatherings in Seattle that included mountaineering.

Whittaker organized Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign efforts in the Pacific Northwest and spoke with him by phone just minutes before the candidate was gunned down in Los Angeles. Whittaker took a flight to Los Angeles and was at the senator's hospital bed when he died and later served as a pallbearer at the funeral.

In mountaineering, Whittaker was closely involved in higher profile ventures. He led an expedition in 1975 to the world's second highest mountain, K2, which he failed to reach the summit. His return expedition in 1978 was successful, although he himself decided not to go to the summit.

That same year, he decided to leave REI, in part due to friction with the cooperative's board of directors. He had been president and CEO since 1971, and when he left, the cooperative 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 the Angels in 2013.

(Elaine Thompson/Associated Press)

Income from an endorsement deal helped him stay financially strong, but an investment in a new outdoor equipment company turned out to be a disaster. The financial irregularities of a partner, who was convicted of felony bank fraud, doomed the company to failure and Whittaker was left holding the financial bag.

He nearly disappeared, but regained his financial position when a venture capitalist asked him in 1986 to be chairman, with stock options, of a new company called Magellan. He was a pioneer in GPS consumer electronics and holds numerous patents in this field.

Appropriately, Whittaker called one of the middle chapters of his book “Roller Coaster.” But he ended it with “Life Well Lived.”

“If you don't live on the edge,” he wrote, “you're taking up too much space.”

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

Colker is a former Times staff writer.