After a long life of dangerous feats in the mountains, Jim Whittaker died peacefully in his Washington home on Tuesday. He was 97.
He was the first American to reach the summit of Mount Everest and a vital figure in the history of REI Co-op, where he eventually served as president and CEO. His impact on both climbing and the outdoor industry is impossible to overstate, and his life has become the stuff of legend.
The tributes came quickly on Wednesday. REI said Whittaker “showed the world what’s possible when courage is grounded in purpose.” In a statement shared with The Associated Press, Whittaker’s family said “his warmth, humility, and belief in the power of nature to bring people together left an enduring legacy of care for our planet and for one another.”
But this giant of a man, known as “Big Jim,” had the soul of a poet. Even at the age of 94, speaking to the American Alpine Club, his own words remain the best reflection of who he was and why he inspired so many.
“If there’s an ocean, we cross it. If there’s a record, we break it. If there’s a wrong, we right it. If there’s a disease, we cure it. If there’s a mountain, we climb it,” he said. “That’s the nature of man: to meet these challenges.”
Jim Whittaker: Born in the Mountains
Whittaker was born in Washington, and he often regarded that as his first lucky break. Surrounded by the area’s wealth of mountains and natural places, he and his two brothers spent their childhood in nature. He often spoke with deep nostalgia about the relationship with the outdoors at a young age.
Whittaker came of age alongside the birth of American rock climbing in the 1940s and 1950s. Many early climbing pioneers came from the West Coast, and Whittaker was a central figure. He and his brother, Lou, founded one of the earliest guiding companies on Mt. Rainier and climbed the mountain hundreds of times.
Even when the two brothers were drafted into the Korean War, their expertise at climbing kept them off the front lines. They were sent to a military base in Colorado, where they practiced skiing and climbing, and avoided the worst of the conflict.
But Whittaker’s biggest opportunity came in 1963, when he was invited to join an expedition to climb Mount Everest. Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had reached the summit of Everest just 10 years earlier, in 1953. Despite an attempt in 1962, no Americans had managed to stand atop the roof of the world.
That changed with the 1963 expedition, now revered as a legendary moment in the history of alpinism. Whittaker and his partner, Nawang Gombu Sherpa, summited the world’s highest mountain on May 1, 1963, turning Whittaker into a genuine American folk hero.
When Whittaker’s youngest son, Leif Whittaker, climbed Everest himself a half century later, he finally realized what his father had accomplished:
“When I was climbing Everest [in 2012] and sitting at the South Summit at about 300 vertical feet from the top and looking at the Hillary Step, I had this vision of my dad and Nawang Gombu Sherpa climbing up there,” he told the Cascadia Daily News.
“It’s 50 years earlier and I imagined what that was like without the fixed ropes, without the crowds. Just those two with a single rope connecting them and ascending this incredibly challenging terrain through a storm no less. I came back three weeks later and met my dad at the airport. He asked me, ‘How was it, son?’ I said, ‘Dad, you did some crazy shit up there that I never really understood until I was up there myself’.”
REI, Family, and an Enduring Legacy
In a lengthy tribute on Wednesday, REI Co-op honored the man who helped make the co-op and retailer a vital part of the American outdoors.
Whittaker was first hired there in 1955 by REI Co-op co-founder Lloyd Anderson as its first full-time, paid employee. He went on to serve as the company’s second CEO from 1971 to 1979.
“During his tenure, he helped shape a co-op rooted in stewardship, humility, and a belief that time outside should be shared widely and protected fiercely,” the co-op wrote. “Under his leadership, membership grew from just under 250,000 to more than 900,000 at the time of his retirement.”
Whittaker was also a fierce protector of the outdoors. His testimony to Congress in 1968 kicked off his advocacy work and later helped establish North Cascades National Park (Wash.), the Pasayten Wilderness (Wash.), and Redwood National Park (Calif.).
But Whittaker’s life will also be defined by a family legacy that continues to explore the mountains. His son Leif has summited Everest twice and works as a climbing coach. His wife of more than 50 years, Dianne Roberts, helped organize several important climbing expeditions and set a high-altitude record for North American women on K2. Whittaker’s oldest son, Joss, is also a climber and skier who became an archeologist for the Washington Department of Natural Resources. And one of Whittaker’s closest friends, Jay Inslee, became a governor of Washington.
Inslee called Whittaker’s legacy “just as impressive, and just as lasting, as Mount Rainier itself,” he wrote in a social media post Wednesday.
“He pulled many a climber up the peak,” Inslee said. “He did the same for all our spirits. He still does.”
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