Seattle University
Jim Whittaker, First American to Reach Everest’s Summit, Dies at 97
As an executive with the outdoor-supply retailer REI and an experienced climber, he conquered Mount Everest in 1963, when fewer than 10 people were known to have done so.
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By John BranchApril 8, 2026
Jim Whittaker, the first American to summit Mount Everest, whose myriad climbing achievements and longtime leadership at REI, the outdoor-supply retailer, helped establish a global mountaineering craze that continues today, died on Tuesday at his home in Port Townsend, Wash. He was 97.
His death was confirmed by his son Leif.
On May 1, 1963, a decade after Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest, and at a time when fewer than 10 people were known to have matched that feat, Mr. Whittaker set out into a storm with his climbing partner, Nawang Gombu, a Sherpa guide.
The conditions on the South Col of Everest were less than ideal for a summit push, but Mr. Whittaker did not hesitate.
“You always start up,” he told The Seattle Times in 2013. “Because you can always turn around.”
Mr. Whittaker became the first American to top Everest at about 1 p.m. local time on May 1. He and Mr. Gombu were the 10th and 11th climbers known to have gotten there and part of the only expedition to reach the summit that season.
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Jim Whittaker in 1975, before his unsuccessful attempt to summit K2, the world’s second-highest mountain. More than a decade earlier, he had successfully topped Mount Everest, the first American to do so.Credit...Associated PressTheir accomplishment was seen as a rare, otherworldly feat, not unlike the string of moon landings to follow. Mr. Whittaker, slender at 6-foot-5 and known as Big Jim, returned home as a national hero, a graceful Everyman that one reporter in 2003 called “an Alpine Jimmy Stewart.” He was featured on the covers of National Geographic and Life magazines and that July received the National Geographic Society’s highest honor, the Hubbard Medal, from President John F. Kennedy at the White House.
The next year, sales at REI, where Mr. Whittaker was a general manager and later chief executive and president, reached $1 million for the first time (about $10.7 million in today’s money), spurred in part by his fame.
“It wasn’t that steep,” he said of the climb years later. “You could walk — stumble — up. The hardest thing was the altitude. Even with the oxygen tanks, we were just sucking air. Put a pillow on your face, run around the block and try to suck oxygen through that pillow. It will give you an idea.”
James Warren Whittaker was born in Seattle on Feb. 10, 1929, to Charles and Hortense (Gant) Whittaker. His father, an alarm salesman, and his mother, a homemaker, raised three boys: Barney and identical twins, Jim and Lou.
The twins attended West Seattle High School and played basketball at Seattle University.
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Mr. Whittaker, right, with his twin brother, Lou, on Mount Rainier in Washington in 1981.Credit...Barry Wong/The Seattle Times, via Associated PressThey found their passion, however, in outdoor pursuits, guiding climbing trips in the Cascade Mountains in the summer and working as ski patrollers in the winter. They were members of the Mountaineers, a Seattle-based climbing club founded in 1906, and as 16-year-old Boy Scouts in 1945, they reached the summit of Mount Rainier, at 14,410 feet the highest peak in the Cascades.
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Drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War, the twin brothers stayed stateside, in Colorado, as teachers at the newly created Mountain and Cold Weather Training Command at the high-altitude Camp Hale, home to the 10th Mountain Division.
It was a climbing friend, Lloyd Anderson, who invited Jim to manage a small outdoor-gear store on Pike Street in downtown Seattle in 1955: Recreational Equipment Co-op, a mostly mail-order supply business. Founded in 1938 by Mr. Anderson and his wife, Mary, it served a growing niche market of mountaineers in the Northwest.
Mr. Whittaker managed the store and stockroom, situated above a restaurant. At the time, the co-op had about 600 members.
“It was too good to pass up,” he recalled in an interview. “What a job. I was the only one in the place. I opened the store, stocked the shelves, talked with customers, rang up sales, cleaned the place, locked up and made the bank deposit.”
The co-op soon incorporated, becoming Recreational Equipment Incorporated, or R.E.I. Mr. Whittaker oversaw sales, and then succeeded Mr. Anderson as president and chief executive in 1971. Stirring and riding a boom in outdoor recreation during the 1970s, the company saw sales increase eightfold from 1969 ($3.5 million) to 1977 ($28 million).
R.E.I. also expanded far from Seattle, established itself as a progressive steward for conservation, and gave rise to a phalanx of other outdoor-gear imitators. It helped turn a gritty, niche sector of the sporting-goods world into a glossy purveyor of sport, culture and fashion.
Still based in Seattle, the company — now known simply as REI — reported $3.5 billion in sales and 25 million members in 2024, with more than 190 stores in the United States.
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Mr. Whittaker in 1963, checking his climbing equipment in Nepal, several months before he scaled Mount Everest. He returned home a national hero — “an Alpine Jimmy Stewart,” as one reporter put it.Credit...Associated PressMr. Whittaker’s work at REI allowed him time for outdoor exploits.
For his 1963 expedition to Everest, his first trip to the Himalayas, he took off from work for several months, joining a group of other American climbers. He had never been higher than the summit of Alaska’s Mount McKinley. But he proved himself to be the strongest climber in the group, passing time by doing push-ups and spending weeks above Base Camp, preferring not to make multiple trips from there through the dangerous Khumbu Icefall.
On a wind-whipped morning, when Norman D. Dyhrenfurth, the expedition leader, decided to delay a final push to the summit, Mr. Whittaker and Mr. Gombu set out after a breakfast of tea and hot Jell-O, carrying heavy packs with oxygen bottles.
Three weeks after Mr. Whittaker’s successful summit, the American climbers Thomas Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld reached the top of Everest by establishing a new route, on the West Ridge, a feat that many serious mountaineers hold in higher esteem.
The Hubbard Medal that Mr. Whittaker and other expedition members received in 1963 recognizes achievements in research, discovery and exploration. It was previously bestowed on Robert Peary, Charles Lindbergh and, in 1962, John Glenn. Later, it was awarded to Neil Armstrong and other astronauts in the Apollo missions.
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Mr. Whittaker guided Senator Robert F. Kennedy to the top of Mount Kennedy, in the Yukon Territory of Canada, in 1965. The peak was named after President John F. Kennedy.Credit...Associated PressIn 1965, Mr. Whittaker guided Senator Robert F. Kennedy to the top of Mount Kennedy in Canada’s Yukon Territory, named for his assassinated brother. They became close friends, and Mr. Whittaker helped lead Mr. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in Washington in 1968. He was in the hospital room when Mr. Kennedy was pronounced dead after being shot in Los Angeles.
Mr. Whittaker was a pallbearer at Mr. Kennedy’s funeral, along with Mr. Glenn, the athlete Rafer Johnson and others.
Two of Mr. Whittaker’s sons, Bobby (named for Robert Kennedy) and Leif, and Mr. Kennedy’s son Christopher returned to Mount Kennedy 50 years later to repeat their fathers’ climb.
In 1975, Mr. Whittaker attempted to reach the summit of K2, the world’s second-highest mountain, but the effort fell short. Three years later, he led a 14-person expedition to K2, along the China-Pakistan border. Four members of the group — though not Mr. Whittaker — reached the summit, the first Americans and the third team to do so.
REI’s leadership, facing a plateauing industry, was less smitten with Mr. Whittaker after the K2 expeditions. He resigned in 1979, the year he turned 50, after 25 years with the company. From a co-op devoid of stock options, he received a $52,000 parting check.
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Credit...Jeff Chiu/Associated PressMr. Whittaker’s fame later led him to various business and climbing ventures, many with an environmental mission and a message of harmony. He coordinated a 1990 expedition to Everest (partly funded by L.L. Bean) that combined teams from the United States, the Soviet Union and China. At the summit, climbers from those superpowers clasped hands.
“We took the three countries that were enemies during the Cold War and demonstrated what could be done through friendship and cooperation,” Mr. Whittaker told National Geographic in 2003. “We also hauled garbage off the top, sending a message that climbers had to start packing out what they packed in, and started that campaign from the highest point on Earth.”
An adept sailor as well, Mr. Whittaker competed in two Vic-Maui International Yacht Races, skippering his own boats in that 2,400-mile race between Victoria, British Columbia, and Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. Mr. Whittaker, his wife and their sons also sailed from their home in Port Townsend, northwest of Seattle, to Australia and back on the family’s 54-foot ketch.
Mr. Whittaker published an autobiography, “A Life on the Edge: Memoirs of Everest and Beyond,” in 1999.
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Mr. Whittaker’s autobiography was published in 1999. In addition to mountaineering, he was adept at sailing, competing in long-distance races.Credit...Mountaineers BooksIn addition to his son Leif, from his second marriage, to Dianne Roberts, he is survived by Ms. Roberts, who photographed the K2 expeditions and accompanied her husband to a camp above 26,000 feet; another son from that marriage, Joss; his son Bobby, from his first marriage, to Blanche Patterson; three grandchildren; and one great-granddaughter. His twin brother, Lou, a longtime mountaineer and guide on Mount Rainier, died in 2024. His older brother, Barney, and two other sons from his first marriage, Scott and Carl, also died.
Mr. Whittaker stayed connected with Mr. Gombu, his partner on Everest. In 2003, when Mr. Whittaker was 74, the men and their families trekked to Base Camp to commemorate the 40th anniversary of their historic summit.
These days, Everest is crowded. Hundreds reach the summit in a typical year, guided by companies from around the world, with climbing routes and ropes established and maintained by Sherpas.
“I think nature is a great teacher,” Mr. Whittaker told The Seattle Times in 2013, 50 years after becoming the first American to top Everest. “Being in nature that way is a good way to find out who the hell you are.”
Ash Wu contributed reporting.
A correction was made on
April 8, 2026:
An earlier version of this obituary misstated at one point how many climbers reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the 1963 season. Four other climbers on Jim Whittaker and Nawang Gombu’s expedition also reached the summit that year; it was not the case that they were the only two.