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.<\/p>\n
His death was confirmed by his son Leif.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The conditions on the South Col of Everest were less than ideal for a summit push, but Mr. Whittaker did not hesitate.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou always start up,\u201d he told<\/a> The Seattle Times in 2013. \u201cBecause you can always turn around.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Their 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 \u201can Alpine Jimmy Stewart.\u201d He was featured on the covers of National Geographic and Life magazines and that July received the National Geographic Society\u2019s highest honor, the Hubbard Medal, from President John F. Kennedy at the White House<\/a>.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s money), spurred in part by his fame.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t that steep,\u201d he said of the climb years later.<\/a> \u201cYou could walk \u2014 stumble \u2014 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The twins attended West Seattle High School and played basketball at Seattle University.<\/p>\n They 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>, 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.<\/p>\n 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<\/a> at the high-altitude Camp Hale, home to the 10th Mountain Division.<\/p>\n 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<\/a>, it served a growing niche market of mountaineers in the Northwest.<\/p>\n Mr. Whittaker managed the store and stockroom, situated above a restaurant. At the time, the co-op had about 600 members.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was too good to pass up,\u201d he recalled in an interview<\/a>. \u201cWhat 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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).<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Still based in Seattle, the company \u2014 now known simply as REI \u2014 reported $3.5 billion in sales and 25 million members in 2024, with more than 190 stores in the United States.<\/p>\n Mr. Whittaker\u2019s work at REI allowed him time for outdoor exploits.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n On a wind-whipped morning, when Norman D. Dyhrenfurth<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n Three weeks after Mr. Whittaker\u2019s successful summit, the American climbers Thomas Hornbein<\/a> and Willi Unsoeld<\/a> reached the top of Everest by establishing a new route, on the West Ridge, a feat that many serious mountaineers hold in higher esteem.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n In 1965, Mr. Whittaker guided Senator Robert F. Kennedy<\/a> to the top of Mount Kennedy in Canada\u2019s Yukon Territory, named for his assassinated brother. They became close friends, and Mr. Whittaker helped lead Mr. Kennedy\u2019s presidential campaign in Washington in 1968. He was in the hospital room when Mr. Kennedy was pronounced dead after being shot in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n Mr. Whittaker was a pallbearer<\/a> at Mr. Kennedy\u2019s funeral, along with Mr. Glenn, the athlete Rafer Johnson and others.<\/p>\n Two of Mr. Whittaker\u2019s sons, Bobby (named for Robert Kennedy) and Leif, and Mr. Kennedy\u2019s son Christopher returned to Mount Kennedy 50 years later to repeat their fathers\u2019 climb.<\/p>\n In 1975, Mr. Whittaker attempted to reach the summit of K2, the world\u2019s second-highest mountain, but the effort fell short. Three years later, he led a 14-person expedition to K2<\/a>, along the China-Pakistan border. Four members of the group \u2014 though not Mr. Whittaker \u2014 reached the summit, the first Americans and the third team to do so.<\/p>\n REI\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Mr. Whittaker\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWe took the three countries that were enemies during the Cold War and demonstrated what could be done through friendship and cooperation,\u201d Mr. Whittaker told National Geographic in 2003. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n